Red sunset, red dawn

Last year, more than 15,000 communists gathered in the Russian seaside town of Sochi for a week-long commemoration of the centenary of Lenin’s revolution. Nearly every nation was represented. Stalls manned by party members from Zimbabwe, Greece, Cuba and India lined the narrow concourse of the event’s main piazza.

Under the eye of the Russian police, celebrants staged rallies, meetings and marathon seminars. The daughter of Che Guevara was there. After giving a lecture on the legacy of her father, she received a standing ovation that lasted more than five minutes. ‘It feels like 1959 again,’ someone said when the cheering had finally died down.

Along with a few thousand other non-comms, I found myself at the centenary, sold to us as a ‘Youth Festival’ by virtue of a Kremlin scheme designed to dilute the political charge of the event. I roomed with two members of the Young Communist League — the youth wing of the Communist Party of Britain.

The festival programme was a hastily hashed-together roster of advertising ploys for Russian businesses and lectures that never seemed to happen. I spent most of my time with the YCL — a gang of six who’d come from all parts of the UK — helping them run the stall, tagging along at delegation meetings and more than once becoming an accomplice in the ongoing war of provocation against a rival British group.

In the kingdom of the post-Soviet world, Cuba is king, and at night the Cubans’ accommodation block was the place to be. Two enormous flags emblazoned with the faces of Castro and Guevara were draped from the hotel windows and beneath them hundreds gathered on the beaches until the early morning. ‘This is like the Marxists’ version of “Football’s Coming Home”,’ a communist from Portugal told me one night as we sipped cold lagers.