Russia celebrates Spring and Labour Day

Russia is marking Spring and Labour Day today, May 1st. Being a traditional European spring celebration, May Day is a national public holiday in a majority of countries. The date is currently celebrated specifically as 'Labour Day' or 'International Workers' Day'. 

1 May was chosen to be International Workers' Day to commemorate the 4 May 1886 Haymarket affair in Chicago. The police were trying to disperse a public assembly during a general strike for the eight-hour workday, when an unidentified person threw a bomb at the police. The police responded by firing on the workers, killing four demonstrators. The following day on 5 May in Milwaukee Wisconsin, the state militia fired on a crowd of strikers killing seven, including a schoolboy and a man feeding chickens in his yard.

In 1889, a meeting in Paris was held by the first congress of the Second International, following a proposal by Raymond Lavigne that called for international demonstrations on the 1890 anniversary of the Chicago protests. 

May Day was formally recognised as an annual event at the International's second congress in 1891. Subsequently, the May Day riots of 1894 occurred. The International Socialist Congress, Amsterdam 1904 called on "all Social Democratic Party organisations and trade unions of all countries to demonstrate energetically on the First of May for the legal establishment of the 8-hour day, for the class demands of the proletariat, and for universal peace." The congress made it "mandatory upon the proletarian organisations of all countries to stop work on 1 May, wherever it is possible without injury to the workers."

May Day was celebrated illegally in Russia until the February Revolution enabled the first legal celebration in 1917. The following year, after the Bolshevik seizure of power, the May Day celebrations were boycotted by Mensheviks, Left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists. It became an important official holiday of the Soviet Union, celebrated with elaborate popular parade in the centre of the major cities. 

Around 50,000 people participated in a rally in Red Square in 1991 after which the tradition was interrupted for 13 years. Since 1992, May Day is officially called "The Day of Spring and Labour", and remains a major holiday in present-day Russia.

Moscow traditionally will meet the holiday with mass demonstrations and meetings in the city center. In total, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia said that about events will be held today at 737 sites, and the largest of them will hold parades of the trade unions and parliamentary parties.