May Day

The days when today, the 1st of May (Labour Day) were celebrated in Red Square Moscow with a massive march past the Praesidium to a grumpy salute from Alexei Kosygin or a more cocky wave from Nikita Khrushchev are long gone. 

The huge threatening presentation of power as the rocket launchers and the lines of tanks passed through the Square was a reminder to us in the West not to poke the bear too hard or we would regret it. The might of the "Collective" and the power of the industrial machine which Stalin had assembled to compete with Capitalism was on show on May the 1st and in countries such as ours with a far less overt military machine we understood what raw overt power meant. 

Like the parades of the Nazi Party  (The National Socialist German Workers Party) in front of Hitler in Berlin. 

These parades which went on for hours were more than just propaganda they were a display of virility, of masculine strength to indicate the power of a nation. The all male martial marching songs, crisp and measured, sung in language of verbal precision, clear and precise the message came across loud and clear. The blond haired, pigtailed, blue eyed madchen gazing adoringly at this massed assembly of manhood were a crystallisation of the breeding plan that claimed a superiority over other races.

We never had the drive to present ourselves in this way. Our troops were a somewhat motley assembly of largely, part time soldiers. Only the Guards Regiments were significantly smart and had any sort of military stature. We were not a martial nation, we were scornful of authority and prided ourselves on our rudimentary individualism.

May Day to us meant dancing around a May Pole, holding a ribbon rather than the rifle, and celebrating Spring, the awakening of life not its destruction !!