Ice is melting in St. Petersburg

Very soon the Neva ice will crash, gushing in a noisy and sparkling stream to the Gulf of Finland. Winter jackets will finally go into wardrobes, and Petersburg from winter will change into summer ... hats and coats. And before you know it, June will come, and an incredibly beautiful brig under scarlet sails will appear under the open Palace Bridge to the music of Gliere.

This year we are looking forward to this magical festival again. According to the organizers, there will be something incredible. But it is still too early - it is not yet time to disclose all the secrets of the Scarlet Sails 2018. And before it starts, let’s to go briefly into the past.

The Scarlet Sails, 1968
Photo: Channel 5 Archives

No one hesitates to call out loud the age of this unique water fairy show. And this does not even contradict the rules of good manners. On the contrary, Channel 5 is proud to announce that soon the Scarlet Sails Festival, an event known all over the world and recognized as one of the best festivals in Europe, will turn 50! And the most touching and dearest image of hope, love and happiness, created by Alexander Green, will be 100!

Alexander Greene
Photo by wikipedia.org

According to the passport, he was Grinevsky, but since 1903 he was caught and imprisoned for revolutionary actions so many times that he preferred to reduce his real name so as not to attract the attention of the police once again. Thus, Alexander Green came to existence. He lived a short, but incredibly turbulent life - his adventures would be enough for three. He was a sailor, a lumberjack, a gold digger in the Urals, a miner at an iron mine, a theatrical copyist. He escaped from prisons and again was sent to them. He starved and wandered until in 1906 he discovered a writer in himself. Then his fate cardinally changed.

Photo: wikipedia.org

After the revolution, his almost fixed life cracked again. Green was called up for military service into the Red Army as a signalman, but soon he caught typhus and spent almost a month at the Botkin hospital. Then, seriously ill, balancing between life and death, he created in his imagination that fantastic world, which then came to life on the pages of his novel «The Scarlet Sails».

The cover of the first edition of «The Scarlet Sails»
Photo by wikipedia.org

«It is hard to imagine that such a bright, warmed up by love for people flower, could have been born here in the gloomy, cold, starving Petrograd», – Vsevolod Rozhdestvensky wrote about the novel.

The symbol of hope and love created by Green - scarlet sails - was filled with such incredible power that millions of readers loved it right away. Soviet people, as it’s known, were mostly truly romantic.

Then there was the war, the horrors of the siege. And only when more than a quarter of a century has passed since the last bombing of Leningrad, here again we were able to recall the romance. And again scarlet sails glided over the Neva not because of, but in spite of the circumstances. A methodical department, responsible for city children's and youth festivals was formed at the so called Pioneers’ Palace (former Anichkov Palace). Talented people who were not indifferent to what they did worked there. They really wanted to make the graduates' festival a bright one ... But there was no money, no real opportunity to do this. Then someone remembered a romantic story by Green. Through the DOSAAF they found a suitable vessel, theater artists from the Pioneers’ Palace draped its sails with scarlet cloth, and the brig, in the presence of thousands of graduates, sailed into the Neva on a light St. Petersburg night and anchored in front of the Winter Palace. It was June 1968.

Photo: Channel 5 Archives

In 1969, the Scarlet Sails Festival became an impressive theatrical fairy show. A famous theatre director Georgy Tovstonogov worked on the script of the festival himself. The Spit of Vasilyevsky Island was turned into a theatrical stage. A squadron of boats approached it. Cadets with torches stood on the granite steps. Assol, the main character of the novel by Green, lit a fire and the flame was passed from person to person, up to the top of the Rostral Columns. After the lighthouses, torches were lit at the Peter and Paul Fortress and the whole sky lit up with fireworks. There was a floating fountain, scenes from the ballet «Swan Lake» and «Hymn to the Great City by Gliere», performed live by the symphony orchestra.

Photo: Channel 5 Archives

In the Soviet times the Scarlet Sails Festival was held in Leningrad during 11 years: from 1968 to 1979. On the eve of the Olympics-80, with the strengthening of security measures, many mass holidays, including this one, were cancelled. But graduates traditionally went to the Neva at night, and although there was no celebration program and the sailboat wouldn’t come, those walks for many years were called «meeting the Scarlet Sails». The festival was forgotten about for 26 years. During that time, many things changed, even the name of the city. But the city remained faithful to its tradition, and in 2005 the festival returned. And since then, its popularity has been growing. Last year, «The Scarlet Sails» gathered a multi-million audience on the squares and embankments of St. Petersburg, as well as in front of television screens across the country. And on the day of its anniversary this year the most romantic water show in the world will make hearts of its viewers beat more often. In Petersburg, in Russia, and all over the globe.

Written by: Elena Utekhina