May, 1st: Soviet Labour Day.

1984 marochkin May, 1st: Soviet Labour Day.

Parade of 1984, city of Ufa. Photo by N. Marochkin.

Day of Inter­na­tional Sol­i­dar­ity of the Work­ing Class, or Labour Day — was cel­e­brated in Rus­sia on May, 1st  from 1919 to 1990. A pub­lic hol­i­day for each every city, every town­ship or vil­lage had a parade organ­ised: flags were car­ried, posters and ban­ners were up, kids had red bal­lons and por­traits of the gov­ern­ing men were on dis­play. The atten­dance usu­ally was com­pul­sory, but judg­ing by the pho­tographs now, I don’t think any­body minded: it looks like peo­ple had fum there. By May the weather was usu­ally sunny and crisp, and this hol­i­day was a lit­tle more that a pro­pa­gan­dist activ­ity: it was a uni­fy­ing event. Please read on to see some faces behind the crowd.

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Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

komm most 500x329 Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

The Com­mu­nal Bridge, back then (late 1970s)

komm mostt 500x375 Novosibirsk: Then and Now.

The Com­mu­nal Bridge, nowadays.

The unof­fi­cial cap­i­tal of Siberia, the city of Novosi­birsk was founded in 1893 with the ini­tial pop­u­la­tion of only 8,000 peo­ple. By the time of the Great Octo­ber Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917,  it grew to the pop­u­la­tion size of 80,000. The name, lit­er­ally mean­ing New Siber­ian City, was adopted in 1926 — and since then, the town had become to grow and prosper.By 1962, Novosi­birsk became the youngest city in the world to have the pop­u­la­tion of 1 mil­lion — it only took about 70 years. Now it is an impor­tant indus­trial, cul­tural and socioe­co­nomic hub of the country.

We realise that today’s post is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent from our usual for­mat, as the mod­ern pic­tures of the city are, well, mod­ern and not of the Soviet epoch. It is still nice to see, how­ever, how the city has been chang­ing over the past hun­dred years — and the old pho­tographs are still full of life and very easy on the eye.

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