MOSCOW - Tens of thousands of Russians turned out for May Day marches and rallies across Russia Wednesday, carrying red banners, flags, and other symbols of the Soviet past. In Moscow, at least 140,000 people took part in the demonstrations under bright and sunny skies, city police said.
The Communist Party and trade unionists held separate rallies in Moscow, the Communists gathering in Revolution Square near the Bolshoi Theater and trade unionists outside St. Basil's Cathedral.
Organizers of the Communist rally said 100,000 people took part - their biggest May Day turnout in 10 years - but Moscow police said the numbers were more in the range of 10,000 to 20,000.
The Communist marchers, most of them elderly, poured into Revolution Square, carrying red carnations and proudly displaying World War II medals on their lapels.
Some said they came out of nostalgia, others as a sign of protest.
"We have been following this tradition for more than 70 years," said Vladimir, a 55-year-old driver who came from the Tula, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) south of Moscow. "It's important to follow tradition."
Alicia, a 73-year-old retired factory worker, said she was protesting her meager pension, which she said is impossible to live on. "I can't buy anything. It's not a life. I'm against the people in power," she said bitterly.
Among the sea of red Soviet-era hammer-and-sickle flags were signs that read "Proletarians of the World, Unite!" and "Our Homeland: USSR."
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, whose party was recently deprived of key leadership positions in parliament, called on the government to resign. He addressed the crowd through a bank of loudspeakers, sandwiched between a statue of Karl Marx and a symbol of the new Russia: a billboard for a new sushi restaurant.
The trade unionists and others came together near St. Basil's Cathedral, just outside the Kremlin wall. Speakers 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." (CD -- i.e., not like Yeltsin)
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 6,000 police officers were deployed in Moscow to control the crowds celebrating May Day, the Interfax news agency reported.
About 500 May Day rallies were planned across the country, including the cities of St. Petersburg in the north and Vladivostok in the Far East. In the former Soviet republic of Ukraine, some 100,000 people marched in the city of Kharkiv, and another 2,000 in the capital Kiev.
/The Associated Press/