Chanting "Yeltsin is a murderer" and "Make soap out of Gaidar," a motley crowd of approximately 5,000 marched from Smolenskaya Ploshchad to the White House, waving red Soviet flags, black, yellow and white anarchist banners, and the blue cross on white of the tsarist party. A portrait of Christ was prominently displayed at the front of the group, while many carried placards with portraits of Lenin or Stalin.
But if the crowd was diverse in what it stood for, it was firmly united in what it stood against: President Boris Yeltsin and his reforms.
Viktor Anpilov, head of the Communist Workers' Party, opened the rally with demands for the removal of "the hated tyrant" from office, and a call for elections to be held on Nov. 7 to identify an opposition candidate for president.
Yeltsin himself had been due to hold a press conference on Tuesday, but Interfax reported Monday that the conference, which would not be broadcast live, would be conducted instead by his press secretary, Vyacheslav Kostikov.
Anpilov was followed by a panoply of hardliners, including former Soviet deputy Sazhi Umalatova, sounding her now familiar call for civil disobedience; Colonel General Vladislav Achalov, who was "appointed" defense minister by the Supreme Soviet last October; and Colonel General Albert Makashov, who led the armed resistance at the White House.
The demonstrators were mostly older people eager to vent their rage on any likely target. Many carried anti-Zionist signs, and several approached Western correspondents with cries of "Go back where you belong! We can get along without you!"
Monday's rally was a smaller but rather more bellicose version of the demonstration held one day earlier to mourn the victims of last October's violence.
On Sunday, approximately 7,000 people assembled on Smolenskaya Ploshchad to hear speakers including former Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, one of the ringleaders of last year's rebellion, and Duma deputy Sergei Baburin, a hardliner who was one of the deputies holed up in the White House during last year's seige.
The crowd then marched to the White House, carrying pictures of those who died in last year's fighting. A requiem service was held in the small park near the former parliament building that has become an unofficial shrine for the White House dead.
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