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Boris Kustodiev Maslenitsa tuesday

Celebration of Maslenitsa in Australia. Federation Square, Melbourne, February 5, 2006, three weeks before the start of the real Maslenitsa. The straw effigy on the photo is the Kostroma, or Lady Maslenitsa.

Maslenitsa or Pancake week (Russian: Ма́сленица) is a Russian folk holiday that dates back to the pagan times. It is celebrated during the last week before the Great Lent that is the seventh week before the Easter. Maslenitsa is a direct analog of the Roman Catholic Carnival. In 2007, Maslenitsa is celebrated from February 12 to February 18.

Maslenitsa has a dual ancestry: pagan and Christian. On the pagan side, Maslenitsa is a sun festival, celebrating the imminent end of the winter.

On the Christian side, Maslenitsa is the last week before the onset of the Great Lent. During the Maslenitsa week, meat is already forbidden to the Orthodox Christians, making it a myasopustnaya nedelya (Russian: мясопустная неделя, English "meat-empty week"). During Lent, meat, fish, dairy products and eggs are forbidden. Furthermore, Lent also excludes parties, secular music, dancing and other distractions from the spiritual life. Thus, Maslenitsa represents the last chance to meet with the worldly delights.

The essential element of Maslenitsa celebration are bliny, Russian pancakes, popularly taken to symbolize the sun. Round and golden, they are made from the rich foods still allowed by the Orthodox traditions: butter, eggs, and milk.

Maslenitsa also includes masquerades, snowball fights, sledding, swinging on swings and plenty of sleigh rides. In some regions, each day of Maslenitsa had its traditional activity: one day for sleigh-riding, another for the sons-in-law to visit their parents-in-law, another day for visiting the godparents, etc. The mascot of the celebration is usually a brightly dressed straw effigy of Lady Maslenitsa, formerly known as Kostroma.

As the culmination of the celebration, on Sunday evening, Lady Maslenitsa is stripped of her finery, and put to the flames of a bonfire. Any remaining blintzes are also thrown on the fire. Lady Maslenitsa's ashes are buried in the snow (to fertilize the crops), all people ask for forgiveness from each other, and the Great Lent begins. This last day of Maslenitsa is also called 'Forgiveness Sunday'. To devout Orthodox Christians, it is the last day on which dairy products, fish, wine and oil may be consumed.

During the Soviet times the Maslenitsa as all the other religious holidays were suppressed. After the Perestroika the celebrations resumed, although they are seen by some as artificial restoration of a dead tradition.

Many countries with a significant number of Russian immigrants consider maslenitsa as a suitable form to celebrate Russian culture, although the celebrations are usually reduced to one day and may not coincide with the exact date of the religious celebrations.

• The Rite of Spring
• Martenitsa (in Bulgaria)
• Fat Thursday (in Poland)
• Pancake Day (in England)
• Mărţişor (in Romania)

• Site devoted to Maslenitsa
• Margaret McKibben Maslenitsa