As the centenary of the Russian Revolution comes knocking on the portals of the Kremlin, the Russian government does not know what to do. The wave of post-Soviet popular revolts, from the Georgian Rose Revolution of 2003 to the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 in Ukraine, made Moscow worry about a possible revolution in Russia itself. As the young followers of Alexei Navalny, a populist critic of the regime and its corruption, take their protests into the streets of Moscow and other major cities, the Russian authorities are hardly in the mood to celebrate.
While the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin, the leader of the Russian Revolution, remains in place on Red Square, with plans to bury his body being long shelved, the country’s leadership has found a more appealing hero in Saint Vladimir, the medieval ruler of Kyiv, now the capital of Ukraine, where he is known as Volodymyr the Great. In November last year, on Russia’s National Unity Day, Vladimir Putin presided over the unveiling of an 18-metre monument to the Kyivan prince in the very heart of Moscow, across from the Borovitsky Gate of the Kremlin.
