November 7 photo report from the city of three revolutions

The Russian authorities canceled the holiday on November 7, making it a working day, and communist organizations were forced to hold their events in the evening. However, no one can cancel the very fact and memory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. And so, despite the working day, flowers were lying in front of places of remembrance associated with the revolution.

Traditionally, residents and guests of St. Petersburger brought flowers to the monument to Vladimir Lenin near the Finland Railway Station. It was to this station that Lenin came from Switzerland after the February Revolution.

One of the main symbols of the October Revolution of 1917 is the legendary cruiser Aurora, which with a blank shot signaled the storming of the Winter Palace during the October Revolution. In November 1948, the cruiser Aurora was moored for eternal rest at the Petrogradskaya Embankment in Leningrad.

Public events, including single-person pickets, are banned in St. Petersburg. Even the St. Petersburg branch of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, inviting its members to a flower laying ceremony near the Aurora cruiser, asked them to come without red flags. But the ban did not stop individual citizens.

Grateful descendants come to honor the memory of those who did not spare their lives fighting for the ideals of the revolution. One such place in St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad is the Memorial “Fighters of the Revolution” erected on the Field of Mars. Revolutionaries who died during the February and October Revolution and in defense of the revolutionary achievements are buried here.

Dying in the struggle does not make a man a victim, it shows the strength of his spirit and the desire to help people. “Not victims, but heroes lie beneath this grave. Your fate gives birth not to grief, but envy in the hearts of all grateful descendants. In the severe red days, you lived gloriously and died beautifully,” the inscription of the memorial reads.

“Without knowing the names of all the heroes of the struggle, who gave their blood for freedom, humanity honors the nameless. In memory and honor of all of them, this stone is set for many years to come,” another inscription reads.

There are many monuments to the leader of the Great October Socialist Revolution in the city of Lenin, who contributed greatly to making it happen. These are monuments, busts, bas-reliefs of Lenin.

The Soviet Union, built as a result of the Great October Revolution, was an example of how people can live together as long as they do a common cause. The slogan “Workers of the world, unite!” became the motto of the revolution, and the peoples united voluntarily in 1922 to build communism.

It is not without reason that today on the territory of Ukraine, liberated from the Nazis, local residents are restoring monuments to Lenin, the founder of a state in which there was place for both Ukrainians and Russians, national cultures were developed, and human development was put in the first place.

The Great October, whose 105th anniversary will be celebrated in November 2022, marked the beginning of humanity’s attempt to take an alternative path to capitalism. Russia pioneered the development of human forces, striving, as Karl Marx, the founder of communism, predicted, to make the leap from the realm of necessity to the realm of freedom.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party, written by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, described communism as an association “in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” It was the building of such a society that was originally the goal of the communists, who sought to transform the world through revolution. It was later that this goal had been distorted beyond recognition.

Communism was not built, but humanity, thanks to the Great October Socialist Revolution, already has the experience of a state in which a  Man, not property, came first. People are able to achieve their goals by correcting the mistakes of the first attempts. For example, man has long dreamed of flying, and today aviation is a common mode of transportation. This means that those who want to build the society dreamed of by Marx, Engels and Lenin need not give up. And that is why, despite the fact that the authorities canceled the holiday, Russian citizens remember it.

This is a translation of the article written by Olga Goryanina for Rossa Primavera News Agency.