Russian leftists poured through central Moscow on Wednesday to mark the 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution, whose legacy lives on in post-Communist life though official commemorations have long been scrapped.
The grand military parades in Moscow's Red Square commemorating the main event in Soviet history are gone, but Russians remain divided about the day in 1917 when Vladimir Lenin led a take-over of the government Winter Palace offices.
On a cold blustery day, 25,000 leftist demonstrators surged down Tverskaya Street, Moscow's main artery now studded with glittering boutiques. Many quickly dispersed, but several thousand remained at a rally at a square honouring Communist theoretician Karl Marx just outside the Kremlin walls.
The mostly elderly demonstrators, bundled up against sub-zero temperatures, carried red flags and placards criticising or lampooning President Vladimir Putin. One poster read: "Putin's plan is the opium of the people", a reference to Marx's similar denunciation of religion. The significance of the revolution, which spawned seven decades of turbulent and often brutal political developments, remains a key theme in Russian politics.
Oleg Morozov, deputy speaker of Russia's State Duma lower house and a member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, said recently that the revolution "may only be compared in the history of mankind with the emergence of Christianity."
Nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky took the opposite view, telling Communists ahead of their march: "You are celebrating an event which has become the reason for all our misfortunes."
Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party, still the main opposition, said the revolution's revival was "inevitable". Putin has described the collapse of Soviet rule as the "greatest geo-political catastrophe" of the 20th century and has praised some Soviet achievements while criticising repression.
Three years ago, Putin scrapped the Revolution Day holiday and replaced it with a new holiday on November 4, marking a day in 1612 when Russian forces evicted Polish troops from Moscow.
November 7, which corresponds to the October date in Russia's old calendar when Lenin led his charge, is now a working day. It remains a holiday in ex-Soviet Belarus, which has kept a command economy and takes a tough line on dissent.
Historians say the post-revolution civil war and Stalinist terror in the 1920s-1950s cost Russia up to 40 million lives. But just as imperial two-headed eagles stand atop Kremlin buildings with Communist red stars, reverence to the revolution coexists with disgust at Communist atrocities for many.
"The repressions were ugly, but thanks to the revolution Russia became a superpower," said taxi driver Sergei Velichko. "The West stopped respecting us when the Soviet Union collapsed. Thank God we now have Putin." More than half of Russians believe the revolution opened a new era and gave impetus to Russia's development, a poll published on Tuesday showed.
Divided opinion has prevented authorities from taking up proposals to remove Lenin's corpse from a Red Square mausoleum. Putin has presided over eight years of growth and rising living standards and is by far Russia's most popular politician widely credited for restoring the nation's self-confidence.
Critics charge that Putin, a former KGB spy, has restored less desirable features of the past, such as a near one- party state, a military build-up and largely state-controlled media.
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