"The holiday is glorious and free! Hail, the first day of May!" Presidential Library tells about Russian May Day celebration history

On May 1, Spring and Labour Day is celebrated annually in Russia. Many songs, poems and other works of art are dedicated to this day. Historians Sigismund Valk and Alexey Shilov tell about the history of May 1 in Russia and abroad in their book "May Day Anthology" (1924).

In Russia, International Workers' Solidarity Day was first celebrated in 1890. In 1891, in St. Petersburg, a group of Social Democrats led by a Marxist Mikhail Brusnev organized the first May Day, an illegal revolutionary meeting of workers, usually held outside the city. Since 1897, May Day demonstrations have been political in nature and were accompanied by mass demonstrations.

After the October Revolution, May 1 became a public holiday. On this day, demonstrations of workers and military parades were held. The motto of the holiday was the words: "Peace. Labour. May." By this day, they wrote slogans, mottos, and painted propaganda posters. The "May Day Anthology" contains poems dedicated to the holiday. Among the authors are Sergey Gorodetsky, Demyan Bedny and other poets. "The holiday is bright and free!/ Hail, the first day of May!/ Our union is international/ Put on a new shine," wrote revolutionary Ivan Kalyaev.

In addition to the poems, the publication contains an excerpt from the fantastic story "May Day Dream", written in 1921 by Vladimir Kirillov. The main character goes to bed thinking that in the morning he needs to make a speech about the significance of May 1 in history. In his dream, he is transported from his 1921 year to Moscow in 1999. The character, who has moved in time, is shocked by what he saw: "My poor language, my poor dream, will I convey by your means all the majesty and beauty of what I saw? Two worlds, breaking the boundaries of centuries, came together here closely. To the right was the Kremlin in all the charm of medieval architecture, to the left was the new world, embodying all the power, all the majesty of human genius." Traveling around the capital, the hero gets to the May Day demonstration and exclaims: "If those who lived in my time had seen at least a particle of this beautiful and happy life, they would have increased their energy tenfold in the struggle for the future."

The portal of the Presidential Library presents numerous visual materials – photographs, posters and postcards about the ways the holiday was celebrated in different years. The collection Celebration of the 1st of May, which is part of the collection 1917, contains rare photographs of the celebration of this day in different districts of Petrograd. In the city center: photos "Celebration of May 1st. Field of Mars", "May 1st (April 18th), 1917 On St. Isaac's Square. Petrograd", "Mariinsky Square. National holiday on May 1, 1917", "Celebration of May 1. Trinity Bridge". At the factory outskirts: photo "May 1st (April 18th), 1917 Instrumental M. P. Z. Petrograd". There are also works by famous Alexander and Victor Bulla (for example, "May 1, 1917 on Palace Square" and others).

Among the documents of the Soviet period devoted to the holiday, the collection "May 1st and pioneers" stands out. It was published by Novosibirsk (Novonikolaevsky) department of the Komsomol organization as a guide for celebration for the pioneers.

During the Great Patriotic War, the visual materials for the celebration of May 1 were complemented by front-line subjects. For example, posters by Alexander Chechnev "May Day gift: from a submachine gunners – death to the German invader!", Victor Govorov "Long live May 1! Everything for the front, everything for defeating the enemy!". These and other images are available on the portal of the Presidential Library in the Posters section of the electronic collection Memory of the Great Victory.

The collection Domestic Periodicals in the Presidential Library Collections contains newspaper articles from the war years dedicated to the celebration of May Day. For example, articles from Belevskaya Pravda, the organ of the district committee of the CPSU(b), the district council and the City Council (1942); from the newspaper Za Rodinu, the organ of the Vitebsk RC KP(b)B and the District Council of Workers' Deputies (1943).

In addition, a digital copy of the Order of the Supreme Commander Joseph Stalin dated May 1, 1945 No. 20 is posted on the portal. Stalin congratulates the people on May 1 and "in honor of the historical victories of the Red Army at the front and the great successes of workers, collective farmers and intellectuals in the rear, in commemoration of the international holiday of workers" orders twenty artillery salutes in the capitals of the Union republics and in the Hero Cities: Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol and Odessa.

May Day was intended to unite the constructors of a new state, of a new reality. Those who could not be congratulated on the holiday in person were sent holiday cards, which convey the spirit of the era better than any photo. The last official May Day demonstration in Russia took place on May 1, 1990. In 1992, the International Workers' Solidarity Day was renamed the Spring and Labor Day.

The Presidential Library's collections contain May Day postcards from the Soviet era. They are available in the electronic reading room located at 3 Senatskaya sq., as well as in more than 1,600 remote access centers to the resources of the Presidential Library, opened on the territory of the Russian Federation and abroad.