Contrasting centenaries: how Russia, Ukraine and Belarus marked October
Journal: Twentieth Century Communism
Year: 2018

The ‘Great October Socialist Revolution’ of 1917 was the foundational event for the USSR, continually invoked by the CPSU to justify the Soviet state and its political and economic order. Its anniversary on 7 November was the major public holiday in the Soviet Union, and up to 1990 was celebrated across the Union in thousands of official marches, meetings and ceremonies large and small. After 1991, following the dissolution of both the Union and the party, the anniversary lost its raison d’être