Every Saturday and Sunday for the past three years, Nikolai Gavriilovich Mytskikh has come to Revolution Square to preach the evils of capitalism, the need for change, and the virtues of his party, the Russian Labor Party (Trudovaya Rossiya).
At 65, Nikolai shows little of the bitterness that characterizes so many of his fellow demonstrators on the square, even though his life story reads like a litany of tragedy and disappointment. He was left an orphan during World War II, when his father died at the front and his mother was killed before his eyes by a Nazi mortar that landed on their house. Separated from his sister during that time, he has no idea to this day if she is alive or dead.
Like many survivors of the "Great Patriotic War," as it is known here, Nikolai has a sense of loyalty to his homeland that is deeply rooted. It is all the more difficult, then, for him to watch as "that criminal Yeltsin destroys Russia. I couldn't stand by silently any more," he says. "So I started coming out here to try and make people open their eyes to what was happening."
"I have always supported the communists," says Nikolai of his political
leanings, "but I have never been a member of the Communist Party myself. I was
invited to join the party in the 1970's, but turned them down, because I thought
they shouldn't waste a membership on me, a man with only a sixth-grade education.
I told them to give the membership to someone like a professor, an intellectual,
who could really help the party.