By Poul Funder Larsen
MOSCOW — When participants in the communist May Day demonstration here — including this correspondent — neared Gagarin Square on Lenin Prospect south of the city centre, they found the entrance to the square blocked by heavy vehicles, with hundreds of police and Interior Ministry riot troops standing ready.
No warning had been given that the road into the square would be closed off. If the authorities meant to disperse the demonstration, they had chosen the worst possible place to do it: the narrowest point in Lenin Prospect, where only a small side street provides an alternative exit. The local metro station, through which marchers would have had to leave, lay close by — but behind police lines.
A head-on collision was inevitable. Within minutes the quiet demonstration turned into an inferno of street fighting, with flying rubble and burning cars. Many demonstrators were savagely beaten by the security forces, who also used water cannons in their attacks on the crowd. The number of casualties was estimated at more than 200.
Some 50 minutes earlier the peaceful demonstration, which had been called by the Trudovaya Rossiya (Working Russia) front and included many old-age pensioners and families with children, had left October Square at the edge of the city centre. As all roads leading toward the centre and Red Square were blocked by other massive contingents of police and riot troops, the marchers had no choice but to head in the opposite direction, down Lenin Prospect.
The organisers of the demonstration had asked for permission to march to Red Square — the traditional venue for May Day demonstrations in Moscow — but this was refused them following a direct order from President Boris Yeltsin. Consequently, the mood of the demonstration was tense and angry, though not violent. There were no signs that the participants were prepared for a violent confrontation with the authorities. On the contrary, the demonstration seemed loose, badly organised and, with some 10,000 participants, not enormously large.
By forcing the demonstration to head down Lenin Prospect, it seemed that Yeltsin and his allies in the Moscow City Administration had achieved what they wanted: to keep the hardliners away from the symbolically important Red Square on May Day. By all accounts, the demonstrators and their leaders had accepted the defeat and were planning to convene a meeting either on Gagarin Square or at the university before dispersing.
But shortly before entering Gagarin Square, the demonstration was stopped by the massive show of force from the authorities. At this point the demonstration was already almost six kilometres from Red Square.
The reasons for the attack on the demonstration are closely intertwined with the general political situation following the April o transform Russia's constitutional structures in their favour, and with only an ambiguous victory in the poll, Yeltsin and his backers needed some shocking incident to further galvanise opinion in support of a highly centralised, authoritarian "presidential republic".
In this game Trudovaya Rossiya, with its hardline positions and comparatively narrow appeal, was a convenient scapegoat that could be used to prove the need for people to rally behind Yeltsin in the fight against "communist revanchism". By provoking the street battle on May Day, Yeltsin obtained "concrete proof" of this "conspiracy".
The president's next steps were all too predictable. A few hours after the clash his press secretary promised decisive action against the violent demonstrators and in particular, the organisations that allegedly planned the "riots".
A ban on certain communist and nationalist organisations can be expected, but this will hardly be the last chapter. The attack on the demonstration can be seen as a trial run for blanket repression of all opposition to Yeltsin. Whatever criticisms one might make of the forces behind the May Day demonstration, it has to be understood that the attack was aimed at civil liberties and the frail Russian democracy in general, and at the workers movement in particular. This calls for action from all organisations of the workers movement and the left.