The Communist Party of the Russian Federation held a traditional rally and procession in memory of the Moscow events of October 1993

On Thursday, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation held a traditional rally and procession in memory of the Moscow events of September-October 1993. This time the date was round (30 years), but the communists did not present fundamentally new theses on this occasion. Although they noted that the official assessment of those events seems to be beginning to undergo changes. Young participants in the event, as Kommersant found out, perceive what is happening as a long-gone story.

On the approaches to the monument to the Heroes of the 1905 Revolution, declared the gathering place for the march participants, two people were loudly arguing. “19 million communists in 1991 – and where were they all?” – roared a man with an imperial flag on his sleeve. “By 1993, there were 1.5 million left: just count how many anti-Soviet people there were in the CPSU,” thundered his counterpart. “Everyone is still in pain, so they argue. About what? “You yourself must have forgotten,” the retired lieutenant colonel explained from the sidelines.

By the way, there were a lot of uniform jackets in the crowd: Navy, motorized infantry and, it seemed, even the Ministry of Internal Affairs with a prominent Soviet coat of arms in the buttonholes. Banners fluttered around them and above them: Komsomol, Lenin, golden stars. In total, according to the calculations of a Kommersant correspondent, no more than 300 people got wet in the rain – however, quite a significant figure for Moscow, which has forgotten political street activity.

The makeshift podium on the pedestal of the monument, where deputies from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation were already gathering, was surrounded by a human chain of Komsomol members with black and white portraits of Muscovites who fell under bullets in October 1993. True, the tragedy of the role entrusted to them did not prevent the young people from quietly joking among themselves. And at first they found it difficult to answer the Kommersant correspondent’s question about what brought them here. “Support the Communist Party,” came the first half a minute later. “At that moment, our Motherland missed the last chance to restore the Soviet socialist state,” his comrade-in-arms formulated more boldly, simultaneously making it clear that she was holding her word for all the other peers who remained silent.

Meanwhile the rain intensified. The head of the Moscow city committee, Nikolai Zubrilin, called on the crowd not to crowd to the right and to “occupy the left flank.” The exhortations did not work until Sergei Udaltsov finally responded to the call, and within a minute he transferred his “Left Front” to the indicated position. The former convict in the “Bolotnaya case” continued to show enviable activity, with obvious pleasure directing his movements and “charging” proven slogans.

The theses that were sounded concisely from the podium (Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Vladimir Kashin shortened his speeches to 2.5 minutes so as not to chill the youth) also turned out to be time-tested: the communists did not report anything fundamentally new about the events of 1993. “Black October showed itself in all its glory through the cynicism of the government headed by Yeltsin and his team in 1991. The enemies of the great power, our beloved Russia, worked hard so that these people, controlled by the relevant structures, including, of course, the CIA and the Mossad, would come to power,” Comrade Kashin recited. “Black October is a symbol of unprecedented betrayal, primarily the betrayal of Russian civilization, which for a thousand years forged a strong power, fighting off all adversaries,” proclaimed the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Central Committee Gennady Zyuganov.

However, in the official discourse, as the communists admitted in private conversations, there are still changes. For example, Vladimir Kashin, in a conversation with a Kommersant correspondent, suggested that the gradual change in rhetoric around October 1993 was provoked by recent socio-political events and, in particular, the departure from the country of politicians and managers who held high positions in the 1990s: “ These people ruled the people for 30 years, but how did they rule if they served the American golden calf? Where are Chubais, Kudrin, Kasyanov now? Therefore, there is more and more frankness. I watched carefully for five or six days, both on TV channels and in other media, of course, there was an increasing desire to understand it objectively.”

It was the desire to “objectively understand” that explained the interest of young people in the event by law student Pavel Shishchenko, who was delegated to a conversation with a Kommersant correspondent by another group of young people who found it difficult to somehow motivate their presence in the pouring rain. “The majority are indifferent to history, but some read it and are interested,” he shared the sore point. “So I sent them something, told them, then invited them here with me.” The student himself, however, was among those who came at the call of his heart: “My great-grandfather was in the State Emergency Committee (in August 1991— “Kommersant”), not in the seven, but headed a certain structure.” Despite such a solid background, Mr. Shishchenko refused to make a purely political assessment: “These are tragic events, people died. Even if we put aside thoughts about what they fought for and against whom, these are our fellow citizens who wanted the best for Russia. It’s important to remember them.”

The meeting traditionally ended with a procession along Krasnaya Presnya to the memorial on Druzhinnikovskaya Street. The thoroughly wet communists, singing “Internationale” and “Varshavyanka” along the road, aroused noticeable curiosity among passersby: the townspeople willingly took selfies against the backdrop of red banners, and cars sailing past fervently honked at the column after them. True, few remained to wait for the Orthodox memorial service near the memorial: the crowd dispersed literally 20 minutes after the party members laid a bouquet of red carnations at the cross.

Grigory Leiba