As November 7 draws nearer, nostalgic notes creep into conversations and texts. The memory surfaces of factory gates, oversized paper flowers, banners fluttering. Demonstrations with slogans and chants honoring the heroes of socialist labor. Parents carry large thermoses, while adults seek something stronger to warm themselves. In the evening, a television concert unfolds with the stage populated by calm, composed presenters, the names Igor Kirillov and Anna Shatilova appearing almost as inevitabilities. A festive mood fills homes in celebration, with dishes like mushrooms, vodka, jellied meat, potatoes, and Olivier gracing the table.
That nostalgia feels natural. People remember their childhoods, their parents in their youth, and trees that seemed to tower above everything. The sentiment runs through the idea that all generations celebrate freedom, and a red ball rises into the sky, symbolic of shared hope and memory.
The ball rises and then vanishes. Lenin appears in memory as a mystery—a spy, a saboteur, or perhaps a metaphor. The celebration becomes tangled, and to avoid disappointment, the holiday is reimagined. To keep spirits up when days off created expectations, a new holiday is introduced: November 4, National Unity Day. It is pleasant, yet different. The differences resemble the divide between Lenin and old Krupsky. It may look like the same thing, yet the context makes the meaning impossible to equate.
History itself has been tucked away from textbooks and memory. November 7 feels like a neglected, almost unspoken chapter. It was hastily crossed out, forgotten, and now a younger generation questions what happened and why it mattered. How can something hold significance if modern social platforms overwhelm the memory of the past?
Polls from VTsIOM indicate that most schoolchildren and graduates believe Lenin led the overthrow of the Tsar because he was the architect of the revolution. The timeline of the February Revolution and World War I is sketched with broad strokes. In Moscow, schoolchildren can recall only one thing about the 1905 revolution: a metro station bears that historic name, nothing more concrete about the events themselves.
But why is this insight mostly limited to the young? Data from VTsIOM show that graduates from Soviet-era schools often cannot recall many dates and feel uncertain about key events. Among those surveyed, no one linked March 3, 1918, with Russia’s withdrawal from World War I. The Russo-Japanese War years, 1904–1905, linger in memory with only about 9 percent clarity; the rest struggle to name them.
What about those who lived through earlier times? Only about one in three of those now in their forties, who could have voted in the 1990s, could name Boris Yeltsin’s main rival, Gennady Zyuganov. Above all, more than sixty percent did not recall him at all.
Moreover, the idea that Lenin, Ulyanov, and the figure Krupsky are one person might be entertained only by individuals who achieved a perfect score on the history section of the Unified State Exam. A playful schoolboy riddle once asked why the October Revolution was celebrated in November—an irony that perhaps now invites more questions than answers from experts in the field.
On the other hand, what could be known? In Soviet childhood, each era carried its own tale of Lenin—how a boy named Volodya tossed a jug, how children met the leader of the world revolution, how Lenin walked with a stove-maker and spoke simply about everyday peasant matters. Quotations, posters, and portraits appeared everywhere across the USSR. Repeating them would be unnecessary and tiresome, yet the shared imagery persisted as if a common memory could be easily reproduced.
But in time, the baby was thrown out with the bathwater. If history, events, and heroes are forgotten, the causes and consequences fade as well. A people without a memory of their past risks repeating it, and when repetition occurs, the stakes rise—sometimes dramatically.
At the moment of November 7, two different worlds collided. Adults wrestle with the idea that basic facts might be forgotten, such as the distinction between World War I and the Civil War. The younger generation wonders why it became necessary to hijack hyperlinks, telegraphs, and phones when Telegram offered a simpler path. Checkmate, revolutionaries, some might say, in this new symbolic landscape.
Today, new holidays have emerged, taking root and becoming significant in their own right. There is value in recognizing a holiday like November 7. Postcards depicting carnations and prophetic salvos of the gunboats at dawn can still be found. This is not a holiday restricted to one political party; it is part of a broader history that many people continue to reflect upon, regardless of current beliefs.
The author offers a personal view that may not align with the editors’ stance, a reminder that memory and interpretation can diverge even within the same historical narrative. In the end, the question remains: how should a nation remember—and why does that memory matter today, as the present keeps weaving new stories into the fabric of the past?