The Angry Russian versus May Day in London

'Happy May Day, comrades!' shouts a not-Angry Russian. Photo Credit: Boris Zelensky

The first thing I ever remember about myself is this: I’m about four years old and my grandpa takes me to the demonstration (which was, like many other things in the USSR, obligatory). It’s a sunny but windy day, so I’m wearing my warm coat. I’m too short to see what’s going on around me, so grandpa puts me on his shoulders and I see a sea of red flags. There are portraits of old bearded men everywhere and long red stripes of cloth with white symbols I don’t yet understand. Somebody’s speaking on the megaphone, music is playing in a distance. Everybody seems happy, and I’m happy too.

Then, after 1991 and onwards, May Day seemed to be about the same flags, banners and speeches, but mostly about unhappy people. They wanted to go back to the times when everything was decided for them and they wouldn’t have to do anything: getting a job, paying taxes, worrying about health insurance, etc. The Soviet state provided everything. They wanted it back, those miserable old ladies clutching bunches of pink and portraits of Lenin, as if hoping that the leader of the Bolshevik party would emerge from his marble tomb and set things right.

Angry Russian as an angry youth

Then, in my 20s, I used to be a leftist-anarchist-that sort of thing angry young man with enough piercings in my body to set off airport metal detectors. I lived in a squat with lots of artsy revolutionary types, punks, vegans, and the like. We used to do quite reckless things by today’s standards. One day, the night before the 1999 elections that saw the Communist party seize power for the first time after the break-up of the Union, we, a bunch of drunk hippies, punks and whatnots, grabbed a dozen of spray cans and went on a graffiti rampage. On every vacant space we could find we painted the slogan “Against all parties!”. Amazingly, it took at least 40 minutes for the police to finally notice those huge black letters on every big billboard in the middle of a four-lane avenue. “Against all parties” went on to be the fourth most popular candidate with six-something per cent. Today things like that would guarantee any of us some serious battering at the station and, quite likely, a jail term.

May Day protest in Russia circa 2000. Photo Credit: Andrey Stvolinsky

But the most exciting moment in that freewheelin’, dope smokin’ life was when an artistic group called SVOI2000 (svoi means something like “one’s own” or “kin” in Russian) applied for a May Day parade and, in a very bizarre twist of fate, their application got approved. It was one of the best days of my life: we are in the very centre of Moscow, between two columns of hard-line, old Communist grannies – a bunch of several hundred mischiefs holding huge banners with complete gibberish or simply flower dotted bedsheets. The whole idea was that May Day had to be reclaimed  from the obsolete political bores and be simply a celebration of sun, spring and whatever. I’ve never had so much fun in my life. Here’s the photo album from that great day. Try to find yours truly in those photographs.

The next year we decided to change the agenda from simply fooling around to something more serious but equally hilarious. May Day in Russia and other post-Soviet countries is called Labour Day. Fine, we thought, then we’ll just celebrate labour, what we can do to contribute to the society. We all wore suits and bore banners advertising our skills and services, from non-linear video editing to construction work. We had a punk brass band heading the procession, it was a another great, sunny day. Check out the video and, again, try to spot the Angry Russian:

Angry Russian versus May Day in London

I would probably be equally happy yesterday here in London if I were some ten years younger. But now, having had my share of anarchist fun, I think that this is just one sorry bunch of idlers. At Parliament Square there was at least fifty different “organizations” with a hundred of different slogans, from demands to end all wars at once to equally impracticable demands to stop killing some critters or whatever. None of those made a single fucking bit of difference, and to most of those ‘protesters’ the whole thing seemed like a good excuse to get stoned and lie about on the grass listening to crappy techno on a portable soundsystem.

The only more or less coherently appealing thing about the whole ‘protest’ was the claim that all politicians were corrupt bastards – oh, the enlightenment! – so everybody should just spoil their ballots (which is, by the way, what many Angry Russians have been doing for the past several years since the abolishment of the “none of the above” article). As if someone cared about your opinion.

Anyway, now I seriously think that the one-party system like what we have now in Russia is so much more practical and honest than the carousel of hypocrisy and complete waste of public money and time that I’ve been observing here in Britain for the past few weeks. By the way, I always wanted to say this out loud: you are a bunch of losers to grill a man – a politician, for dear God’s sake! – for actually saying what he thought once in a while. That lady WAS a bigot. Gordon, I’m with you here. And you, demented witch, just shut up. We evil forunurs are here to steal your fucking biscuits.