Day of Knowledge

So in the end Aygul was lovely about my leaving. I assured her that it was only due to the distance from the center and she invited me to come back and drink tea with her and Blanche whenever I like. In the car with Vanya Shupenko on the way to the new apartment he informed me that today was a holiday. “What holiday?” I asked. This seemed strange since Kazan had just celebrated “The Day of the City” two days earlier. “It is ‘The Day of Knowledge’” he said. Hmmm. “What does that mean exactly?” I asked and Vanya replied, “It is September 1, the day that all of the students go back to school.” “Ahh, the Day of Knowledge, I see.” And I didn’t think much of this “holiday.” I mean most kids go back to school on the same day in the States right? No big deal. However, even just on the ride to the new apartment it was clear that The Day of Knowledge was an entirely different beast than our generic Back to School season. Mothers lined the streets with big bouquets of flowers ostensibly for teachers in one hand and children dressed up in mini-formal wear in the other. I arrived at the apartment and my new host mother was wearing a shiny pants suit and heels on her way to a Day of Knowledge celebration to honor her as a retired school teacher. I still didn’t entirely get the picture until I arrived at the university and there were tens of thousands of students lined up by their departments with techno music pounding through speakers in front of the main building of Kazan State University. I went into the crowd and was overwhelmed.

Student Lining up in front of KSU

...All the way down the Street

Lined up by Department

The event was sponsored by Maxwell House and fuzzy hatted mascots were handing out packets of instant coffee. Many of the students were dressed in suits, some of them very shiny suits. Others were too cool for school and smoking along the sidelines.

Maxwell House Coffee Guy

  

 KSU Pride

 Her Boyfriend was in a Particularly Shiny Suit

Alas, She was not Thrilled with my Attempt to Capture Him on Film

I was standing beside a man and a woman in MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) uniforms along the sidelines, very surprised at how little police presence there was for such a huge number of people, when a girl came over with her friend who looked ill. The girl leaned the friend against the wall next to me. The friend, a tall lean Tatar looking girl, put her head in her hands and swayed unsteadily in her spiked heels like she was about to pass out. The girl got scared and rushed over to the MVD officials saying “My friend is sick. Can you please help?” They waved her away like a pesky fly to continue their conversation. The girl ran off to find someone else and unbeknownst to either of them I kept an eye on the unsteady friend as the girl left to get help. The Tatar friend was looking pale and scared, clenching her fists, trying to take deep breaths but only getting little panicky gulps of air in. The girl came back with some guy in a blue sweater who looked like some sort of maintenance man. He lifted the tall Tatar girl off of the wall and put her arm around his shoulder. The other girl took up her other side but they only got ten paces before the girl crumpled to the floor in a pile completely passed out. The guy in the blue sweater slapped her face twice then tried to pick her up and dropped her. The MVD officials next to me didn’t even pause in their conversation to look over. Another man rushed over and together he and the guy in the blue sweater got the girl off the ground and over one of their shoulders to take her away. I walked a few steps forward to see where they were taking her but they faded into the crowd. And then the crowd started moving forward down the street.

Students on the Move

Final Destination: The Statue of Young Lenin

 

On my way home I stopped at the flashy shopping mall Koltso to see what movies were playing for future reference. While there, I noticed that a show was starting up on a little stage in honor of the Day of Knowledge. I couldn’t help myself and sat down on a bench among doting mothers and disaffected teenagers (completely unclear why they were there en masse) and. The show was emceed by an obnoxious little girl with long braids down her back wearing a business casual grey pants suit. She was quite pleased with herself, laughed at her own scripted jokes none of which were funny and kept telling the audience when they needed to applaud. For a moment I forgot that the Soviet Union had collapsed and could see her whole career in the Communist Party unfolding before my eyes. “Applodismenti, Applodismenti.” At the same time I worried that everyone in the audience of the 6^th grade talent show that I emceed in 1988 had felt the same revulsion toward me. I comforted myself with the fact that at least I had been wearing a full length shark costume while telling the crowd when to applaud. Braids then sang a melancholic ballad that was as age-inappropriate as her pants suit about nostalgia for childhood and friends from our school days.

Note the Adorable School Girls behind the Stage

She then introduced a little blond wunderkind in sparkling high tops and skinny jeans offset with a black blazer over a tee shirt with Japanese characters. He sang and tapped and handed her the microphone to do flips across the stage before they broke into a duet.

Braids and Wunderkind Duet

I stayed in part because I was mesmerized by the absurdity of the spectacle and also to see what the ridiculously cute gaggle of schoolgirls with big poofy ribbons in their hair lined up behind the stage were going to do. I was not disappointed as the school girls filled the stage and were paired off with school boys to do a song and dance that involved a jump rope. 

The Grande Finale

A Thrilling Conclusion to my Day of Knowledge