Revolution Celebrants Embrace Capitalism Russians Struggle To Reinterpret Their Soviet History
The cheers emanating from the sea of red banners over by the former KGB building meant that the demonstrators were warming up, but Nikolai Amelin’s makeshift stand across the square was where the real action was Friday.
Amelin makes his living selling Soviet memorabilia and Friday, as Russian communists marked the 80th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, he was making a killing. A steady stream of people in red arm bands lined up to spend their hard-earned rubles on the relics of Russia’s socialist epic: Lenin badges, Hero of Socialist Labor medals, hammer-and-sickle pins, Red Army epaulettes.
“Folks like it that they can remember their past, and that’s what this day is about,” Amelin said, breaking off to use his sales pitch on an elderly woman who was inquiring about a lapel pin depicting the Soviet founder in his infancy. “Clearly you are a lady of good taste, Madam. The Baby Lenin is an excellent choice.”
It was fitting that the Russian capital should mark what was once the most revered holiday on the Soviet calendar with the entrepreneurial spirit of the new Moscow. Even communist leaders acknowledge that Russia’s transformation is no longer about communism versus capitalism, but what kind of market economy the country should have.
The struggle being fought Friday was about how the country should view its troubled history, or at least the part that began when a handful of revolutionaries led by Lenin began the 20th century’s longest and bloodiest experiment in social engineering.
President Boris N. Yeltsin has tried to transform Nov. 7 into a day of repentance for the evils of communism, especially the millions who died in Stalin’s firing squads and labor camps.
“Today, we are simply obliged to remember all those who perished in the civil strife,” Yeltsin said Friday in a nationally televised address. “We also must understand and forgive those who made the fatal mistake of putting a utopian idea above human lives.”
But like the unwieldy name Yeltsin has given to the new holiday - Day of Reconciliation and Accord - the idea does not seem to be catching on.
The initial surge of enthusiasm for digging up the dark secrets of the Soviet era has worn off. Today, Russians are more preoccupied with improving their lives.
“I don’t care about repression,” said a man carrying a poster of Josef Stalin, who gave his own name as Stalinbekh. “All I know is that under the Soviets, I was a person, I had a job, I had a life. Today, I live like a beast.”
According to the Associated Press, at least 100,000 people marched under Soviet red flags in central Moscow, one of the largest crowds to attend a pro-communist demonstration in the capital in years. Some 50,000 marched in St. Petersburg, called Leningrad and “the cradle of the revolution” during Soviet times, and thousands more marched in cities across Russia’s 10 time zones from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific.
But as in Moscow, where the crowd quickly dissipated in the driving sleet and rain, the marches were peaceful.
From his busy stand across Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, Amelin said he had modified his view of the revolution, which fell in October, according to the old Julian calendar later abandoned by Russia.
“Before 1991, I hated Lenin,” he said. “Now, I like him, because he is our history, and because he pays the bills.”
The high turnout coincided with a recent poll that suggested that many Russians are reconsidering their country’s communist past.
And a new generation of Russians is growing up without the Soviet education system’s Lenin-driven curriculum.
The McDonalds generation
As 8-year-old Nastya Gordeyeva took a picture of her mother, Lena, at the McDonald’s on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, she admitted that she knew neither who Lenin was, nor what had happened in 1917. Her mother appeared to be ashamed.
“Today there are no ideals, because once again, we have crossed out our history,” she said. “Before, we had ideals; maybe they were bad ones, but at least we had goals. Before, kids wanted to become astronauts. Now, after they finish school, most kids want to become racketeers.”
Well, not quite. According to a poll of 1,000 students released last month by the All-Russian Center for Public Opinion Studies, 21 percent of children want to become accountants for private firms. Would-be economists and bankers accounted for second and third place in the poll. Just over 4 percent of the young respondents said they wanted to become gangsters and hired assassins - still strikingly high, especially since only one child expressed a desire for space exploration.
Some people are happy to put Soviet history behind them altogether.
Mommy, what are Communist slogans?
For Eduard and Lyudmila, sharing a burger at McDonald’s with their daughter, Marina, Friday was just another day off from work - as it was for millions of other Russians. It was not always that way - 10 years ago, Eduard and Lyudmila, both students, were required to attend the 70th anniversary of the Nov. 7 rally on Red Square. It was a show of forced celebration that was followed by a massive show of force - tanks, troops and nuclear missiles.
Friday, as they recounted how they had to make posters with Communist slogans, Marina asked “Mommy, what are ‘Communist slogans.”’
Marina, 10, is also unaware of what went on 80 years ago.
“We used to have only one history, the history of the Communist Party,” said Lyudmila, a Moscow schoolteacher who asked that her family’s name not be used “in case my students get a hold of this story.” Now, Marina is being taught world history, starting with antiquity. “Her class just hasn’t gotten to 1917 yet.”