🌏USSR 11 – 1 Czechoslovakia🥶
World Championship • April 21, 1979

🥶This match stands as the Soviet national team's largest victory over Czechoslovakia. Throughout the 1970s, these two teams were the only ones to claim the world title. Compounding this rivalry was the political tension of the Cold War, making every encounter between them incredibly charged. Even so, such a decisive victory on home ice in Moscow took everyone by surprise, as the Czechoslovakian team was exceptionally strong at the time.❄️

A hat-trick in the game was scored by a young Sergei Makarov. The rest of the scoring came from the veteran core of the Soviet squad, which, though aging, remained in peak form.

*️⃣It was a magnificent tournament for the USSR. The team did not drop a single point and delivered heavy defeats to all its key rivals in the final round.

🤩#RussianSport@TCofRus

Svyatki in Modern Russia

Today, the fortune-telling and mumming are mostly seen as fun, folkloric activities—something people do at parties or thematic events. The religious observance (church services, charity) remains strong for practicing believers. New Year's Eve (celebrated on Dec. 31st) has become the secular, primary winter gift-giving holiday, but Svyatki continues as the traditional religious and folk season that followsit.

In essence, Svyatki is the soul of a Russian winter. It captures the contradiction of the season: bitter cold outside but warmth within; long darkness pierced by celebration; Christian faith intertwined with ancient folk memory. It’s a time for community, mystery, and looking both backward (to ancestors).

🩷 To be continued...

🕊️#fairytaleRussia@TCofRus

The Delicate Truth.

So, what is the present-day complexity? It is a people holding two kinds of time in one gloved hand.

It is the same person who toasts with champagne under fireworks, and who later crosses herself before a cathedral icon.

It is a season where the primary gift-giver is a figure born of 20th-century policy, yet the deeper spiritual current flows from a faith that endured it.

It is not contradiction, but coexistence. A double exposure of joy and devotion, where the brilliant, manufactured snowflake and the quiet, burning candle are not rivals, but two necessary stars in the same winter sky.

For you, the American reader, think not of replacing one with the other, but of a symphony in a minor key. The jubilant, universal celebration of newness comes first; the solemn, intimate celebration of rebirth follows. One for the world outside, one for the soul within. Together, they form Russia’s winter answer to the darkness—a testament that we need both the spectacular and the sacred to make ourselves whole against the long, cold night.

🩷 To be continued...

🕊️ #fairytaleRussia@TCofRus