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October Revolution Day scrapped

Vladimir Radyuhin

President Vladimir Putin has decided to scrap the November 7 holiday in favour of a new one on November 4.

FOR THE first time in nearly 90 years Russia is not celebrating November 7 as the country's most important public holiday, Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

In Soviet times, massive military parades and colourful demonstrations marked the day to commemorate the victorious anti-bourgeois revolution of 1917 led by Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik party. After the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, official celebrations stopped, but November 7 continued to be a red-letter day. From this year on it will be an ordinary workday. Russia's Parliament has replaced it with a new holiday, People's Unity Day, on November 4 to commemorate the liberation of Moscow from Polish troops in 1612, which ended decades of civil war and foreign intervention in Russia.

In post-Communist Russia, November 7 had become a rather divisive holiday. While many people continued to celebrate it as a turning point in history that gave rise to the world's first socialist state, their more liberally-minded compatriots marked it as a black day that signalled the onset of Communist dictatorship.

Russia's first post-Soviet President Boris Yeltsin made an awkward attempt to overcome ideological divisions by renaming it the Day of National Reconciliation. It did not work, and Communists and other Left-wingers continued to mark it as October Revolution Day. Moreover, they turned the holiday into a day of nationwide protests against capitalist economic and social reforms in Russia.

President Vladimir Putin decided to scrap the holiday altogether in favour of an arguably uncontroversial new holiday that should promote national unity. The November 4 holiday honours the end of a long period of chaos and weak rule in Russia in the 17th century known as "The Time of Troubles" and the subsequent revival and territorial expansion of the Russian state. By a more subtle implication it also symbolises the end of chaos and weak rule under President Yeltsin and the resurgence of Russia under Mr. Putin.

Few takers for new holiday

However, despite significant propaganda efforts to promote the new holiday, average Russians, at least at this stage, have refused to accept it. Opinion polls showed that just 6 per cent approved of the novelty. What angered people most was that the new holiday became a substitute for the October Revolution Day. Over 60 per cent of Russians said they opposed scrapping the November 7 holiday, and 36 per cent said they would continue observing it.

"October Revolution is part of our history, an event of global significance, and we must remember it as such," a listener said in a call-in session on Echo of Moscow radio station.

In another unpleasant surprise for the Kremlin, ultra nationalists used the new holiday to advance their agenda of cleansing Russia from hundreds of thousands of non-Russian immigrants from former Soviet republics who come to Russia in search of work. An estimated 3,000 supporters of right-wing organisations marched through Moscow on November 4 chanting slogans such as "The Russians Are Coming," "Glory to Russia, Glory to Empire" and "Russia for Russians."

If nationalists succeed in hijacking the new holiday the Kremlin may wish it had not scrapped the good old October Revolution Day.

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