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My wife and I marked Soviet holidays at home not because we considered them to be holidays, just because it was generally accepted. I remained a party member, so it was obligatory for me to mark Soviet holidays and to subscribe to the newspaper 'Izvestia' [one of the most popular communist papers in the USSR, published from 1917 to the1980s, with the circulation exceeding eight million copies].
Certainly it was nice to get extra days off and on such Soviet holidays as 1st May, 7th November [October Revolution Day] [46] and Soviet Army Day [47] we got together with my friends in my house. Only the Victory Day [48] on 9th May was sacred to us. In the morning my family and I went to the Grave of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and brought flowers there. In the evening the front-line soldiers got together to commemorate the past and to sing military songs.
Certainly it was nice to get extra days off and on such Soviet holidays as 1st May, 7th November [October Revolution Day] [46] and Soviet Army Day [47] we got together with my friends in my house. Only the Victory Day [48] on 9th May was sacred to us. In the morning my family and I went to the Grave of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow and brought flowers there. In the evening the front-line soldiers got together to commemorate the past and to sing military songs.
Period
Location
Russia
Interview
Yuri Bogdanov