> The 88th aniversary of the October Revolution -- which occurred in
> November by the Western calendar.
and which just this year in Russia has been changed to "National Liberation from Poland" day.
Ah, those Poles. They have been such oppressors of their neighbors :o)
Michael
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November 4 2005 Financial Times
New Russian holiday harks back to time of troubles By Arkady Ostrovsky
For the first time in almost 90 years Russia will not celebrate on November 7 the anniversary of the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, later renamed by Boris Yeltsin "Day of Agreement and Reconciliation".
The country today will celebrate a new holiday, the Day of National Unity, which commemorates one of the most mythologised episodes in Russian history: the liberation of Moscow from Polish occupiers in 1612.
Few Russians know the exact meaning of the new holiday -- just eight per cent, according to an opinion poll. Nor do the vast majority of Russians care much about the old one; the anniversary of the revolution had long lost any political meaning.
For millions of Russians, with the exception of die-hard communists, it was simply a day off between summer holidays and New Year's day -- a chance to drink, with a televised military parade on Red Square thrown in.
Although the new holiday is unlikely to upset many Russians, given the proximity of the dates, it does reflect an important attempt to redefine the nation's identity. Andrei Zorin, a professor of Russian at Oxford University, says "the new holiday celebrates Russia's defensiveness towards the outside world and isolationism".
The holiday also risks being hijacked by ultra-nationalist parties that are planning a number of demonstrations against migrants and other ethnic "occupiers".
Officially, November 4 marks the end of the Time of Troubles -- a period of chaos in the early 17th century when Moscow's nobility, worn out by civil conflicts, swore allegiance to Polish Prince Wladislav.
Their shift antagonised the majority of the country and, at the end of 1612, Kuzma Minin, a merchant, and Prince Dmitry Pozharsky led a militia that liberated Moscow from the Poles. The following year Mikhail Romanov was elected tsar, founding the dynasty that ruled Russia until 1917.
President Vladimir Putin has often equated the period of Mr Yeltsin's rule to the Time of Troubles, when the economy was weak and the nation's unity disintegrated. "Mr Yeltsin worked in the period of revolutions. I think Russia had enough revolutions. Now we should have a period of stability and strengthening of the state institutions," Mr Putin declared at the beginning of his presidency.
"The new holiday equates the turmoil of the 1990s with the Time of Troubles and declares this time to be over," Mr Zorin said. "It promises stability under the new dynasty, which reasserts its power by a show trial of one of the most powerful boyars of the previous reign -- Mikhail Khodorkovsky -- and exile of the others."
Over the past year, and particularly since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the idea of national unity in the face of a perceived threat from the west has dominated Russian politics.
This is not the first time the 1612 victory over Poles has been used for arousing patriotic feelings.
It served a similar purpose in 1812, during Russia's war with Napoleon. "In the modern Russian mythology," said Mr Zorin, "the centre of global intrigues against Russian interest has shifted from Paris to Washington and the role of ungrateful brothers ready to betray their Slavic identity for the trappings of western civilisation is played by the Ukrainians."
The last time that Russia evoked the myth of Minin and Pozharsky was during the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty in 1913.
Tsar Nicholas II at the time enjoyed an economic boom that was accompanied by a rise in nationalism and anti-Semitism. Stability was the word. Four years later the Bolshevik revolution took place.