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There is no mistaking that Monday, the day Russians celebrate their new constitution, is a holiday. Whether to celebrate it, though, depends on your politics.
Opposition factions in the State Duma on Friday, not in the holiday spirit, voted Constitution Day off the calendar, and with it its prescribed rest. The constitution is fine, they said, but President Boris Yeltsin violated it by enacting the celebration without consulting them.
But Yeltsin thinks Russians deserve a day off to contemplate the new law of the land, as his own declaration said Friday.
Vladimir Isakov, the hardline chairman of the parliament's legal committee, said by phone that come Monday he will be at his desk.
"As for me, I will work," he said. "There should be a holiday for the constitution, but not for this constitution."
The holiday was first declared Sept. 20 to mark the December 1993 constitutional referendum.
To Holiday or Not to Holiday?
10 December 1994
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