People followed Lenin

A crowd of thousands on Tverskaya celebrated the anniversary of the revolution - and hoped for a remake

I visited the November demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution, but only a long time ago, as a child, and not in Moscow, in Tashkent. But on Saturday, deja vu happened. First of all, because there were a lot of people. They occupied the entire Tverskaya street from...

I visited the November demonstrations in honor of the October Revolution, but only a long time ago, as a child, and not in Moscow, in Tashkent. But on Saturday, deja vu happened. First of all, because there were a lot of people.

They occupied the entire Tverskaya street from Pushkinskaya Square to Teatralnaya. I don’t know exactly how many thousands came, but yes, I’m not a statistician. I'm interested in people, not numbers. And the people were interesting.

The first thing I noticed was the incredibly large number of children for such an event, which always runs the risk of ending in a fight with riot police. There were couples, there were grandfathers with grandchildren. In general, there were many young people whose participation in the demonstration cannot be explained by nostalgia.

I have never seen people in Moscow waving red flags from their own balconies. These are balconies on Tverskaya Street, where non-poor people live.

Not only people with leftist political convictions came to Tverskaya. A large part of the demonstrators were deceived real estate investors. They came from Zheleznodorozhny, Shcherbinka, Podolsk and other cities near Moscow - and even from Sochi. I have often been to their rallies, but I have never seen so many “deceived” people together. They walked in yellow vests and dragged a yellow airship on a leash.

And one more thing: the word "revolution" was constantly heard, but not in a historical context. Peaceful people demanded revolution here and now. And it scares me, to be honest. I asked people: why the revolution? They answered: it couldn't be worse. We tried to talk to the authorities. They asked and demanded. Received replies - at best. If the government refuses to at least talk to us, it needs to be changed.

At the head of one of the columns, by the way, was Lenin. Obviously a doppelgänger. But usually people take pictures with him - for fun. And then they followed him - in the direction of Red Square.

Met, as usual, riot police. The laying of flowers at the monument to Georgy Zhukov was not authorized. Therefore, those who tried to do this (mainly activists of the Left Front) were taken away by law enforcement agencies. And they were transported to two departments - Tver and Kitaigorod.