We're eating pancakes this week! And tomorrow is the last and the most important day of Maslenitsa. There'll be festivities all over Moscow and rosy-cheeked women will feed us tasty, greasy pancakes with different fillings. And on Monday Lent begins. 
Each year Maslenitsa is the same. In my childhood, now and hundreds years ago. We'll be eating pancakes, climbing to the wooden poles, play different street games and burn effigy. And joying like in the fist time! So I've been looking at the reproductions of Russian old masters and contemporary artists works showing Maslenitsa festival. It's the XIX century. 
"Maslenitsa Festivities at the Admiralty Square in St. Petersburg" Konstantin Makovsky, 1869 
"Maslenitsa", Petr Gruzinsky, 1889 It's the beginning of XX century, before Revolution. One of the most famous master of genre painting was Boris Kustodiyev. He painted the majority of known Maslenitsa pictures of those years. 
"Maslenitsa (Harmonist)", Boris Kustodiyev, 1916 
"Maslenitsa", Boris Kustodiyev, 1916 It's the early revolutionary years. Kustodiyev stayed in new Russia and it seems that nothing changed in the ordinary life. 
"Maslenitsa", Boris Kustodiyev, 1919 
"Maslenitsa", Boris Kustodiyev, 1919 
"Winter. Maslenitsa Festivities", Boris Kustodiyev, 1919 
"Maslenitsa", Boris Kustodiyev, 1920 And now, after disintegration of the USSR. Unfortunately the Maslenitsa paintings of these years are some "satellite" or even strange. 
"Maslenitsa Fair", Vladislav Nagornov, 1999 
"Maslenitsa", Semyon Kojin, 2001 
"Maslenitsa", Olga Larionova, 2006 
"Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Izhevo in 1908th", Valentin Belykh, 2008 
"Winter Send-Off", Dmitry Kholin, 2009 Extreme Maslenitsa contests) 
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