History of Russia is that of its Bolshevik struggle

Gone are the days when the ruling politburo would line upon Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin’s granite mausoleum to watch the traditional military parade and wave regally to thousands of marching activists on Red Square.

For most Russians, it will be a day to reflect more on present hardships than on the past. Yeltsin, trying to heal political splits during the difficult transition to a market economy, has declared November 7 the day of accord and reconciliation.

The main events of the great October Socialist Revolution, as it was known in the Soviet Union, took place on the night of October 25-26, 1917, under the Julian calender used by Russia until February 1918. The revolution is celebrated on November 7, the day onwhich it falls under the Gregorian calender introduced by the Communists to bring Russia into line with other countries.

Bolshevik activists seized the Winter Palace and arrested most of the provisional government which had held a shaky grip on power since Tsar Nicholas II abdicated eight months earlier, ending three centuries of rule by the Romanov dynasty. The Soviet Union rapidly built up its industry, became a military superpower and sent the first man into space. It established control over Eastern Europe after World War II and historians estimate that a third of humanity was at one time living under systems modelled on Moscow’s. The human cost was immense. Millions of people were killed by war, famine and Stalin’s persecution before the Soviet dictatorship collapsed in economic chaos.