From: glevy@PRATT.EDU
Date: Mon Nov 07 2005 - 15:33:15 EST
<http://www.mosnews.com/feature/2005/11/07/revolutionday.shtml> Requiem for Revolution Day Lisa Vronskaya MosNews This year, for the first time in decades, Russia did not mark the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution. Instead, it celebrated the end of the Time of Troubles, prompting many to draw parallels between the period of chaos in the early 17th century and the 1990s. The Time of Troubles ended with the foundation of the Romanov dynasty. The 1990s ended with Vladimir Putin taking over the helm of the country. On the Day of National Unity, Russia called for unity in the multiethnic country at the same time allowing marches by nationalists who urged the expulsion of illegal migrants from the country. After so many years of enjoying a day-off on Nov. 7 most people woke up here on Monday and went to work. Something was clearly missing. Russia's die-hard communists, however, ignored the new holiday. They laid flowers at Lenin's tomb on the eve of Nov. 7, and held marches in the capital on the no-longer-celebrated day of the Great October Socialist Revolution as it was officially called before having been renamed as the Day of Accord and Reconciliation by the Boris Yeltsin government. Despite the change, for most of us, especially the older generation with their childhood memories, it still remained the day when the Lenin-led Bolshevik Party overthrew the Provisional Government - a day of Russian glory with festive demonstrations marching across the city towards Red Square, with people carrying red carnations and Lenin placards. President Vladimir Putin signed a law late last year canceling the Nov. 7. The move vexed the old guard of communists but left most people here indifferent. In a recent poll conducted by the respected Levada Center, 51 percent of respondents did not know what holiday would be celebrated and only 8 percent referred to it by the correct name, the Associated Press reported. Indeed, for most Russians of my age Nov. 7 was merely another official day-off but I never failed to call my grandparents and email my parents that day to send them traditional October Revolution greetings, which, of course, had nothing to do with the revolution proper. This year I also used the occasion to call them all. Even though I would never side with those who lament the demise of the Soviet regime in this country, I did not welcome the idea of abandoning the Nov. 7 celebrations. It is not that I will miss a day-off because now we have another day-off, three days earlier. Besides, I honestly think we have too many days-off here and most Russians do not need a day-off to have a drink. But, I am still strongly convinced that, one of the clues to this country's never-ending misfortunes is that we never learn from own mistakes; instead, we seek to forget them only to repeat them again. We tear whole chapters from our history books but fail to provide new books, being unable to reconstruct the developments of the past as time goes. In the early 1990s hundreds of Soviet-era monuments were ripped down across the country, streets renamed and Soviet-era history books thrown into waste bins. Today, many Russian schoolchildren think Lenin fought in the Second World War and Stalin led the October Revolution. The 1917 uprising is seen by many today as the beginning of Russia's woes while the positive sides of what it brought are being conveniently forgotten. The new holiday - November 4 - marks the end of the Time of Troubles - a period of chaos in the early 17th century when Moscow's nobility, worn out by civil conflicts, swore allegiance to Polish Prince Wladislav. Their shift antagonized the country and, at the end of 1612, Kuzma Minin, a merchant, and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky led a militia that drove the Poles out of Moscow. The following year Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar, founding the dynasty that ruled Russia until 1917. "The new holiday celebrates Russia's defensiveness towards the outside world and isolationism," Andrei Zorin, a professor of Russian at Oxford University, told the Financial Times last week. "The new holiday equates the turmoil of the 1990s with the Time of Troubles and declares this time to be over," Zorin said. "It promises stability under the new dynasty, which reasserts its power by a show trial of one of the most powerful boyars of the previous reign - Mikhail Khodorkovsky - and exile of the others." When decreeing on the new holiday, Vladimir Putin's government said the Revolution Day had to be abandoned because it created a rift in society while a new holiday would help boost patriotism and strengthen national unity. But with ultra-nationalist calls growing louder each day, Russia is unlikely to achieve true unity anytime soon.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Tue Nov 08 2005 - 00:00:02 EST