By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Deputies to the Moscow Soviet on February 26 petitioned for an emergency sitting of their assembly to consider a motion condemning the city government for its handling of the February 23 opposition demonstration.
Though widely misreported as a provocation by "Communist conservatives", the Army Day march and rally was planned as a peaceful and orderly affair. Clashes developed only after the "democratic" city administration, in a move which has brought sharp criticism even from within the liberal camp, denied marchers the right to proceed to their announced destination.
The February 23 action was called by the Officers Union and the labour movement group Trudovaya Rossiya ("Toiling Russia"), around demands for the defence of the Soviet Army. The city soviet deputies passed a motion stating that the demonstration should be allowed to go ahead. However, virtually all of the deputies' powers have now been transferred to the mayoral administration, and resolutions of the soviet are little more than expressions of opinion.
Publicity for the demonstration was limited, and the total attendance was only a few thousand. Many of those present were elderly war veterans. The demonstrators intended to march from Mayakovsky Square in the northern part of the city centre, down Tverskaya Street to the Manezh Square. After listening to speakers, they were then to lay wreaths on the nearby Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
For years now, the Manezh has been the major rallying point for political demonstrations in Moscow. It is difficult to recall any violent incident at these gatherings. As recently as February 9, a Trudovaya Rossiya demonstration on the square passed off without trouble.
Nevertheless, by 8 o'clock on the morning of February 23, a total of 450 vehicles, mainly buses and heavy trucks, had been parked across the entrances to the Manezh. The closure of some of some of central Moscow's busiest streets threw traffic into fierce tangles. The exits of 11 metro stations were shut. Long lines of grey-coated police, as many as 10,000 in all, marched into position.
The city government claimed that allowing the demonstration to go ahead on the square would have created major problems in keeping public order, and would have impeded the flow of
transport and pedestrians.
At a press conference on February 25, Moscow prosecutor Gennady Ponomarev remarked that these formulations reminded him of the clumsy and provocative action by Gorbachev's Union government in throwing a similar cordon around the Manezh almost a year ago.
The handling by the police of the February 23 demonstration was confused and contradictory, suggesting that at least some branches of the force were reluctant to carry out their orders. Police removed one line of trucks, allowing the marchers to proceed down Tverskaya Street. But a few hundred metres further on, the street was blocked by a line of riot police equipped with shields, helmets and clubs. A number of deputies who tried to lead the way through the police lines were clubbed over the head or kicked in the testicles.
A demonstrator who climbed with a flag onto the top of a bus was set upon by three police, thrown off his feet and kicked. At that, the crowd roared with anger and surged against the police lines. The police swung their clubs, and blood sprang from the heads of a number of demonstrators.
"I saw with my own eyes how two riot police beat a grey-haired man with their clubs", one of the demonstrators said later. A retired lieutenant-general collapsed and died, apparently of a heart attack.
The meeting that was to have taken place on the Manezh instead unfolded between rows of police on Tverskaya Street. Following the speeches, the organisers urged those present to disperse through alleyways and to reconvene at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier for the wreath-laying.
However, the approaches to the tomb were blocked by further lines of riot police. More clashes ensued. A police report on the day's events later listed injuries, mainly bruises, to 21 police. City soviet deputy Yuri Khramov put the number of demonstrators injured at more than 60.
Observers from various political quarters agreed that there is no reason to think the demonstration would not have been peaceful and soon forgotten, except for bizarre decision to throw the weight of the Moscow police against it. Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov is widely considered to have staged a huge, extravagantly costly political provocation.
In deputy Khramov's view, the city government aimed at making a show of strength, and also at avenging the blockade, by the same police, that prevented an anti-Communist demonstration on the Manezh in March 1991.
Another deputy, Boris Kagarlitsky of the Party of Labour, was more forthright. "What we have in Moscow is a weak and ineffective dictatorship. The city government is constantly looking for extra powers. To try to justify this, it's doing all it can to provoke violence."
Mayor Popov's strategies seem likely to deepen the divisions in the "democrat" camp between real supporters of democratic rights and would-be capitalists for whom "democracy" has never been more than a flag of convenience.
This prospect was lent weight by a report on the demonstration published on February 25 by Independent Newspaper, the leading organ of Russia's liberal intelligentsia. Uncharacteristically, the paper's analysis coincided on major points with the views expressed by leftists.
Independent Newspaper noted that the organisers of the demonstration were claiming a victory, on the basis that the city government had recognised Trudovaya Rossiya as an important danger.
"However", the paper continued, "it is entirely possible that the authorities laid on the clubs not because they were scared themselves, but in order to convince society that there is a 'red-brown threat'.
"Since the collapse of the Communist Party, the place of the 'enemy within' has been vacant."