The National Unity Day, first celebrated on 4 November 2005, commemorates the popular uprising lead by prince Dmitry Pozharsky and  a meat merchant Kuzma Minin which ejected the alien occupying forces of Polish Roman Papists army from Moscow in November 1612, and more generally the end of the Time of Troubles and foreign interventions in Russia. Its name alludes to the idea that all the classes of the Russian society willingly united to preserve the Russian statehood when its demise seemed inevitable, even though there was neither Tsar nor Patriarch to guide them. Recently this episode was made into a Russian movie 1612.

Minin and Pozharsky: The Liberation of Moscow. (from the triptych “For the Russian Land!”) Artist Yuri Pantyukhin

Russia: Muscovites celebrate Unity Day in capital

 

Parade in Sevastopol, Crimea

 

River dance  in Simferopol, Crimea

 

Russia: Putin and Patriarch Kirill bless new monument to Vladimir the Great

 

Nov 4, 2016

President Vladimir Putin unveiled a new monument to the Russia’s first Christian leader Vladimir the Great in Moscow, on Friday. The opening ceremony took place just in few meters from Kremlin walls and coincided with the Russian National Unity Day.

Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): “Your Holiness. Respected Muscovites! Dear friends!
I greet and congratulate you on the opening of the monument to Saint Equal-to-apostles Prince Vladimir. This is a big and significant event for Moscow, for the whole country and for all Russian compatriots. It is symbolic that it is being held on the National Unity Day here in the centre of the capital near the walls of the ancient Kremlin, in the heart of Russia.”

Vladimir Putin, Russian President (Russian): “The strong moral support, cohesion and unity helped our ancestors to overcome difficulties, to live and to win for the glory of the Fatherland, to strengthen its power and greatness from generation to generation. And today it is our duty to stand together against modern threats and challenges basing on spiritual precepts, invaluable traditions of unity and concord and to move forward ensuring the continuity of our thousand-year history.”

Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and all Russia (Russian): “The monument to Prince Vladimir is a symbol of the unity of all the peoples to whom he is farther. This is the peoples of the historical Rus’ currently living within the borders of many states. The monument to the farther may be everywhere where his children live. There is no contradiction in it. But it is bad if children forget that they have the only father.”