May Day Greetings!

(Quote of the Week)

Jamaican-born black poet Claude McKay was part of a wave of radicals who, inspired by the Russian working class’ conquest of power through the 1917 October Revolution, were recruited to Communism. He traveled to Soviet Russia in 1922 where he served as a special delegate at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International. The last poem that he wrote in Russia, excerpted below, hailed the Soviet workers’ May Day celebration and was published in a monthly journal of the Communist Party of America.

The Nevsky glows ablaze with regal red,
Symbolic of the triumph and the rule
Of the new Power lifting high its head
Above the place where once a sceptered fool
Was mounted by the plunderers of men
To awe the plundered while they schemed and robbed.
The marchers shout again, again, again!
The stones where once the hearts of martyrs sobbed
Their blood are sweet unto their feet today
In celebration of the First of May.
[...]
Jerusalem is fading from men’s mind,
And Christmas from its universal thrall
Shall free the changing spirit of mankind:
The First of May the holy day for all!
And Petrograd, the proud, triumphant, city,
The gateway to the new awakening East—
Where warrior-workers wrestled without pity—
Against the powers of magnate, monarch, priest!
World Fort of Struggle! each day’s a First of May
To learn of thee to strive for Labor’s Day.

—Claude McKay, “Petrograd: May Day, 1923,” Liberator (August 1923)