Easter cards from pre-revolutionary Russia (317 cards)

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The Holy Resurrection of Christ is the triumph of triumphs, the greatest
and the most joyful holiday, the oldest in the Christian church. It was established back in the time of the apostles, and from them, as a legacy, the Easter greeting was passed on to us: “Christ is risen!” - “Truly he is risen!”
With the advent and spread at the end of the 19th century of open
letters, a new opportunity arose to carry these words across miles of spring thaw and border posts. It is significant that some of the very first domestic illustrated postcards were issued for Easter in 1898: four watercolors “on spring subjects” by the famous writer and artist N.N. Karazin became the first (and very successful) experience in publishing postcards undertaken by the Community of St. Eugenia. Subsequently, this publishing house - without exaggeration, the best in Russia that published open letters - repeatedly turned to Easter themes. Artists I.Ya. Bilibin and F.G. Berenstam, V.I. Zarubin and I.I. Smukrovich, N.K. Pimonenko and E.M. Bem paid tribute to her - each in their own unique manner. It is symbolic that they are alone of the last postcards of the Community, which were published in March 1917, depicted Ukrainian “pysanky” - painted Easter eggs.
Full-color Easter cards were also published in other
publishing houses: based on the originals of professional Russian artists, they were published by such large companies as "Richard" (St. Petersburg), "Lenz and Rudolf" (Riga) - the now little-known painter M.M. Germashev collaborated with him, as well as "Granberg" (Stockholm).
In general, a huge amount of postal mail was produced in Europe
cards for Easter for the Russian market. At the same time, many foreign illustrated postcards used attributes unusual for the Russian tradition, such as chickens and hares. The bulk were black and white photo postcards with sentimental (at best) and, most often, vulgar content.
In the short period of 1914 - 1917, Easter cards
a new plot outline appears, determined by external and internal events in Russian life: World War I and the February Revolution. In the spring of 1917, an unknown artist used the image of a red Easter egg to allegorically express joy at the birth of a republic of workers and soldiers.
However, soon greeting cards for Easter will last for decades
disappeared from the everyday life of the new Soviet society.
However, they continued to exist among the Russian
emigration. An idea of them is given by a small collection that the Russian National Library received as a gift from the California State University Library (USA) in 1997: in the 1950s and 1960s, Parisian and New York private publishing houses, as well as the publishing house of the Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville (USA) published postcards depicting ordinary Easter foods or scenes of a bright holiday in an irrevocably gone, idyllic and sweet native land.
Since the early 1990s, publication has resumed in Russia
illustrated Easter cards. Many of them reproduce (explicitly or covertly) samples from the beginning of the 20th century, and modern artists in their original works, as a rule, operate with an extremely limited set of motifs: temple, Easter cake and Easter, willow branch and, of course, painted or painted eggs. To understand how large the number of stories connected with the celebration of the Holy Resurrection of Christ really is, you just need to turn to the experience of the Russian Easter card of the 1900s - 1910s...