Polls show that Russians have more and more positive comments on the October Revolution.
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On November 7th, 2006, nearly 10,000 people marched from Triumph Square (formerly Mayakovski Square) in the Russian capital to the theater square in the city center and held a rally to commemorate the 89th anniversary of the October Revolution. On November 7, 1917 (October 25, Russian calendar), Bolshevik armed forces led by Lenin launched a general attack on the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, where the bourgeois interim government was located, overthrew the interim government and established the Soviet regime. Thus, the world’s first socialist country was born. Xinhua News Agency reporter Shen Bohan photo
Background information: October Revolution
November 7th is the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution in Russia. Polls show that the Russian people have more and more positive comments on the October Revolution. Quite a few Russians miss the October Revolution and even yearn to return to the Soviet era.
According to Hong Kong’s Wen Wei Po, a recent poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Foundation showed that 40% of Russians thought the October Revolution was positive.
Compared with the situation that only about 20% people gave positive comments on the October Revolution shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the October Revolution has been recognized by more and more people.
The 18-year-old Jiaji Trif said in the Red Square waiting in line to pay tribute to Lenin’s remains: "Lenin was a great man. The people of his time were full of ideals, which is very different from the present situation where everyone is in charge of money."
The Levada Research Center found that 35% of Russians supported the return to the Soviet system, while 44% opposed it. The agency also found that a quarter of Russians believe that the current political system is more and more like the Soviet Union. A 44-year-old businessman said: "Putin is pursuing a’ Soviet’ policy." Ivanovna, a 75-year-old pensioner, said: "November 7th is still a big festival for me, because the revolution brought freedom and social welfare to the people."
Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991, the strength of the Russian communist party as a domestic opposition party has gradually weakened. Some commentators pointed out that Russia’s domestic feelings about the October Revolution were complicated.
After Yeltsin came to power, he once abolished celebrating the October Revolution in order to draw a clear line with the Soviet Union. However, Putin rescheduled the October Revolution Memorial Day in 2005, which is closely related to the people’s memory of the October Revolution.
The independent newspaper Russian Novosti predicted that Russia "will have a Soviet-style future and great leaders".
Inside story of Russian textbook revision
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"World Knowledge" magazine: The problem of revising textbooks appeared in Russian newspapers two months ago. On June 21, 2007, President Putin told the delegates attending the All-Russian Social Science Teachers’ Conference his views on the current social science textbooks (including history textbooks) in middle schools. He believes that at present, Russia "actually has no textbooks that profoundly and objectively reflect the modern historical events of our society", and "the textbooks of history and sociology are still at the level of the 1990s, and the elaboration of the recent period is abstract and contradictory".
Editor: Li Xiuwei