Rallies held to mark Bolshevik Revolution on former holiday

(7 Nov 2005) SHOTLIST

1. Wide top shot of demo down Tverskaya Street
2. Wide shot pan of the demo
3. Wide shot of demo with red flag carried up by demonstrators
4. Wide low shot of approaching demo
4. Close up of a young girl marching ahead of column
5. Mid shot of a line of police walking along demonstrators
6. Wide shot of demonstrators passing by the Kremlin on the background
7. Wide shot of line of interior ministry troops barring approaches to the Kremlin
8. SOUNDBITE (Russian) Vox pop, demonstrator:
"We will never, never give away our Russia to anybody to be abused, we will fight for it to the end."
9. Mid shot of an old man with poster of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin
10. Mid shot of demonstrators with National Bolsheviks flag
11. Wide shot of demonstrators facing police line in front of Duma
12. Mid shot of young chanting National Bolshevik with loud speaker
13. Wide shot of young demonstrators chanting slogans, UPSOUND: (Russian) "Revolution, revolution"
14. Cut away spectators watching demo
15. Wide shot of young demonstrators setting up fire crackers in front of Duma, zooming on one of them.

STORYLINE:

Communists held rallies across Russia on Monday to commemorate the Bolshevik Revolution, marking a long-sacred former holiday that was an official working day for the first time in decades.

President Vladimir Putin signed a law late last year cancelling the Nov. 7 holiday that used to mark the anniversary of the 1917 revolution and
replacing it with the Day of People's Unity, a Nov. 4 celebration of the end of Polish intervention in 1612.

Thousands of Communists and their allies and supporters, most of them elderly, marched down Moscow's main street toward a monument to Karl Marx, carrying red banners and chanting "Revolution! Revolution!"

Communist leaders have said they expect more people to attend rallies nationwide than in recent years, galvanised by the cancellation of the
holiday.

"History will not forgive them for taking it away," Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said. "Those in power are afraid of Soviet history
... because they themselves can do nothing but steal."

In the former imperial capital St. Petersburg, about 1,000 mostly elderly Russians carrying Soviet hammer-and-sickle flags and portraits of Lenin,
Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung and Che Guevara rallied at a main city square.

They planned to march to the cruiser Aurora, anchored in the Neva river, which shelled the Tzar's Winter Palace during the revolution.

In a poll conducted by the respected Levada Centre, 63 percent of respondents opposed the decision to scrap the holiday.

The Oct. 14-17 poll of 1,600 people nationwide had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork
Twitter:   / ap_archive  
Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​
Instagram:   / apnews  


You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...