Soviet October Revolution Parade
Today marks the anniversary of the socialist revolution in Russia, I guess it will be the 94th. 40 years ago, we were in Leningrad (now St Petersburg) at the time of the 54th anniversary. We were lucky enough to see the October Revolution Parade and, to our surprise, found ourselves in the middle of it. It was quite an experience.
We had signed up for a 10 day “cultural exchange visit” arranged through Skådebanan, an organisation I joined through my work social club (which seems to be still going strong), through which we could get tickets to cultural events in Sweden. Probably because we were living in Sweden at the time, getting a visa took only a couple of days, even though in 1971 the cold war was still in full swing. We found ourselves in a large 4 star hotel in the centre of town, the Oktiabrskaya Hotel. It was very close to the Moscow Station:
