An eventful anniversary...

Let me be the first, and no doubt the only, person to wish you Happy 90th Bolshevik Revolution Day November 7, 2007. Ninety years ago tomorrow, in Petrograd, a few Bolshevik activists broke into the Winter Palace to arrest the cadets and Women's Battalion of Death soldiers guarding what was left of Russia's democratic government. The activists and their leaders found it inconvenient to convene the Constituent Assembly that was supposed to decide all the burning questions--land reform, whether to stay in World War I, what kind of state Russia would be--because they believed themselves possessed of superior wisdom. It might be an understatement to say that the succeeding years did much to dispel that illusion.
For old times' sake, let's have a look at Vladimir Lenin hailing a taxi--er, leading the troops on to victory--and celebrate "70(now 90) years on the road to nowhere," as a sign i once glimpsed in a l987 crowd proclaimed. URA! URA!