The Presidential Library recalls the history of the May Day celebration

Spring and Labor Day is one of the favorites in our country. May Day received this name relatively recently, in 1992, and before that, May Day was celebrated as the International Day of Solidarity of Workers. People took to the demonstrations with banners, sang songs and chanted life-affirming slogans. They were proud of the scale of the May Day demonstration.

For the first time in our country this day was openly celebrated after the February Revolution of 1917. In tsarist Russia, workers gathered for the May Day celebration in secret as May Days were dispersed by the police. Having become official, May Day was accompanied by the slogans: "All power to the Soviets!", "Down with the imperialist war!". One has opportunity to see on the Presidential Library’s portal how it was thanks to a photo report from one of the first official May Day demonstrations.

The institution’s portal contains a whole collection of May Day photographs depicting citizens marching along Nevsky Prospekt, Palace Square and Troitsky Bridge...The authors of the photographs are the sons of the famous Karl Bulla, Alexander and Victor, who, unlike their father, did not emigrate in 1918, but remained working in Petrograd (Leningrad).

May Day was intended to unite the builders of a new state, a new reality. Those who did not have the opportunity to congratulate in person were sent holiday cards. And these postcards sometimes convey the spirit of the era better than any photograph. The postcards of the Soviet era often depict the heroes with red banners, collages of photographs of revolutionaries.

This was how the tradition of the new state was laid, in which people had to take a responsible and “personal” attitude to work. But employers were now also required to have a more respectful attitude towards the work and rest of their employees. In 1894, the International Congress on Hygiene and Demography was held in Budapest. Extracts from the resolution of this congress were taken up by the Bolsheviks. This is how the postal propaganda card Long live the 8-hour working day! appeared, which was distributed at the May Day demonstrations in 1917. The requirement to switch to an eight-hour working day was one of the key ones in the Russian labor movement: "Eight hours for work, eight for sleep, eight for free!" The long working day, the campaign card emphasized, undermines the health of the worker, promotes the spread of alcoholism, and leaves no time for family and raising children.

What, according to the emerging new government, should workers spend those same 8 hours of free time? This is true even today. Without sufficient leisure, a person cannot improve his/her cultural and professional level, which is necessary, again, to increase labor efficiency. Therefore, a long working day kills culture, the campaign card emphasizes.

By the way, the revolutionary excitement that gripped the state was also reflected in a funny typo in the text of the postcard, where instead of “from the resolution” it says “from the revolution of the International Congress on Hygiene”...

On November 11 (October 29, old style), 1917 an 8-hour working day was established by decree of the Council of People's Commissars. The process of building a new state was launched. Already in May 1941 the newspapers wrote: “The USSR is the only country in the world where work becomes the first need of every person. We celebrate the May 1 holiday with new production victories, new achievements. Showing on May Day before the whole world their mobilization readiness, their moral and political unity, their solidarity..."

These and many other library and archival materials containing interesting and little-known historical facts about the May Day celebration are available in the Presidential Library's collections.