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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
THE 1990 MAY DAY PARADE IN MOSCOW'S RED SQUARE provided an extraordinary spectacle of the growing dilemma faced by the Soviet leadership. Mikhail Gorbachev, flanked by members of the Politburo, stood atop the Lenin Mausoleum while below an angry crowd of demonstrators booed, jeered and defiantly waved placards and portraits of opposition politicians. It was an historic occasion, reminiscent of the last days of the CeauSescu regime in Romania. Not since Lenin's day had there been a public demonstration of this kind in Red Square. This was the first time since the Bolshevik Party appropriated the International Labour holiday to celebrate its own power that the May Day parade had been disrupted. The symbolic significance was all too apparent: the key event in the calendar of Soviet political ritual had been visibly wrecked, the communist leadership had appeared weak and isolated, and even at the sacred heartland of Lenin's shrine Gorbachev's authority was being challenged and undermined by an angry Soviet public. From being a symbol of workers’ solidarity and Soviet military might, May Day had become further testimony to the crisis of legitimacy in the Soviet regime.
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