During the school year 1984-1985, I took a leave of absence from my teaching job in Boston and was hired by the U.S. State Department to teach at the Leningrad Branch of the Anglo-American School of Moscow. Leningrad is now known as St. Petersburg. My class consisted of two sisters, one in second grade and the other in fourth grade. I lived in a diplomatic apartment building, worked in a classroom in the American Consulate, and was treated like a diplomat. I hoped to meet Soviets and explore as much of Leningrad and the surrounding area as I could.

Around the middle of October, red flags and pictures of Lenin and other prominent Soviet leaders began appearing all over the streets and buildings of Leningrad, in anticipation of one of the major Soviet holidays, October Revolution Day. This day commemorated the final takeover of power by Lenin and his Bolshevik Party. Because of changes in the calendar, October Revolution Day was celebrated on November 7.

When I learned about the parade I asked several people at the Consulate what time it started. Each person responded about the same way, saying, “I have no idea when it starts. This happens all the time and the Soviets never tell us.” So I decided to get there early in the morning of the big holiday and I set off on the subway to find a good spot from which to view the parade. This turned out to be much more difficult than I had expected. The parade route was down the main thoroughfare, Nevsky Prospect, and past the reviewing stand which was erected in Palace Square. The reviewing stand was in front of the tsar’s Winter Palace, which had become the famous museum, the Hermitage.

When I got closer to Nevsky Prospect I saw that there were huge trucks and buses blocking each street intersecting with Nevsky Prospect. These prevented people not only from getting to the parade but even from seeing the parade. There were scores of militiamen, soldiers, and sailors manning each barricade and lining the parade route, so it was not possible for anyone to crawl under or over the trucks to get to the parade. It seemed very strange to me that a major parade would be held and no one would be allowed to see it.

I wasn’t ready to give up that easily though, so I squeezed myself between two trucks, and showed my identification to the militiaman to prove that I was an employee of the American Consulate. When he didn’t respond, I said to him in my best Russian, “I’d like to watch the demonstration,” which is what they called the parade. He started yelling at me and telling me that it wasn’t possible and I should go away.

In the couple of months I had lived in Leningrad I had learned a technique to use whenever someone told me that what I wanted to do wasn’t possible. I stood my ground and didn’t move or talk. So there I was, squeezed between the two trucks with the militiaman yelling at me from one side and another group of people whose path I was blocking, yelling from behind me. Finally the militiaman threw up his hands in exasperation and let me go through.

I joined a small crowd at a major square near where the parade would begin and wondered what techniques the other people had used to get through the barricades and where all the spectators came from. Everyone seemed in a festive mood and even the militiamen were smiling and talking to the crowd, which was very unusual.

There were chains separating the sidewalk from the street, and the militiamen kept telling people to step back several feet from the chains to the back of the sidewalk. The crowd repeatedly pushed forward to the chains and the militiamen kept moving everyone back. All this maneuvering proved to be totally useless because as the front of the parade marched by, the entire crowd around me surged forward, climbed over the chains, and joined the parade. The militiamen just stood there without doing or saying anything.

That was how I found myself in the middle of a crowd of people carrying red flags, marching down the middle of Nevsky Prospect. I was surprised by the crowd around me because they actually seemed happy and jovial, something I had never seen publicly in the Soviet Union. People were singing, talking, and laughing, in contrast to the somber, downcast expressions people usually had when they were walking on the street.

Militiamen, soldiers, and sailors lined the entire route. I tried to stay in the middle of the red flags and pretend that I was singing, so that no one would notice me. As we entered Palace Square, there were rows and rows of soldiers and sailors who kept people moving in the right direction. Once I tried to pass through a row of sailors to join another stream of people and get closer to the reviewing stand. That didn’t work out since one of the sailors grabbed me by the shoulder and pushed me into a line of people who were further away.

A voice from the reviewing stand kept shouting over the loudspeaker such things as “Hail to the builders of factory number 122,” and the crowd would answer “Hoorah!” Other stimulating cheers were: “Hail to school number 27,” “Hail to the women street cleaners,” and “Hail to the truck drivers.” After each cheer the crowd would answer, “Hoorah!” I began to feel sorry for the people on the reviewing stand who had to listen to these cheers all day. They must have become very bored.

It was later that night as I watched the fireworks display from beside one of the university dormitories that I heard more interesting cheers from a group of fairly drunk students. They were imitating the speaker on the reviewing stand, but they offered their own cheers of “Hail to free love,” and “Hail to sex!”

The parade ended for me and my group of red flag carriers as we were funneled through Palace Square without stopping and through more barricaded streets to a distant subway stop. I pushed my way into the subway station along with thousands of other people and made my way home.

All in all, it was an interesting experience, but I felt that I had seen enough red flags and hammers and sickles to last me a lifetime, and that one Soviet parade would certainly be enough for me.