(I am interrupting the series of selective postings from the Tikkun Olam section of my book, to post this May Day comment.)
The First of May, or, as the Russians call it, Pervomai, used to be a major national holiday in the USSR. Its official designation was International Workers’ Solidarity Day, but its celebration had little to do with what had happened in Chicago back in 1886, providing a Socialist radical connection between the traditional Day of Spring and the populist commemoration of America’s martyred proletarians. The Russians celebrated this day as a positive totalitarian statement. Both the first and the last in Soviet society were united in their joint labor ad majorem civitatis gloriam, and, as I can well remember, the collective jubilation was quite sincere, no matter what its past and present detractors may have said, and keep saying.
Today, on May 1st 2012, millions of Russians went into the streets in an unabated national festivity, which is still going strong, and certainly even stronger than before, just because this has now turned into a powerful statement of national self-affirmation after a horrific crisis that the nation had endured in the 1990’s. Some 150,000 marched in Moscow today, with Putin and Medvedev at the head of the cheering crowd…
A staged event? Of course! All symbolic events are more or less staged. But it takes nothing away from the fact that the old Soviet Union may have ceased to exist on the map, but not in the hearts and minds of those patriotic Russians for whom the much-maligned USSR remains an integral and inexpungible part of Russian history, which saw the nation rise to superpowerdom against all odds, some seemingly insurmountable.
Yesterday never dies, especially a glorious yesterday.
The First of May, or, as the Russians call it, Pervomai, used to be a major national holiday in the USSR. Its official designation was International Workers’ Solidarity Day, but its celebration had little to do with what had happened in Chicago back in 1886, providing a Socialist radical connection between the traditional Day of Spring and the populist commemoration of America’s martyred proletarians. The Russians celebrated this day as a positive totalitarian statement. Both the first and the last in Soviet society were united in their joint labor ad majorem civitatis gloriam, and, as I can well remember, the collective jubilation was quite sincere, no matter what its past and present detractors may have said, and keep saying.
Today, on May 1st 2012, millions of Russians went into the streets in an unabated national festivity, which is still going strong, and certainly even stronger than before, just because this has now turned into a powerful statement of national self-affirmation after a horrific crisis that the nation had endured in the 1990’s. Some 150,000 marched in Moscow today, with Putin and Medvedev at the head of the cheering crowd…
A staged event? Of course! All symbolic events are more or less staged. But it takes nothing away from the fact that the old Soviet Union may have ceased to exist on the map, but not in the hearts and minds of those patriotic Russians for whom the much-maligned USSR remains an integral and inexpungible part of Russian history, which saw the nation rise to superpowerdom against all odds, some seemingly insurmountable.
Yesterday never dies, especially a glorious yesterday.
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