The citizens of Russia have just celebrated National Unity day, which, in our
today’s consciousness, has been replaced more or less by the erstwhile most
important Soviet holiday – the anniversity of the Great Socialist October
Revolution, which was more often called the time of “Bolshevist U-turn”.
Generally speaking, any kind of revolution (including the attempted coup in the August of 1991) means a U-turn, an overthrow (and this exactly matches the translation of the French word “revolution”), so that nobody needs to feel hurt or insulted. However, the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution will be soon and, of course, the devotees of the “red idea” will celebrate their day by holding meetings and organizing demonstrations. All well and good – they are entitled to do so, and, as they say, we live in a free country, after all.
Many other Russians, however, only recently solemnized another memorable day, a very joyless and unpleasant one – the 70th anniversary of the so-called Great Terror. And the victims of political repressions (which, in our country, were not only carried out in the 1930s, but also before and after that time) will hardy support these “red” meetings…
Hence, we cannot talk of any unity of the people, although we are supposed to celebrate the great Day of National Unity tomorrow; so far, we can only dream about it; there is nothing else for it but to imploringly hope that our children, who were born into a new, free Russia, will contrive to transform this day into a real, authentic public holiday, on which people will share eachother’s happiness.
Eduard RUSAKOV
“Krasnoyarsk Worker”, 07.11.2007
PHOTO: these huge posters can be looked at on Revolution Square.
Photo: Ilya Naymushin (Reiter)