Relying on spiritual covenants

The Day of National Unity was celebrated by the procession and opening of the monument to Prince Vladimir

On November 4, on the Day of National Unity, two solemn events were held in Moscow - the many thousands of the march “We are one!”, In which representatives of political parties, public organizations and educational institutions participated - this event was open to everyone. And after the procession on the cordoned Borovitskaya Square, the opening ceremony of the most discussed monument of the last year was held - to Prince Vladimir, who baptized Rus' in 988. The Medusa correspondent Evgeny Berg watched both celebrations.

The march of the peoples of Russia

On the morning of November 4, at Tverskaya, there were flags, balloons, ribbons, chirlaider pompons; The drum fight was mixed with the songs of the Star Factory, rattling from the speakers (“Goal, goal, goal! We won the race!”). According to the organizers, 80 thousand people gathered on the march “We are one!” Dedicated to the Day of National Unity (they counted the same year earlier). The column began at the metro station "Tverskaya" and was lost somewhere behind Mayakovskaya.

Hiding one after another from the snow, the beginnings of the processions were expected by members of various public organizations - from radicals from the Forty Magpies and the National Liberation Movement to the “Russian Red Cross” and “Green Russia”. There were many students in colorful jackets; They warmed up, singing in chorus of the song-in the head of the column “Russian Union of Youth” patriotically performed Katyusha, a hundred meters further young people in the form of the “International Festival of Students” shouted something from the SPLIN group with might and main. Others breathed with helium of balls and mixed each other with cartoon, thin voices.

Participants in national columns entertained themselves with authentic music - young people in folk costumes danced. The flags of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Crimea, and many Russian regions were visible in the crowd; The flag of Novorossia saw the Medusa correspondent only one, but there were several flags of Greece.

- This is the march of the peoples of Russia! -said a man with a white-blue cloth,-and Greeks in Russia even more than, for example, Armenians!.

Closer to the end stood column budget organizations; Their participants, unlike neighbors, did not try to entertain themselves, and instead they gathered in small groups and discussed the urgent. There were also columns of parliamentary parties - members of the LDPR with blue flags and Socialist -Revolutionaries with yellow vests.

The procession began at 10:30. "Ura-ah-ah!" - flashed through the crowd, the drums stuck louder. The combatants, guarding along the sidewalk, were stepping back with the participants in the procession, the police, on duty at the fences, missed the students and state employees late to the beginning.

- Russia! Russia! - The Nogais chanted (as it was written on their flag), passing by the Armenia store.

-Oh-si-t-i! Ah-ah-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh- -shouted young people with a huge white-red-yellow extinct in their hands.

- Guys, let's go faster, we have a gap between the columns! - a girl with a megaphone ran to them.

-Ossetia-ah-ah-ah! Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah! - The guys switched to running.

Closer to the Manezhnaya Square, the column of some Orthodox organization tried to shout out the neighbors.

"Jesus Lord!" - they chanted a scream.

On the stage installed in front of the Manezhnaya Square, a festive concert miller began.

- We are Russians! And we stand under the same flag! - announced from the stage the host, a former player in the KVN Sangaji Tarbaev. - And the concert will open the most patriotic singer Denis Maidanov!

The crowd buzzed, apparently not deciding how it should relate to the name of the artist. The most patriotic singer approached the microphone and straightened the guitar. “My country, my fate, my dream, my war,” a studio record sounded from the speakers.

After Maidanov, the secretary of the Public Chamber Alexander Brechalov entered the stage. “Today, like four centuries ago, they want to plunge us into turmoil,” he began a speech, in the final of which he suddenly turned to the inhabitants of Ukraine: “I want to congratulate the fraternal Ukrainian people on the Day of National Unity! Hooray!".

The crowd hesitantly supported him. Brechalova was replaced by the singer Valeria, who was ardently asking her present to sing. “We are together, we are together; Even if we are not together, we are still nearby, ”Valeria tightened.

The singer is not that they listened. National instruments again went in the crowd - round dance drove around the musicians.

Representatives of the parliamentary parties began to speak from the stage - the chairman of the LDPR Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Sergey Mironov, who heads “Fair Russia”, Vladimir Vasiliev from “United Russia”; There were no communists on the stage.

As usual, the leader of the LDPR was most attentive.

“Today is the best day! Four centuries ago, Catholics, Poles and other evil spirits came from the west! They occupied the Kremlin, unraveled it! But Prince Pozharsky united the Russian people, and we drove them out! We always won! We practically won the First World War! ” - Zhirinovsky shouted a little inconsistently into the microphone. Unicorn Vasiliev limited himself to formal congratulations, and the chairman of the Fair Russia Sergey Mironov pushed the need to solve a demographic problem, "but in no case at the expense of migrants."

A hour and a half after the start, the participants in the procession had just begun to diverge home; Those who stayed with Manezhnaya continued to dance, talk, take pictures and listen to Oleg Gazmanov and Lev Leshchenko speaking on the stage.

The people are undisciplined, extraordinary beauty

All approaches to the monument to Prince Vladimir, installed on Borovitskaya Square (at first they wanted to put him on the Sparrow Mountains, but they changed their minds - the public was against it, and the work to strengthen the soil would be expensive), were blocked. It was impossible to go down the Mokhova or Znamenka to consider the monument. Cross on foot a large stone bridge, from which Borovitskaya Square is clearly visible - too. The police launched only those who had a pass to the monument.

- Fore Oklock. FOR! - The police sergeant, who was on duty in the transition near the Lenin library, showed four fingers to the Japanese tourist, trying to explain when they opened access to a new attraction.

The only place from where it was possible to look at at least a little at the opening ceremony was a patch next to the Kremlin embankment. Employees of the traffic police were on duty on the Piglet, and in the intervals between the KamAZs standing in a row there was a monument to the prince with unnaturally large eyes. Building forests were removed from him on the first of November; The cloak, traditionally torn off when opening monuments, did not put on a 18-meter statue.

Near one of the openings between the cars there were two women of about fifty.

“And this is all because our people are undisciplined, therefore they don’t let them go,” said one of them and looked at the monument. “But still the beauty is unusual, you look!”

The second nodded silently and continued to peer into the distance. At half past five, Borovitskaya was almost empty - only a dozen figures in the civilian and large bus of the Russia TV channel was visible.

The sound of the siren spread along the embankment. The women suddenly got out and turned around.

-Oh, the Holiness goes, look and look! We are Orthodox! Keep you the Lord! - they spoke loudly and began to bow towards the approaching Mercedes with a miletic.

But the car traveled indifferently.

- Yes, this is not him! - I held out in disappointment alone, frozen in the middle of the sign of the sign. - Ugh you!

At the beginning of the second, people began to appear in the square. First, the brass band arrived, then another police outfit arrived. By the time, when the real motorcade of Patriarch Kirill appeared on the embankment, three hundred people gathered on Borovitskaya Square.

Patriarch and Russian President Vladimir Putin (he arrived by car from the Kremlin) went to the orchestra march to the monument). The patriarch's voice was drowned out by the working engines of KamAZ and a whistling wind (the patriarch said that the prince did not look for “magnificent worship or mental comfort, which religion often gives, he was looking for truth with a capital letter”). Then Vladimir Putin spoke, who said that “Prince Vladimir laid out moral value foundations that determine our life today” and that today our duty is to resist modern challenges and threats, based on spiritual covenants. ”

After a solemn speech, the Patriarch consecrated a monument to the singing of the church choir.

“Still, I am glad that we are here,” the woman said on a patch, “at least so, but here.” Health to the patriarch, and the president, and all our leaders! How this monument decorates all Holy Rus'!

The second woman nodded silently. In the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, the bells were scored.

Evgeny Berg

Moscow