Foto: AP
Yes, May 1, today – is luckily Spring and Labour Day. But he visited in Russia and some martial May Day – not a holiday, and protest! Now, when you look at the tough shots with Ukrainian Maidan, or from the US in Baltimore, you know – and because we have 20 years, too, might be something … But then we had the sense and wisdom not to reach a limit. And much has changed in Russia, we do not want to protest and learn to celebrate – and rightly proud of their country.
We have been 20 years ago, all the conditions for the merciless revolt – not Ukrainian, of course, and Russian which, as he wrote Russian genius Alexander Pushkin in “The Captain’s Daughter”, “… senseless and merciless.” But there were people who had enough wisdom of the “senseless and merciless” … to prevent and fight, fight and fight – but with the mind, not with fists or clubs.
Although the May 1 is celebrated as widely Labour Day, few understand its real causes. The current Baltimore in the US – a fine example of this. As already reported, “Pravda.Ru” Today Baltimore, like Chicago in 1887, is the center of a huge public discontent citizens perturbed unfair treatment to them. When in the nineteenth century anarchist associations Chicago rallied in the struggle for the eight-hour day, the situation could be discharged.
But there was an explosion, the police began firing, which caused the response of the crowd armed anarchists. Several people were killed, including seven police officers and a group of protesters sentenced to death. They became martyrs of the movement, and the few survivors of the defendants were acquitted six years later, then-Governor John Peter Altgeldom. The parallels between the protests in the then Chicago and Baltimore, this then and now hard to ignore …
After the October 1917 Mayday we became official: the day the workers held demonstrations and military parades. In the era of “developed socialism” in the Soviet Union May Day demonstrations began to bear a different meaning. I remember my 10th class on May Day in the late ’70s: it was considered chic secretly “cool” a sip of port from his pocket, squeezed the most beautiful classmate and loudest plenty poorat “Hurrah!” in unison with a “megaphone” the head of the column.
This meant that on the day of May 1 workers of the USSR “… express their solidarity with the revolutionary struggle of the working people in the capitalist countries, with the national liberation movement, expressed determination to give all the power struggle for peace and for the construction of a communist society “.
May Day with the” smell “
Then May Day ceased to be a holiday. May 1, 1990 was the last time the official May Day demonstration. May 1, 1991 On the Red Square held a rally organized by the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions and the Association of Free Trade Unions, against rising prices. And, oddly enough, on the podium of the Mausoleum I was personally present, MS Gorbachev, as if not hearing any abusive shouts from the crowd. In 1992, International Workers’ Day was officially renamed (not even Gorbachev and Yeltsin) in Spring and Labour Day.
In 1993, the first time after a long period of 76 years, a peaceful demonstration of workers in Moscow was disbanded. According to official figures, killed one person – an employee of riot police and dozens of protesters were injured. The holiday ended …
Now that saw then in person. That remember for a lifetime – and never forget. Exactly 20 years ago, May 1, 1995, took place in Severodvinsk largest number of participants since the collapse of the Soviet Union May Day workers’ demonstration organized by the trade unions of the city of shipbuilders. The newspaper “Northern worker”, where the author of these lines in those days worked, was recruited and already made up the official figure, which gave me the mayor’s office – 11 thousand participants (ie those who were in the towers) and about ten thousand spectators who We stood along Lenin Avenue.
An hour before the transfer to the printing of the newspaper layout editor phoned police authorities saying that if you have something on the May Day demonstration, you too, please write the number that appears in the our reports to discrepancies was not … And it turned out that, according to city police, the colony did not go 11 thousand, but not less than 14 thousand demonstrators! How many spectators – do not consider. By the way, according to police, a single serious incident in the day was not. Even in Soviet times, it is hard to imagine …
But it was not a holiday – quite the contrary … It was an action of resistance, protest demonstration! It was, without false pathos, the most militant May Day. Shipbuilders, nuclear scientists in the early ’90s it was decided to hold a public protest – a brutal claw crisis then took them by the throat. Lack of money. Artwork is not. The country collapsed. Navy shipyards and unique, but the entire industry, and all “peaceful” life Khan. Outlook no …
Although it is not only the May Day, but the whole year 1995 were not only in this city but in the whole country, hot, both at the front and reports of local newspapers remind front-line reports. Then I just had just retired to the reserve from the Navy and worked in Severodvinsk newspaper “Northern Worker.” So, the most common theme in the newspaper then was a protest of local trade union organizations forming enterprises. The salary was not paid at the shipyards, shipbuilders families had nothing to eat.
In January 1995, several shipyard workers “Star” and the company “Arctic” on hunger strike in protest – and they are starving right in one of the compartments of nuclear repaired submarine, standing at the factory quay bulkhead tightly battened down one of the compartments! Everyone was afraid of natural rebellions that might have unintended consequences. It seemed quite a slightest spark – and people will rise up.
People were desperate, and this is a case where workers blame the fact that they are protesting right on nuclear orders (to remind those who have forgotten, or not He knows Severodvinsk built and repaired nuclear submarines), not at all. Trade union committees “Sevmash”, “star”, “arctic”, “North Star”, as well as the city trade union organizations reminded staffs fighting.
I remember very clearly, as a still picture: a certain day of April 1995, on the eve of May Day, there is a huge queue for bread … the usual. The plant was given two loaves in his hands. This was said to the veterans, it was not even in the Great Patriotic War … Then, perhaps, it was enough the slightest spark – and, as they say, it started … and Severodvinsk lucky that time there were people who understood that the root of troubles is not in the city itself.
Today, for the fact that this city, where building nuclear submarines, still survived, and finally lost frames, not destroy the production capacity, it is necessary not only because of the great directors of Severodvinsk. Thanks must speak and Severodvinsk unions that had the wisdom not to enter into an irreconcilable conflict with the administration it works. Everything was done one thing: saving all Russian nuclear shipbuilding and, by and large, their families and homes. In no city in Russia such events was no more. Thank you and May Day militant trade unions. If, then, the voice of the working class has not sounded so loud, it is not yet known what would have ended the dashing 90′s …
After the battle Mayday won Severodvinsk – first mentally, then the material. The money for the plants began to list. The efforts of our heroic directors and union leaders have not been in vain – Moscow heard!
But this is something that I personally saw with my own eyes … But that wrote exactly 20 years ago, fellow journalists from other regions of the vast country: go to protest the miners, metalworkers, academics, air traffic controllers – everything anyone. The corruption, the collapse of the army, the collapse of everything. Generation of the Internet, at a time and born, this, of course, does not remember, and you can read about it very few places. But this was, it was …
But if our people had enough wisdom and patience. Personally, I remember the first time in the same Severodvinsk people out on May Day demonstration (not protest!) Than with posters threatening, but with branches and balls, as well as with the kids on father’s shoulders, around the middle of the “zero”. The holiday began to return. And back!
In total, some 20 years have passed, and we already have reasons not to protest, but to celebrate. There are reasons not to scold the leadership of the country and the country itself, and be proud of their president and his Russian. And still to come.
And let today be just – Peace, Labour, May!
See also:
Heroes of Labor revived. Who are they?
May Day: and the heathen, and the socialist
Mayday, from anarchists to nationalists
May struggle for peace and workers’ rights
More holidays, good and different!
Andrei Mikhailov
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