In the shadow of Red October

I see the ghosts of communism past.

Philosopher Karl Marx is here. He looks deep in thought.

Dictator Joseph Stalin is here, too. He looks sinister.

Once communist idols, these giants of history – or rather their statues – have been put out to grass in a park near Moscow.

Here, too, stands the leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known to the world as Lenin. Indeed, there are lots of Lenins here. In one pose, he is the great thinker, with hand on chin. In another, he’s chatting to children. A third statue has Lenin toiling away at his desk.

While Brand Putin sells, Bolshevik Lenin is under fire. And it is the Orthodox Church, increasingly influential in Russia, which is leading the charge against him.

“One lesson of the revolution is we should not allow society to be shaken by people coming from abroad with a special task,” Metropolitan Hilarion, head of external relations for the Russian Orthodox Church, tells me.

“The Bolshevik revolution started with the arrival of Lenin and more than 200 other revolutionaries who came by train through Germany. Their trip was sponsored by Germany, which was at war with Russia. This indicates the whole affair was criminal.”

In other words, with Lenin’s help, a foreign power orchestrated regime change in Russia in 1917. The argument has a contemporary ring to it. In recent years Moscow has accused Western governments of plotting social unrest in Russia.

The Russian authorities also link the West to the so-called “coloured revolutions” that have deposed pro-Moscow regimes, from Ukraine to Georgia. Russian officials often refer to Red October as “the first coloured revolution.”

Among the guests taking part in that raucous TV show was businessman Stanislav Svistunov. I visit him at his factory in the north of Moscow.

Stanislav’s company decorates plastic products, including funeral accessories. Plastic coffin handles and crucifixes go into the machines and when they emerge they are sparkling with a golden coating.

There is an irony to Stanislav being in the business of religious appendages.

He shows me a book. It is the family history of Vladimir Lenin - the communist who declared war on the Church.

“I am Lenin’s great-great-grandnephew,” declares Stanislav, pointing to a family tree. “My great-great-great-grandmother, Sophia, was the sister of Maria, Lenin’s mother.”

Stanislav assures me that only once did his family benefit from their famous relative. One year back in the 1930s winter was so cold that his great-grandfather and great-grandmother had to burn some of their furniture to keep warm. Out of desperation they wrote to the authorities mentioning the family connection.

“Some people came to check their identity papers. Shortly after, a lorry arrived with firewood. My great-grandfather was sworn to secrecy about it.”

As for what to do with Lenin’s body, Stanislav assumes it will be up to the Kremlin to decide.

“Only one man can take the decision to bury Lenin - our president,” Stanislav tells me.

In a building next to the Church on the Blood, I attend a children’s choir rehearsal. Looking down from the wall is Nicholas II. His portrait provides inspiration to the young choristers.

“The tsar and his family set us a moral example that we try to follow,” Alexandra explains. “They believed in God so much, they suffered for it.”

“I always think of him as the captain of a big ship called Russia,” says Anastasiya. “He was on this ship till the very end, till the country ended. He was so brave and I admire him.”

It is an idealised and somewhat distorted image of Russia’s last tsar. For, if Nicholas II was the captain, does he not bear some responsibility for the sinking of imperial Russia?

It was the tsar’s soldiers who fired on peaceful protesters outside the Winter Palace in 1905. It was Nicholas who brought the mystic and faith-healer Grigory Rasputin into the royal court. As a private adviser to the Romanovs, the renegade monk interfered in matters of state and further damaged the prestige of the monarchy.

Nicholas’s decision to take personal command of the tsarist army in World War One proved disastrous. And ever the inflexible autocrat, the tsar was incapable of steering Russia clear of revolution.

The Provisional Government that took over from him made mistakes, too. But ultimately, the Bolsheviks seized power in a country that had been weakened by years of imperial mismanagement.

In post-communist Russia, it is not only the tsar who is enjoying a revival. So is the Church. In 1989, Russia had 6,000 Orthodox churches. Today there are more than 36,000.

Formerly a pillar of tsarist autocracy, Orthodoxy once again enjoys a close connection to the state. As the Kremlin strives to shape a new national ideology around patriotism and ultra-conservative values, the Church is playing a key role.

In a school playground on the edge of Yekaterinburg, I watch children practising traditional Cossack sword-spinning. The school, which has built its own church, is one of several in the area where education is centred on piety, patriotism and a glorious past.

“We are rediscovering our culture of a century ago, not just with swords, but with songs and dances,” 14-year-old Nikolai tells me. “But for me, faith is the most important thing in life - it is the reason we are here.”

I talk to the school director, Alexei Solovyov. He recalls that in Soviet times, when atheism was an official state doctrine, only one church was open in Yekaterinburg, or Sverdlovsk, as it was known under communism. It is a city of more than a million people.

“Outside the church there were always police in civilian clothes,” recalls Alexei. “They didn’t harass the old people. But any young people that went up to the door were taken aside for a conversation.”

Yet communism failed to replace God in Russians’ hearts.

“My great-grandmother was a communist,” Alexei recalls. “She worked as a cook. She even cooked for Tsar Nikolai’s killers in the Ipatiev House. But in the 1930s she was a victim of Stalin’s purges. She spent five years in the gulag for being a ‘Trotskyite’. When she came out, she ditched all that revolutionary hype and turned to religion.”

But if Russians are looking to the past to shape their future, might they decide to restore the monarchy? That is unlikely.

“Monarchy is a good way of governing,” schoolteacher Olga tells me. “But times have changed. Anyway, our president is a man who kind of governs the way the tsar tried to govern. He is a real ruler, a real patriot. He doesn’t allow other countries to humiliate our citizens.”

The Russian Revolution hadn’t even happened when Lev Lipovich was born.

By the time the Bolsheviks had seized the Winter Palace, Lev was already seven months old.

A hundred years of Russian history are etched into his face.

“I fought in four wars, and I survived three famines,” Lev tells me with a hint of pride.

We are sitting in his tiny apartment in the city of Khabarovsk, the capital of the Russian Far East. Out of the window you can see the point where the two great rivers of eastern Russia meet - the Amur and the Ussuri.

On the roads here there are few Russian-built cars - it is cheaper for people to buy right-hand drives from Japan. The border with China is just 25km from here.

Red Square feels a world away. And we are more than 6,000km (3,700 miles) from the cradle of the October Revolution, St Petersburg.

“I am a son of October,” he explains. “To me, Revolution Day - 7 November - is my second birthday because I see that as the day the USSR was born.”

Lev was born in the Crimea in April 1917. When he was 11, his parents sent him to a factory boarding school.

“For my first 20 years my motherland fed me, clothed me, put shoes on my feet. It gave me an education. When I joined the army, I started to repay my debt to my country.”

At the age of 15, Lev learnt to fly. He became a fighter pilot. His first experience of battle was the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland; he fought in World War Two, what Russians refer to as the Great Patriotic War; in 1945 he flew missions against Japan and in North Korea.

Like shifting sands, the past in Russia seems to change right under your feet. One moment Russians are being told to praise “Great October”; the next they are being told the revolution was not so great after all. One day religion is the “opium of the people”; the next it is the life and soul of Russia. So often here the past is rewritten, reinterpreted, reshaped, depending on who is in power.

Back in Khabarovsk, I meet three generations of one family strolling in the park: 13-year-old Sofia, her mother, Anna, and grandmother, Nina.

“It’s difficult when history changes,” Anna tells me. “It’s hard for youngsters to understand what is good and what is bad. TV says one thing, parents say another and teachers say something else.”

“Yes,” says Sofia. “It’s hard to know which opinion is the right one.”

“Then again, it’s always been like this in Russia,” reflects Anna. “Every 50 years everything changes here. We cope.”