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In late June, 2024, Warsaw’s Ukrainian community arranged a celebration of Ivan Kupala Night, an Eastern Slavic midsummer festival that dates back to pagan times but still remains part of many Slavic cultures. The holiday was arranged primarily for Ukrainians displaced from Ukraine by the war. However, all who were interested were welcomed to the celebration including local Poles and SRAS students studying on SRAS’ Slavic Studies Summer in Warsaw at the time.
Attending this event was eye-opening for many reasons. This was a first-hand experience of authentic Ukrainian culture, as practiced by a Ukrainians. It was also a reminder, however, that despite even the trauma of war and displacement, culture lives on. The festival’s bonfire, traditional dances, and floating wreaths celebrated heritage, unity, and resilience.
Alexander Neuman is a third-year Ukrainian student spending the Summer of 2024 with SRAS in Warsaw, Poland, supported by the U.S. Department of State Program for Research and Training on Eastern Europe and Eurasia (Title VIII). He is pursuing a Master of Arts in International Security at George Mason University.
Ivan Kupala: A Celebration of Slavic Tradition
The bonfire lit the Saturday night.
I remembered the long jump in middle school P.E. class as I leaped over the flames and skidded to a halt on the sandy Poniatowka Beach of the Vistula River. The Ukrainian attendees cheered for me, even though I nearly fell backward into the fire pit. The occasion was Ivan Kupala Night, an eastern Slavic holiday with pagan roots that celebrates Midsummer.
What made this celebration special was that it was organized by the Ukrainian expatriate community in Warsaw, Poland. Fortunately, I learned about Ivan Kupala the previous week from an assigned reading in my B1/B2 Ukrainian class held by SRAS and the Slowianka Language School.
Cultural Continuity in Exile: The Ukrainian and Belarusian Communities in Poland
Ukrainians, Belarusians, Russians, and certain regions of Poland itself celebrate Ivan Kupala despite all of these countries now being resolutely Christian. Indeed, the following Saturday, I attended an all-night Ivan Kupala festival organized by Warsaw’s Belarusian community called Varushniak. The holiday serves as a venue for multiple generations to have fun and celebrate their culture, with all four languages heard at both events.
The bonfire is the center point of the celebration, symbolizing the burning away of the previous season. It is also serves as an obstacle which young couples, who could be a literal or figurative ‘bride and groom’ pairs, hold hands and jump over for good luck. However, individuals constantly leaped over it as well, just for fun. In between the constant stream of jumpers, the community formed circles around the fire, holding hands and dancing to traditional Ukrainian and Cossack songs over the speakers.
A second component of Ivan Kupala is the vinok. Unmarried girls will each create one of these wreath-style headbands out of straw and flowers, symbolizing maidenhood. They would then fix a small lit candle to them and release them into the Vistula, with the lights of downtown Warsaw and the riverside promenade of Powisle shining from the opposite bank. Knowing how to properly construct these is important as a sinking wreath symbolizes bad luck, a floating one – a good marriage in the works. I didn’t see any sink.
The holiday celebration was organized by Euromaidan Warsaw, one of several Ukrainian non-governmental organizations in Poland, and featured a cookout, Ukrainian music, and an open microphone for Ukrainians to share their singing talents. A small flea market sold Ukrainian souvenirs, paintings, blue-and-yellow wristbands, and traditional embroidery like vyshyvanka shirts and rushnik traditional towels, as well as other handmade crafts, with all proceeds directed to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
Language, Identity, and Solidarity in a Time of Crisis
Even in such a merry summer atmosphere, the war next door was in the air. It hung over the majority of my conversations when I ask a Ukrainian how long they’ve been in Poland: “two years.” Nothing more needs to be said. One of the consequences of the full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 was a surge of interest in learning the Ukrainian language and culture around the world, starting with Duolingo for me. The same cloud of displacement hung over the Belarusian celebration: many of the Varushniak attendees I spoke with arrived in 2020, when the Belarusian government cracked down on massive protests against electoral fraud, and which represses the Belarusian language as a sign of disloyalty to the regime.
This event was one of my many observations that reinforced how SRAS described Warsaw as a “destination for the millions of Ukrainians who have sought refuge in Poland, boosting the amount of Ukrainian to be heard in that city.” After just two weeks of formal language study with SRAS, Ivan Kupala was the first time I practiced speaking Ukrainian in public. The result was unlike anything I ever experienced on previous travel abroad.
For the first of many times this summer, my Ukrainian interlocutors thanked me and shook my hand for learning their language. The depth of this response illustrated the significance of taking the time to learn the language of a nation fighting for its existence. This program is not just improving my communication skills: it is helping me demonstrate my respect for and build rapport with Ukrainians, while representing my country in a positive light to them. My objectives to learn their language at a rapid pace aligned perfectly with its diaspora’s mission of keeping traditions alive in a time of dislocation and uncertainty.
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