Russia National Unity Day

Activists of the largest pro-Kremlin group, called Nashi, or Ours, hold white-blue-red Russian flags and their red-white party flags as they march to mark National Unity Day just outside Moscow’s Kremlin on Sunday. National Unity Day is a public holiday the Kremlin inaugurated in 2005 to replace the traditional Nov. 7 celebration of the 1917 Bolshevik rise to power. The Kremlin has tried to give the holiday historical significance by tying it to the 1612 expulsion of Polish and Cossack troops who had briefly seized Moscow at a time of political disarray.