posted November 08, 2004 04:40 PM            

Published: November 8, 2004

Sergei Kivrin for The New York Times
A march in Moscow on what was formerly known as the Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution.

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Sergei Kivrin for The New York Times
Anna B. Smirnova, a teacher at the Moscow march, said proposals to abolish the Nov. 7 holiday were ill-conceived.

Sergei Kivrin for The New York Times
Tens of thousands of Communists and their supporters marched in Moscow and other cities.

OSCOW, Nov. 7 - Russia celebrated a holiday on Sunday that under the Julian calendar was in October, that commemorates the beginnings of a state that no longer exists. It used to be called the Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution, but is now the Day of Accord and Reconciliation or, sometimes, the reverse. Anyway, neither was much in evidence.

Tens of thousands of Communists and their supporters marched in Moscow and other cities to honor the 87th anniversary of the revolution that swept the Bolsheviks to power. They were energized this year not only by revolutionary nostalgia and ideological zeal, but also by concern over a proposal to legislate away the holiday itself.

Placards reading "Hands Off Our Glory - Nov. 7!" joined the more familiar ones like "Down with the Bourgeois Counterrevolutionaries!" as marchers formed a river of red that coursed slowly from Lenin's statue on October Square to Marx's on Theater Square.

"A new epoch began after the Great October Socialist Revolution," said Lilya P. Timoshkova, one of the marchers. "The memory of this holiday is not something you can sweep away."

But a bill in Parliament, drafted by pro-Kremlin lawmakers, would dispatch Nov. 7 the way of the Soviet Union itself, calling the day "a source of tension in society." In its place would emerge the Day of National Unity on Nov. 4, the anniversary of an event that hardly races to mind, even for Russians: the day in 1612 that Kozma Minin and Prince Dmitri Pojarsky led the uprising against the Polish occupation of Moscow.

National holidays, of course, reflect any country's history and identity, but few countries have a more conflicted sense of both than Russia and, as a result, a more convoluted calendar.

Christmas, banned in Soviet times, is now officially celebrated Jan. 7, because the Russian Orthodox Church, unlike the Soviet Union, did not adopt the Gregorian calendar. (That has added benefits, since "old" New Year's Eve is celebrated Jan. 13, in addition to the "new" one on Dec. 31.)

Russia, as the Soviet Union before, still celebrates May Day, or the Day of International Workers' Solidarity, but calls it the Day of Spring and Labor.

There is still, for now, Constitution Day, though not as before on Dec. 5, honoring Stalin's Constitution, but on Dec. 12, the anniversary of the one adopted after President Boris N. Yeltsin ordered the shelling of the Parliament in 1993.

Some Russian holidays manage to avoid politics. New Year's, which, much like Christmas elsewhere, involves decorating trees and exchanging gifts, is safely nonideological and very popular.

March 8 is International Women's Day, which has socialist roots but is celebrated now not unlike Valentine's Day (which is also catching on here), with flowers and chocolate.

Of course, Women's Day raised the question of what to do for the men. In 2002, President Vladimir V. Putin elevated Feb. 23 (formerly Day of the Soviet Army and Navy, but not a day off) to a holiday known as Day of the Defenders of the Fatherland, or informally as Men's Day. That is also the anniversary of the day in 1944 when Stalin ordered the Chechens deported to Siberia - an event whose violent reverberations are felt today.

May 9 is Victory Day, which marks the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and is, mostly, unambiguous. Chechnya's separatists chose it this year to assassinate the republic's Russian-backed president, Akhmad Kadyrov.

June 12, since 1994, has been Independence Day. In the calendar's most patent paradox, Russians on that day celebrate the 1990 declaration of independence from the country whose revolutionary beginnings they celebrate Nov. 7.

The Communists, in keeping with recent tradition, turned their annual marches on Sunday into anti-government protests, which almost certainly is why the government would like to stop making it an official occasion. Across the country, from Yakutia in Siberia to Voronezh on the Volga, as many as 300,000 people marched, according to the Interior Ministry.

In Moscow, Anna B. Smirnova, a teacher, marched wearing a red headscarf. She called the proposal to abolish the holiday an ill-conceived effort by a divisive government that has failed to address Russia's nagging social and economic inequities.

Nov. 7 might represent an anachronistic ideology, she said, but the ideals of social equality do not. "Until the main social demands of the people are taken care of, there will be no accord and reconciliation," she said.

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That Nov. 7 remains a holiday at all reflects the delicate balance between past and present that has persisted since the Soviet Union collapsed.

Mr. Yeltsin may have been a democrat, but he was a weak leader who could not risk inflaming his main opponents. It was easier to keep the old holidays, while adding new ones like Christmas or changing the names. From his hospital bed after heart surgery in 1996, he issued a decree renaming Nov. 7.

Gennady A. Zyuganov - then, as now, the Communist leader - called the new proposal insulting. He also ridiculed Nov. 4 as historically inaccurate.

"All intellectuals know that on that day only Kitai Gorod was seized, while the country was liberated later," he told the radio station Ekho Moskvy on Friday, referring to the old part of Moscow near the Kremlin. "A garrison was still resisting in the Kremlin. They only opened the gate after they had eaten all the crows and dogs."

Mr. Putin has not addressed the proposal, but the official view became clear on state news media. The state-owned Rossiya network, like the official Russian Information Agency, led not with the Communist marches, but rather with a smaller, government-sponsored parade marking the 63rd anniversary of the mythologized march of the Soviet Army through Red Square to meet Hitler's advancing armies on Nov. 7, 1941. That date had never before been given such prominence.

Vladimir A. Ryzhkov, a liberal in Parliament, said in an interview that it was time to rethink a calendar rife with absurdities. He favors abandoning Nov. 7, but opposes Nov. 4, since that date, too, would commemorate a violent struggle, not unity. Dropping Dec. 12 - Constitution Day - would be "one more signal that we do not support constitutional law," he said.

He plans to propose instead Oct. 17, which next year will be the 100th anniversary of Nicholas II's October Manifesto, granting basic rights and empowering Parliament after a wave of unrest. Another choice, he said, could be April 23, when Nicholas published the Fundamental Laws in 1906, outlining those rights. Those, he said, would "symbolize Russian democracy."

"Unfortunately," he added, "Russian history is very complicated. Many dates divide society."

Tens of thousands of Communists and their supporters marched in Moscow and other cities.