On Revolution Day, 1993, Moscow Is Wistful, Jittery

MOSCOW â€”  For 75 years, the Bolsheviks and their successors have been celebrating the anniversary of the Great October Revolution in ways that have fascinated and frightened the West.

Revolution Day, Nov. 7, was the premier holiday on the Soviet calendar. On Moscow’s Fourth of July, the streets were festooned with proletarian-red bunting. Fireworks filled the night sky.

The highlight, of course, was the annual parade, when workers, students and, especially, the Soviet military got to strut their stuff through Red Square.

Western diplomats, when they weren’t boycotting the proceedings, strained to see who was--and was not--among the fur-hatted dignitaries atop Lenin’s Mausoleum. It was a show no Kremlinologist could miss.

Revolution Day, 1993, finds post-Communist nostalgia clashing with post-Coup II jitters.

Fearing political violence on this supremely political holiday, the government of President Boris N. Yeltsin has once again closed Red Square to parades by neo-Communists. But some may come to offer wreaths to V. I. Lenin, who might be buried elsewhere by Revolution Day, 1994.

Anti-Yeltsin demonstrators are expected to gather near the giant statue of Lenin in October Square--where the anti-Yeltsin riots began Oct. 3. Authorities have promised to take strict measures to stop them.

Today marks the 76th anniversary of the Bolshevik coup that toppled the Provisional Government, which had taken power after the abdication of the czar. In fact, the coup took place Oct. 25, 1917, but the new socialist government immediately changed the calendar. The October Revolution’s first anniversary fell on Nov. 7, 1918. It was celebrated with a parade in Red Square.

But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Revolution Day has been marked by wistful and angry crowds who accuse Yeltsin of destroying their homeland.

Researcher Jason Andrew Stanford contributed to this story.