8th of March and Being Superheroes: Animation

I was born in a newly independent Ukraine, and growing up had to deal with all the decomposing traditions of the soviet union. One such slowly dying habit was celebrating March 8th as a “day of tender beauty of our weak sex”, as soviet postcards put it. I would congratulate my mother and receive flowers for being “a flower of life”.

Only recently starting 2014 the habit started to change. Women’s marches attracted feminists and clashes between new Ukrainian and old soviet populations. The latter somehow grew to be ardent orthodox supporters. Perhaps, communism was a religion after all.

Today debates continue — to discard the holiday altogether, of snatch it from the soviet frames, instilling the day with different senses? More than 50% of respondence on Ukrainian government app Dia spoke for the holiday to remain a day-off.

Our new animation is dedicated to the times when the holiday was born — on the verge between centuries — as women only started to receive education, and their fight was ahead.

Kharkiv local, Khrystyna Alchevska was bold, courageous, smart, and started her activism with helping her mother Khrystyna (one should note naming a child after her mother is a badass move already) with teaching at a Sunday school for women, founded and sponsored by Alchevsky family. This kind of brave self-made independence did not have much space in the soviet state, even its younger modernist times could not allow Alchevska to continue writing. But we remember this trail-blazing lady, and that is why she is the superhero of our new story: