Youth Day in 2023: the history and traditions of the holiday

In the summer, Our Country celebrates Youth Day – a holiday dedicated to those on whom the future of the country, the world and the planet as a whole depends.

In 2023 Youth Day will be celebrated throughout Our Country. This holiday was first held in 1958. Since then, the tradition has hardly been interrupted. We tell how our grandmothers celebrated Youth Day and how they spend it in modern times.

When is it customary to celebrate a holiday

The holiday is celebrated every year 27 June, and if the date falls on a weekday, the ceremonial events are postponed to the next weekend.

Originally from the USSR: how Youth Day appeared

The history of the holiday begins in the Soviet Union. The decree “On the Establishment of the Day of Soviet Youth” was signed by the Supreme Presidium of the USSR on February 7, 1958. They decided to celebrate on the last Sunday of June: the school year is over, the exams have been passed, why not take a walk. However, “walking” did not become the main goal, the main meaning of the new holiday was not so much entertaining as ideological. In cities throughout the Union, meetings, rallies and congresses of activists were held, competitions of youth brigades in factories and plants, sports festivals and competitions were held. Well, then it was already possible to relax – in the evening after the production competitions, their participants went to the city parks to dance.

By the way, the Soviet Youth Day also had a predecessor – International Youth Day, MYUD, which fell at the end of August and the beginning of September. In our country, it was celebrated from 1917 to 1945. Vladimir Mayakovsky devoted several of his poems to MYUD, and the Soviet miner Alexei Stakhanov in 1935 dated his famous record to this holiday. The abbreviation MUD is still found in the names of some streets in our country.

Flash mobs and charity: how Youth Day is going now

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the holiday of the young did not disappear. In 1993, in Our Country, they even allocated a fixed date for it – June 27th. But Belarus and Ukraine left the Soviet version – to celebrate the holiday of the young generation on the last Sunday of June. At the same time, entertainment events are often postponed to the next weekend – the last in June – and with us: in the event that June 27 falls on weekdays.

Today, on Youth Day, no one sets Stakhanov records and does not arrange Komsomol rallies. But the competitions in honor of the holiday remained, although they were “modernized”. Now these are cosplay festivals, competitions of talents and sports achievements, quests and scientific forums. For example, in 2018 in Moscow, everyone was invited to fight in virtual reality helmets or practice creating computer graphics.

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the social component during the Youth Days. Charity fairs and festivals are often held, and the proceeds from them are sent to orphanages or hospitals.

Various actions in cinemas, theaters and museums, as well as master classes are timed to coincide with the holiday. Well, dancing, of course – discos with fireworks in the final are held in almost all cities of our country.

And how are they: three dates and an international festival

Of course, a holiday for the young is by no means a Soviet invention, it is celebrated in many countries of the world, and there is even an International Youth Day, adopted by the UN, with the date August 12. Each year, a common theme for the holiday is chosen, related to the global challenges faced by young people around the world.

There is also an unofficial World Youth Day on November 10, which was established in honor of the founding of the World Federation of Democratic Youth (WFDY) in London. By the way, this organization became the initiator of the international festival of youth and students, which is regularly held in different cities around the world. In 2017, our Sochi was chosen as the site for the forum. Then more than 25 thousand people from more than 60 countries took part in the World Festival of Youth and Students. By tradition, each day of the festival was dedicated to one of the regions of the planet: America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Oceania and Europe. And a separate day was allocated for the host country of the event, Our Country.

The third date is International Youth Solidarity Day on 24 April. Its founder in the middle of the 24th century was also the World Federation of Democratic Youth. This holiday was actively supported and sponsored by the Soviet Union, therefore, after its collapse, April XNUMX ceased to be a holiday for some time. Now the Day of Youth Solidarity is gradually returning to the agenda, although it most likely will not regain its former popularity.

Who is considered a youth

According to the UN classification, youth are boys and girls up to 24 years old. There are approximately 1,8 billion of them in the world today. Most of the youth in India, one of the most densely populated countries on the planet.

In Our Country, the concept of a young person is broader – in our country, people under 30 years of age are classified as such, with a lower mark of 14 years. In our country, more than 33 million people can be classified as young people.