May Day protest in Moscow - 3 May 1991

On a May Day many moons ago, I found myself as the French say, standing on a velvety lawn bordered by protective woods, a lawn that ran down to the edge of a cliff which overlooked the majestic Hudson River. It was a splendid, a privileged place to be, a handsome neo-Georgian mansion, amid gardens, greenhouses, stables, farms, and many more manicured acres sloping towards the river. A wonderful haven from the threat and turmoil of the city, only a few miles to the south. William Makepeace Thackeray had once stayed there as a guest, so had T H Huxley, the Italian musical tornado Toscanini had lived there.

It had been bought some time I imagine very early in the century by a banker, a partner of JP Morgan and this meant he'd done most of the loving cultivation of the place. It belonged to his daughter during the time I'm talking about, some time during the middle 1950s I believe, and she happened to be an Anglophile. In a burst of transatlantic tenderness, she'd given the house, or put it on indefinite loan to Britain to be the official New York residence of the chief UK delegate to the United Nations.

So on that second day of May it was as his guest that I was there. I was not the only one by about another 200 people I should guess. However, one of the guests was Mr Andrei Gromyko, the seemingly perpetual Soviet ambassador to the United Nations. Of all the famous and the fussy and the fashionable people there it was Mr Gromyko that I was eager to bump into, I had a point to make.

That morning's papers had slammed across their front pages as always on the second of May, mightily impressive pictures of May Day in Moscow in Red Square. We'd seen the newsreel films on television the previous evening, of course, it was always a sight that you'd not forget for many days and thoughtful nights. The overwhelming juggernaut of Soviet military power, the endless platoons of huge tanks, their elevated guns monotonously slicing the air across an enormous picture blow up of Lenin. The cameras reverently panning the 100-200,000 gathered there, who made no more noise than the rustle of the wind over a heaving ocean. And the party bigwigs, the general secretary in the middle, and all the rest of them imitating his little wave, a funny listless gesture, always as of an old man with a semi paralysed hand. Nowhere ever in sight was there a dissenting figure, a protesting voice, an angry face.

Well I didn't have to go in search of Mr Gromyko, my host and an American delegate I knew introduced me. I was going to say that after a little small talk I put to Mr Gromyko my question. But I have to say, that of all the diplomats I've ever known, Mr Gromyko was without compare, the total non-performer of small talk. "So," he said, that was it. Seemed as good a moment as any to plunge right in – I told him about the impressive pictures we'd seen of May Day in Moscow. But, I said, there's one thing I always notice, no protestors, I said, students, angry posters, placards. We saw them yesterday in Paris, in London and here as always a hoarse crowd parading up and down First Avenue, down with the Soviets and their satellites. Mr Gromyko gave out a melancholy rumbling sound, something between a groan and a chuckle, "Of course," he said, "this is very simple. You don't understand, there are no protests, no dissent, because the people have nothing to protest about, they are part of their government, they approve. So."

Well, in the past two years since, half a continent crumbled and the whole system burst at the seams, of course we've seen practically nothing but protest, hundreds of thousands in every capital square from Riga to Volgograd. And a very simple truth we'd shunned or dismissed as naive, became very clear: no system of government, however benign or awful in theory can exact total obedience without the constant threat of torture or imprisonment. Under Hitler the one sound that successfully made whole populations of decent people cower and ??? taking of their children, their friends give in was the midnight knock on the door of the SS.

And as it has come out during the past two years that the people of the Soviet republics have grievously lacked bread and soap for decades. Why didn't we know, why didn't they rise up and rebel? Well from all that we've read, much learned explanation from experts who never dreamed of the collapse of the system the same crude, simple truth emerges. Power was held by all those successive Politburo and their presiding despots. Because of the brutal dependable efficiency of the secret police who went by many names and wound up as the KGB. Nothing will so successfully stifle the bravery of dissent in the stoutest hearts than the certainty of being sent to prison, to a labour camp, to a so-called psychiatric hospital.

Among all the hindsight, historians and analysing experts I have not read why and at what moment are the KGB jibed, or somebody, some group somewhere decided to defy them, but that was the moment when ordinary people could breathe again and complain and be again the government. And in that moment the system blew up.

Well, did you see on the box this May Day parade to a casual viewer who remembers the old ones, there didn't appear to be great differences, but there were. This year the rally was called by the official trade unions, the alliance of democratic unions and followers simply boycotted it. There were maybe 20-25,000 in Red Square. The official published figure is 50,000. Even so you could not get there without a special pass to be shown to the thousands of police and KGB troops. There were two lots of demonstrators, hard-line Communists waving portraits of Stalin and Lenin and anti-Semitic placards, and then assorted groups, the majority waving nothing but protest placards. They are against unemployment, poverty, hunger, rising prices, as aren't we all.

I've not seen any reports of a May Day parade in New York. We used to have them regularly, and through the Depression years and on into the McCarthy years, a nucleus of actual declared Communists swelled by waves of fellow travellers, but those days are evidently over. I suppose there still is a Communist Party, by golly there is I've just looked it up, it says here, Communist Party USA 2, 35 West 23rd Street. And the secretary, I can't believe this, it's rather as if you'd looked up Communist Party USSR and it said, secretary Leon Trotsky. The American secretary is Gus Hall, changed his name at some point from Arvo Kustaa Halberg son of Scandinavian immigrants, was born in Minnesota, was a student at the Lenin institute in Moscow from his 21st year, back here became a Communist, 1934. Has been the general secretary of the party since 1959. He ran for president 1972 and 6. Yes, but is he a Gorby man or a Yeltsin groupie? No way of knowing, as far as he's concerned there might have been no Communist revolution since 1917.

Nearly 30 years ago he wrote a book called For a Radical Change. And as late as 1983 he wrote a book called Karl Marx, Beacon For Our Times. He's 80 years old and by now a benevolent almost a revered old American. He must be the last living American ideologue for you may have noticed for you may have noticed we're living through the twilight or perhaps the dark night of ideology. Nobody will confess to any principled belief other than vaguely conservative of various stripes, or liberals of an angry sentimental sort.

The Democratic party has been looking, is still looking for a leader who has an idea, a belief, if not an ideology and a crusade, and finally this week a Democrat declared himself for the presidency next year. He is, it doesn't sound very promising, a Greek American from Massachusetts, just like Governor Dukakis. Massachusetts, the state whose economy because of its once lavish defence contracts and microchip manufacturing was known as the Massachusetts miracle … Today it is close to bankruptcy and when it goes seeking loans has the lowest credit rating of any state in the Union.

Well Mr Paul Tsongas is his name, he was a United States senator and a highly visible liberal. But on Tuesday he announced his platform, and you'll see what I mean when I say, whatever happened to the ideologues and ideology, where now is Franklin Roosevelt, Beacon for Our Times, where now is Paul Tsongas the old fighting liberal? He's running, he says against mediocrity in Washington. Maybe like Governor Dukakis he's also against incompetence. He sounds not unlike the George Bush of 1988, he wants first to cut the capital gains tax, he's for nuclear power to relieve the country's dependence of fossil fuels. He wants, unlike scads of Democrats, a free trade treaty with Mexico.

He's also just like Ronald Reagan for the values of our ancestors. In his first speech as a candidate Mr Tsongas said a sentence which I cannot imagine any other candidate dreaming up. "In the Apache time," he said, "the word for grandfather and grandson is the same, they understand linkage, they understand honour, they understand mutual obligation." Ach so.

Now the number of voting red men, let alone members of the Apache tribe in Massachusetts must be very small indeed, but since most white Democrats are expecting to go under again next year and are really looking for a man for 1996, Mr Tsongas can't start too soon looking for all the help he can get from the minorities.

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