April 17 in Russian history

1912: Lena massacre. On March 13, workers of the Andreyevski goldfield on river Lena in Siberia began a strike. The working conditions were terrible. They worked for 16 hours a day, 6 days a week, in Siberian cold weather. The salary was very low and it was partially substituted with coupons which could be ecxhanged for food in the shops belonging to the owners of the goldfields. The prices were high and the food itself was of a poor quality. Also, the workers had to pay fines for every fault. Safety regulations simply did not exist, so about 700 accidents per 1,000 workers happened every year. The workers demanded to shorten the working day to 8-10 hours, to increase wages and supply them with better food. By mid-March, about 6,000 people participated in the strike. On April 17, about 2,000 workers marched to protest against the arrest of their leaders, which took place one day before. The workers were met by soldiers who opened fire, killing about 270 people and wounding around 250 more.

95 years later, in 2007, the authorities of Moscow and St.Petersburg ordered the police to attack the participants of other peaceful marches. In Moscow, about 9,000 policemen beat 3,000 protesters with clubs and kicked the fallen people, dragged them by hair to the police cars. About 500-600 people were detained in Moscow and about 200 in St.Petersburg. Many of them were arrested before the march began. Many people from Moscow suburbs were arrested on railway stations. Few were hospitalized. In St.Petersburg, one woman was hospitalized with broken nose and jaw. Another man is suffering from broken rib, which damaged his lung. A member of the prohibited National-Bolshevist Party was hospitalized with cranial trauma. In Moscow, an operator of a Japanese TV channel was severely beaten. A number of other journalists became victims of the police violence, too. The arrested people were trialled and found guilty in "chanting anti-government slogans and using foul language" on the basis of the evidences given by policemen. Many of them were passers-by who did not participate in the protests. Testimonies of other witnesses were not taken into account. Of all national TV channels, only one covered the events in depth. "President" Putin at the moment of the massacre was visiting a show called "fights without rules". A nice choice.

5 years after the Lena massacre, the tsar abdicated the throne. In 1918, he was executed.

1923: The XII congress of the RCP(b) Russian Communist Party (of bolsheviks) began. There were 836 delegates who represented 386,000 members and candidates of the Communist Party. It is interesting that in April 1922, during the XI congress, there were 532,000 people in the party. Moreover, in March 1921, during the X congress, there were 732,521 members.

Lenin was ill and did not attend the congress. Among the most important matters was the question of the industrialization. K.Radek and L.Krasin offered to seek the assistance of foreign capitalists (which implied certain concessions, of course). The proposal was rejected. Idiot Trotsky came up with a stupid idea to close the larges factories of the country and to boost industrialization by providing more support to the agriculture. The congress decided to give special attention to the heavy industries (the accent which survived till the last years of the USSR). Another important point was the position of the party on the national question. The extreme danger of all kinds of nationalism was recognized. The liquidation of the inequality of the nations of the Soviet Russia was stressed by the congress.

January 18 in Russian history

1654: Pereyaslav Rada (Assembly) approved the treaty prepared by the Cossack Hetman, Bogdan Khmelnytsky, to re-unite Ukraine with Russia. In the morning the Hetman called the elders' rada (council of the leaders of Cossacks) and after their approval, the open rada assembled and confirmed the decision. The participants included representatives of all areas liberated from Polish troops, people from the town of Pereyaslav and peasants from nearby villages. The Hetman, the Cossack leaders and the people pledged their allegiance to the tsar Alexey I. The Russian government was very careful about the decision and declined the Ukrainian initiative for a number of times before finally signing the Pereyaslav Treaty on March, 14, 1654.

1825: The new building of the Bolshoi Theatre was inaugurated. The theatre was founded in 1776 and they gave performances in Znamensky theatre. In 1780, it was destroyed by a fire and a new theatre, Petrovsky, was designed by Osip Bove. In 1805, this building burnt down, too, and in 1808 the theatre moved to Arbatsky theatre built by an Italian architect Carlo Rossi. The Arbatsky theatre was destroyed when Napoleon took Moscow in 1812. In 1821, Osip Bove started the construction of the new building, designed by Alexey Mikhailov, the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts. The Muscovites, impressed by the grandeur of the new building, called it Colosseum. During the first concert on January, 18, 1825, a piece by Russian composers A.Verstovsky and A.Alyabyev, "The Triumph of The Muses", was performed. In 1853, during a fire, the building was damaged, but it was restored in 1856. Now, in 2007, the building is closed for restoration works.

1926: Premiere of "Battleship Potemkin", a film by Sergei Eisenstein. The film is considered one of the most influential films. In 1958, during the World's Fair at Brussels, it was named by experts the greatest film of all time.

1943: The Soviet troops broke the blockade of Leningrad. After a week of fierce fighting, units of Leningrad and Volkhov fronts overcame the German fortifications and opened a corridor to supply the food to the dying city.

1944: Precisely one year later, on January 18, 1944, the siege was ended and the German troops were driven away from Leningrad, after 900 days-long tragedy, one of the most frightening ones in history. From 670,000 to 1,500,000 people died, mostly from starvation and exposure.