MOSCOW (AP) - Thousands of trade unionists gathered in downtown Moscow on Wednesday to celebrate the traditional May Day holiday while communists marked the occasion at a separate rally.
Organizers of the trade unionists' rally said at least 140,000 people had gathered behind St. Basil's cathedral near Red Square by midmorning. Another 100,000 people met at the separate communist rally at Karl Marx Square in front of the Bolshoi Theater several blocks from Red Square, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
Participants in the trade union rally criticized government policy toward labor, but praised the leadership of President Vladimir Putin.
Andrei Isayev, deputy chairman of Federation of Trade Unions, said Russia was being led by "a person we are not ashamed of before the whole world: a sober, reasonable and rational politician."
But, he said, Russia was not developing dynamically because Putin's policy was becoming stuck "in the stagnant bureaucratic apparatus of those who do not want to work and cannot work."
Putin sent a message to the trade unionists that was read to the crowd over a loudspeaker.
"The main task of the government and all constructive forces in society is to make Russia a wealthy, prospering country," Putin's message said. "I believe that the joint rally by representatives from the Federation of Trade Unions will help achieve this goal."
Some 4,000 police officers and traffic police were deployed in the city center to control the crowds celebrating May Day, once one of the most important holidays in the former Soviet Union, ITAR-Tass said.
Leading the communist rally, party leader Gennady Zyuganov noted that more young people were taking part in the May Day celebration. "The participants have increased by four or five times (over recent years), and many of them are young people," he said.
Elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, rallies were planned in about 500 cities and towns.