Octobering

What it was

The English name Octobering covers a naming ceremony of the early Soviet Union. The state introduced it on the official footing of Marxist-Leninist atheism, as an attempt to take the place of christening. Two Russian neologisms sit behind it, and the sources treat them as synonyms. Oktyabryenie was coined by analogy with Kreshcheniye, the word for the sacrament of baptism. Oktyabriny was coined in place of Krestiny, the family celebration held when a child was baptised. Both words come from Oktyabr, October, and commemorate the October Revolution. The article adds a warning: Oktyabriny is a different word from Oktyabrina, which is a Soviet given name.

From cross to star

The old rite had a visible sign: the Christian cross. The new one replaced it with a revolutionary sign, the Red Star, krasnaya zvezda in Russian. From that star came another name for the ceremony, zvezdiny, formed the same way krestiny had named the older celebration around baptism. The vocabulary of christening was rebuilt too. Where Russian had okrestit, to christen, the Soviet version offered ozvezdit, which turned the cross into a star. A baby was not signed with the cross but given the star. In this way the ceremony kept the shape of the ritual it displaced while changing everything it pointed to.

The names it spread

The rite itself did not last, but the article credits it with helping a new kind of given name spread. These names were built from revolutionary phraseology. Oktyabrina is one, formed from Oktyabr, October. Vladlen is another, made from the name Vladimir Lenin. The point was a name that belonged to the revolution. The wording of the sources is careful: the ceremony was short-lived, yet it helped names of this kind multiply. So the lasting trace of Octobering is found less in a ceremony than in the lists of names that Soviet parents could draw on.

In film

The 1988 film Heart of a Dog includes a scene that shows what Octobering looked like in the eyes of later Soviet culture. A mother brings her newborn daughter to be ozvezdit, to be given the star instead of christened. She is handed a choice of what the film calls revolutionary names, and Barrikada and Bebelina are among the ones offered to her. The scene is a cultural reference rather than a record of the rite, and the sources present it that way. It does show the shape of the idea: a state ceremony in the place where the church ceremony stood, and a set of revolutionary names offered in place of the baptismal one.

How Octobering is kept

Octobering was for a newborn. Parents brought the baby to be ozvezdit, given the star, instead of taking it to a church baptism. The sign of the old rite, the cross, gave way to the Red Star. A name was then chosen for the child, and the names on offer could be revolutionary ones. The gathering around the event followed the pattern of krestiny, the family celebration that came with a baptism. The rite belonged to the early years of the Soviet state and the sources call it short-lived, so it is not kept as an official ceremony now.

When and where

Octobering belonged to the early era of the Soviet Union, in the years that followed the October Revolution. The sources give no fixed day of the year for it. It came at the birth of a child, at the point where a family would otherwise have arranged a christening. The rite was short-lived and never grew into a lasting annual custom.

This was a state project of the Soviet Union, and the sources name Russia. It was meant to reach families wherever a christening would once have taken place, so it was designed as a nationwide replacement for a church rite rather than as a custom of one town or region. No single place is named as its home.

What Octobering means

For the state that introduced it, Octobering carried the October Revolution into the family. A child's naming became a small act of the new order, and the cross of the old rite was answered by the Red Star. The words did the same work: Oktyabr, October, sits inside Oktyabryenie and Oktyabriny, and the same root fed a set of new given names. What the ceremony handed on, in the end, was not so much a rite as a habit of naming children after the revolution.

Questions people ask about Octobering

See also

CouvadeChildbirth rituals where fathers take to bed and mimic the labor of childbirthRushnykA sacred embroidered cloth used in East Slavic rituals, weddings and daily life.Nativity of John the BaptistA Christian feast day on June 24 that marks the birth of John the Baptist and anticipates Christmas.BabindenA Bulgarian feast honoring midwives and new mothers with rituals of bathing, feasting, and blessing.

Good reading and sources

• Octobering on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

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