Soviets Stress Peace in Low-Key Observance of 1917 Revolution

Fewer tanks and missiles, no icon-like portraits of the ruling Politburo and warmer Soviet-American relations marked the Red Square parade celebrating the 71st anniversary Monday of the Bolshevik Revolution that led to the formation of the Soviet state.

Western envoys including U.S. Charge d’Affaires John Joyce attended the festivities for the first time since the December, 1979, intervention in Afghanistan, and U.S. and Soviet flags fluttered side by side. Representatives of U.S. allies also ended their boycott.

In traditional fashion, Red Square was adorned with revolutionary banners and a giant portrait of V. I. Lenin, founder of the state. as Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev led his colleagues through driving snow onto Lenin’s Mausoleum to view the military parade.

But in apparent keeping with Gorbachev’s reforms, the slogans that thousands of civilians brandished afterward in organized demonstrations concentrated on economic achievements and calls for peace.

Gone completely were the portraits of the country’s leaders, which had been common under the late President Leonid I. Brezhnev.

The display of military hardware, lasting about five minutes, was one of the shortest on record. It featured only 15 types of vehicles, two fewer than last year. In what the Soviet news agency Tass cited as a sign of Kremlin commitment to arms control, there were no strategic missile carriers.

At a reception in the Kremlin after the parade, Gorbachev told dignitaries of his reform efforts: “We realized that we would have to live through a difficult transition period. Now we have entered it.

“Not everything goes smoothly so far,” he continued. “We are not gaining momentum as quickly as we should like to and as (quickly as) we could. And still, millions of people have joined perestroika (restructuring) already.

“It ( perestroika ) became a way of life and work for them,” Gorbachev said. “They have been convinced by their own experience that there is no alternative to it.”

The speech by Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov from atop the red and black granite mausoleum was also in line with the Kremlin’s “new thinking.” He endorsed cooperation with the West to preserve peace and solve world problems.

“The new political thinking, based on the priority of common human interests . . . finds ever-growing understanding and support among the world public and the leaders of many states,” Yazov declared.

The defense minister’s keynote address, formulated each year as a signal of the armed forces’ view of the world, also endorsed the Gorbachev line of “reasonable sufficiency” in arms and of defensive posture in military doctrine.

Similar celebrations were held in other parts of the nation.