Hundreds of opposition activists rallied during May Day festivities on Saturday, shouting slogans comparing Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin in a rare protest approved by the authorities.
"Putin is Stalin! Putin is Brezhnev! Russia without Putin," chanted the crowd, which included former chess master Garry Kasparov, who co-heads the Solidarity movement.
One activist held a big caricatured picture of Putin kissing Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. Police quickly took it down.
Other demonstrators — from grandmothers to schoolchildren — unfurled an enormous Russian flag and waved placards demanding fair elections as lines of riot police watched warily. State media did not report on Saturday's opposition rally.
"Haven't you noticed what is happening in this country?" Kasparov said in an interview. "The economy is sinking, the politicians do not allow any opposition into the parliament, Putin's state control is all-encompassing and the authorities cannot close their eyes to us today."
He said some 40,000 people have signed his petition asking for the resignation of Putin.
The authorities usually deny requests by Solidarity activists to stage rallies.
Elsewhere, thousands of Communists, trade union activists, nationalists, black-clad anti-fascists and supporters of Putin's ruling United Russia party rallied to mark May Day. Media reports put the nationwide total at 2.5 million.
Some 3,000 Communist supporters marched on Moscow on Saturday holding bright red banners and hoisting large portraits of Stalin.
Young people and pensioners sang songs praising Stalin and Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara in what state television said was the largest Communist rally in Moscow in 10 years.
"People of labor have no other weapons but to come out together to force the authorities to listen to their demands," Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said in an interview.
"And those demands are pretty simple," he said. "We need jobs, we need real modernization and not talk. We need the fight against corruption and bandits."
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