By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Police on May 9 were unable to stop more than 50,000 opposition demonstrators from marching through the centre of the Russian capital and onto symbolically important Red Square.
Built around the anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany, the May 9 demonstration capped several weeks of political drama. As well as the referendum of April 25, this period included mobilisations by opponents of the regime on May 1, the traditional workers' holiday. One of the May Day actions, a march by communist and nationalist organisations, ended in a fierce clash after the city authorities blocked it using trucks, water cannon and Interior Ministry "OMON" riot police.
The actions of the police on May 1, Militia Major General Pavel Chernyshov later acknowledged, were marked by "many organisational, tactical and technical miscalculations". These "miscalculations" were in fact so glaring as to raise a serious question of whether the city authorities really wanted to avoid clashes with demonstrators.
After a May Day march and rally called by the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions had passed without incident, many participants continued to a second rally at Oktyabrskaya Square, on the southern fringe of the city centre. Denied the right to march to Red Square, the demonstrators expected the authorities to honour a promise to allow the opposition groups to march to a rallying point near the House of Artists, several hundred metres away near the Moscow River. But the road to the House of Artists was blocked by police.
Wanting to avoid a confrontation, leaders of the demonstration decided to march south, away from the city centre, and to rally at Moscow State University. The march was peaceful, and there seemed no reason why it should not reach the university without incident. However, the authorities closed off the route at a narrow "choke point". Members of the Russian parliament who tried to negotiate with the police were ignored.
When the marchers easily pushed through the ranks of ordinary police, 350 riot troops with shields and helmets were brought into action. The result — eminently avoidable — was a melee in which hundreds of people were injured and an OMON sergeant suffered fatal head injuries.
Then followed a week of political theatre, with President Boris Yeltsin and his supporters outbidding the communist leaders in the flamboyance of their rhetoric. "Neo-Bolsheviks are once again prepared to sacrifice the people and to plunge the country into an abyss of violence in order to seize power", Yeltsin declared in a televised speech on May 6.
The Committee of Democratic Organisations of Russia appealed to the general prosecutor and the Justice Ministry to outlaw organisations essions led to mass disorders. The general prosecutor's office set a team of 70 people to sifting evidence with a view to launching prosecutions against the organisers of the May 1 rally and march. "The investigation will name the culprits of the large-scale riots on May 1", Yeltsin pledged in a telegram to the family of the dead OMON sergeant.
As the days passed, attention turned increasingly to the May 9 anniversary. Moscow city administrative chief Vasily Shakhnovsky warned of possible "terrorist acts". Russian interior minister Viktor Yarin claimed that the riot troops on May 1 had been guilty only of "impermissible moderation", going on to promise, "They will be tougher in future". An unnamed senior OMON officer quoted by Reuters was more explicit: "If we're ordered to act on Sunday, we'll send them fleeing all the way to Berlin".
As on May 1, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov sought to deny the demonstrators access to the streets and squares around the Kremlin. The city government gave the organising bodies — the Officers Union and the Army Officers Assembly, military organisations aligned with the opposition — permission to march from Byelorusskaya Square only as far as the building that houses the Moscow City Soviet.
Beating up elderly war veterans, however, is as politically risky for the authorities in Russia as it would be in most countries. The presence of the veterans gave the Victory Day march a degree of impunity. The demonstration was not only large — considerably larger, in fact, than the biggest of the mobilisations that supported Yeltsin during his March attempt to impose "special rule" — but it could also proceed where it chose.
The OMON remained in their trucks, parked up a side lane. Successive lines of ordinary police gave up in bemusement as the marchers flocked between and around them. Eventually, a stream of red banners poured onto Red Square.
Almost as embarrassing for Yeltsin and Luzhkov as the fact that communists had demonstrated on Red Square was the fact that they had done so peacefully. If organisations such as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Toiling Russia could march through the heart of Moscow without occasioning more than shouting matches, what was the real purpose of Luzhkov's ban? To protect public order, or to suppress democratic rights?
On May 5 the evening television news program Vesti broke into a Tchaikovsky funeral march after announcing the death of the OMON sergeant critically injured on May 1, and a voice-over announced that the 25-year-old Afghan war veteran had died to save all. But had he? If the OMON stayed out of sight on May 9, and the result was an orderly, generally good-humoured demonstration, what did this indicate about the causes of the bloodshed eight days earlier?