Putin bringing back Soviet era practices in Russia

People in helmets dressed as Russian factory workers hold a man wearing a Barack Obama mask in chains as they take part in a Communist [note the Soviet symbol on the globe being carried] demonstration in downtown Moscow, May, 1, 2014.

MOSCOW — Russia staged a huge May Day parade on Moscow's Red Square for the first time since the Soviet era on Thursday, with workers holding banners proclaiming support for President Vladimir Putin after the seizure of territory from neighboring Ukraine.
 
Thousands of trade unionists marched with Russian flags and flags of Putin's ruling United Russia party onto the giant square beneath the Kremlin walls, past the red granite mausoleum of Soviet state founder Vladimir Lenin.  [Statues of Lenin remain in abundance in Russia; by contrast, in Germany there can be found no trace of a monument to Third Reich founder Adolf Hitler. -cy]

 Many banners displayed traditional slogans for the annual workers' holiday, like: “Peace, Labor, May”. But others were more directly political, alluding to the crisis in neighboring former Soviet republic Ukraine, where Russian troops seized and annexed the Crimea peninsula in March, precipitating the biggest confrontation with the West since the Cold War.

“I am proud of my country,” read one. “Putin is right,” said another.

Unlike Kremlin leaders in Soviet times, Putin did not personally preside at the parade from atop the mausoleum. But he carried out another Soviet-era tradition by awarding “Hero of Labor” medals to five workers at a ceremony in the Kremlin. He revived the Stalin-era award a year ago.

Putin has described the breakup of the Soviet Union as a tragedy and overturned decades of post-Cold War diplomacy in March by declaring Russia's right to intervene in former Soviet countries to protect Russian speakers.

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May Day, always an important date in the Soviet calendar and still a major holiday for Russians, has been marked by rallies in other parts of Moscow since the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, but until now parades were kept off Red Square.

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Putin has also revived the Soviet-era practice of staging massive displays of military firepower on Red Square to mark May 9, the allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, one of the most important days in the Soviet and Russian calendars.

Central Moscow streets have been partially closed in recent days as tanks and mobile rocket launchers rehearse for that parade next week.

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See also "Survival of U.S. Communist Party".