May - the month of demonstrations

  

May Day

1st of May, the traditional worker's holiday, which this year made hundreds of thousands of people gather in other parts of the world, is a rather bleak holiday - at least when it comes to demonstrating - in the Russia of today.

This year, about 100-150 people took part in the 1st of May demonstration through the central streets of Moscow. They were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the police and the army, as well as photo journalists (I've seen very few May Day demonstrations elsewhere so thoroughly covered by media), and enthusiastic Chinese tourists jumping around taking pictures.
Walking past Гостиница Москва. Thousands of policemen, police dogs and soldiers lined the street as the small demonstration went by.
A mini bus with a couple of people holding speeches, chanting slogans (such as "Ленин! Родина! Социализм!" - "Lenin! The motherland! Socialism!") and playing Vysotsky's classic Моя родина - Советский Союз (My motherland is the USSR) led the demonstration. The demonstrators following were mostly older people, and members of various communist and socialist parties. A flag with el Che was flying above the Soviet banners. The very favourite of the journalists was an old man carrying a large portrait of comrade Stalin. And, since parts of the Russian communists are infected by a very stupid and unnecessary antisemitism, some individuals also carried placards with antisemitic slogans (pointing out 'the Jew' and 'Putin' as the great adversaries of the Russian people), which envoked curiosity and, actually (to my relief),  some loud dismay among more clear-sighted demonstrators.

To get better pictures, I infiltrated the demonstration. On the mini bus, someone was holding a flaming speech against capitalism, the bourgeoisie, and, particularly, the politician Явлинский, leader of the liberal party Яблоко. A middle aged demonstrator turned to me and asked: "Девушка, кто такой Явлинский?"

  

Victory Day


Some of the aged veterans have to be driven in military jeeps during the demonstration.  		9th of May, in contrast, is an extremely popular festival all over Russia. The events celebrated still have great relevance for most Russians, unlike the 1st, which is mostly associated with the old Communist Party and not real working class struggle.
Even if they are starting to become very old, there are vast numbers of veterans from the Great Patriotic War, who dress up in their uniforms and ordens, and demonstrate on the 9th of May.

Unfortunately, I couldn't stay in Moscow during May 9th, but was forced by outer circumstances to spend that day in Petersburg. There, the demonstrations weren't quite as impressive as in the capital (no military material, for instance), but still enjoyable (not least thanks to the marine force in their cute uniforms ...).
Veterans paraded up along Nevsky Prospekt. The presence of some Afghanistan veterans made my less erudite Swedish companions 
express anger. (For more accurate information than the US-based coverage we have been fed with so far, see William Blum's CIA history.) The celebrations were rather militaristic in their character, considering that the main thing should perhaps have been the peace that followed 9th of May 1945. But I suppose that the sad truth is that peace isn't quite a reality in the Russia of today ...
When everyone had gathered in front of the Winter Palace, a military orchester stroke up the national hymn of the Russian Federation, and people started singing. Having

Veterans from the Marine.  		once again the same melody as the old Soviet anthem, only with different words*, it moved quite a few to tears ...
Later in the evening, there was the salute with fireworks (which me and my acquaintances, to our regret, missed, because we were sitting in a strange bar with a lonesome guy playing bad and very loud live music ...).

Poaching young soldiers ...


Some bearded and moustached cossacks (unfortunately very far away from my camera ...)

 

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*: A short history of the Russian national anthem

After the revolution, the hymn of the Soviet Union was, naturally, the International. But in the wake of WWII, when the USSR, under Stalin, already had found itself having slightly different values, it was changed into the more nationalistic Soviet anthem. In 1991, after the 'collapse of the Soviet Union', the new Russian Federation received a rather boring and impersonal anthem. But under Putin, who managed to start making people aware of the nice things about the good old Soviet Union, such as the exploring of outer space, the old anthem was once again brought up, and a new text, suiting the new political system a bit better, was written.