#4 - RW 261
The Hindu (India)
June 13, 2003
Putin hijacks Yeltsin legacy
By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW JUNE 12. Russia marked its National Day with great pomp on Thursday but festivities left the nation confused as to what exactly the country was celebrating.

For the first time, Russia's main post-Soviet holiday was marked on Red Square, traditionally used for May Day, Victory Day and October Revolution celebrations.

A colourful march by delegations from all of Russia's 89 regions, followed by a military parade and a sports show was topped off with a flypast by Su-27 and MiG-29 fighter jets, the first air show over Red Square in nearly half a century.

The holiday commemorates the adoption on June 12, 1990, of a Sovereignty Declaration by the first Congress of People's Deputies of the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic, led by Boris Yeltsin, who would become Russia's first President.

The document provoked a chain reaction of sovereignty declarations in other Soviet republics, which eventually led to the break-up of the Soviet Union in December 1991.

Initially named Independence Day, the June 12 holiday became the target of jeer and jokes, as historians and politicians mocked the notion of Russia, the core part of the Soviet empire, celebrating independence from its own self.

In 1998, Independence Day was renamed to the more neutral Russia Day, and the President, Vladimir Putin, has further hijacked the holiday from its roots. In his festive speech in Red Square today, Mr. Putin defined June 12 as a "holiday of national unity,'' failing to make any reference to its origins.

``Today, we fete our Motherland, a country with a millennium-long history and unique heritage,'' Mr. Putin said.

Former Soviet republics mark June 12 as the day that paved the way to their independence. The Prime Minister of Lithuania, Alghirdas Brazauskas, today hailed Russia's Sovereignty Declaration as a "monumental event,'' which facilitated his country's independence.

As for Russians, they displayed total confusion when asked what their country celebrated on June 12. Only 6 per cent of Russians quizzed in a recent poll could correctly identify the holiday as Russia Day and just 20 per cent were prepared to see it as anything more than another day off.

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