Although the state holiday on Nov. 7 was made redundant this year by falling on a Saturday, crowds from both the left and right turned out as usual to express their views on what events in St. Petersburg in 1917 mean for Ukraine today.
As the Communist Party took the opportunity to parade some 5,000 of its mostly aging supporters down Hrushevskoho street on Kyiv's first snowy day of the year, a small group of young supporters of the right-wing Rukh party, dressed up in white protective suits and masks, followed behind. As they walked they sprayed the street with water, pretending to disinfect the streets of the Communist presence.
The Communists marched to the former Lenin museum, now called the Ukraine House. Apparently to counter their image as a party of pensioners, some brought along their grandchildren, who toted red-and-gold balloons and flags of a country that dissolved before many of them were born.
The upcoming presidential election, and internal rivalries within Ukraine's leftist parties, gave a specific focus to the traditional Revolution Day program.
Between speeches by factory workers and technical school students, Socialist Party leader Oleksandr Moroz called for a return 'forward' to socialism.
'We are not calling to go back to socialism, we are calling to go forward to socialism,' Moroz said. 'The whole of Europe is moving in this direction.'
Moroz's speech told volumes about the nature of his campaign. It was virtually identical to dozens of previous speeches by East European former communists trying to refashion themselves as West European-style social democrats, except that it was delivered on an orthodox Marxist-Leninist holiday to a mostly orthodox Marxist-Leninist audience.
Considered by many to be President Leonid Kuchma's strongest rival in the upcoming presidential race, the key to Moroz's election hopes is reaching out to centrists and moderate leftists while still carrying Ukraine's large pro-USSR constituency behind him.
In a gesture to that constituency, Moroz said he hoped the 82nd anniversary of the October Socialist Revolution would be led by Ukraine's new president-elect. The elections are scheduled for the last weekend of October 1999.
Communist Party leader Petro Symonenko, who spoke toward the end of the leftist demonstration, gave the audience more of what it came to hear.
Symonenko berated both the 'capitalist clans' that run Ukraine and the International Monetary Fund and other Western organizations, which he described as 'the predators of one system that are trying to take the future away from our people.'
He said the Ukrainian people are living in a nest of tuberculosis, a disease caused by the poverty of the people, whose wealth he said was stolen by Kuchma and others currently in power.
The anniversary of the Bolshevik takeover, called the Great October Socialist Revolution by Marxist-Leninists, was the Soviet Union's biggest holiday of the year. It falls on Nov. 7 rather than in October due to adjustment from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar.
A student who spoke after Symonenko was quick to suggest that Symonenko must 'seize the power' as the Bolsheviks did in 1917 and become president. The Communist Party is currently debating whether to run its own candidate in the 1999 election or support Moroz.
Meanwhile, about 1,500 Rukh supporters met near the Shevchenko museum and marched to Mykhailivska square to hold a counter demonstration. They gathered to mourn for the victims of the Soviet regime that was launched from the 1917 Bolshevik takeover, which they described as a palace coup and not a popular revolution.
Standing on top of a truck, Rukh leader Vyacheslav Chornovil verbally condemned the Soviet and current governments, and called for democratic forces to unite before the presidential election.
Just a few blocks away, the Communists also exhorted unity and condemned Leonid Kuchma's rule.
A few yards away from Symonenko's podium, several small, sad-faced children in red Pioneer ties were not listening to speeches but talking to journalists.
Eleven-year-old Tanya Nesterenko said her family is poor, and her mother has to collect bottles to feed her and her two siblings.
Her mother, 51-year-old Nadia Nesterenko, said she cannot find a job, and her husband doesn't get paid.
'I want to get back what I used to have – I want my children to have clothes and to be fed. And I want my flat to be warm and to have no mold,' she said.
Many people across the country wanted the same. According to the Interior Ministry, 90,000 people took part in Revolution Day demonstrations, mostly in leftist ones.
Ukrainians gathered in major industrial cities, such as Lviv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv, Kharkiv, Luhansk, Sevastopol and Simferopol. In each city they were watched over by large contingents of armed soldiers.
The only reported melee occurred in Lviv, where five people were injured in a clash between leftists and soldiers.
