On May 9, the police left alone only the most harmless members of the Avant-garde of the Red Youth.
Photo: Dmitry Chebotaev
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The Radicals Were Locked Up
On May 9, the members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF)and other radical organizations, instead of the traditional march on Tverskaya Street, had a meeting next to Belorussky Railway Station. The meeting went fairly quietly: majority of radicals were arrested in advance by police “as a precautionary measures.”
Traditionally the CPRF demonstration on May 9 is a more massive gathering than the march on May 1. Yearly, starting from 1993, the war veterans who didn’t get into official celebrations were coming out together with the communists. This year, because of the visits of a lot of heads of foreign states, the communists were prohibited from having their march in the center of Moscow and the meeting. For that matter, the communists celebrated the Victory Day a bit early—during the May 1 march. However, the leadership of CPRF did not leave hope to have another demonstration on May 9.Right before the Victory Day the prefecture of Central Region of Moscow suddenly allowed the communists to have a meeting for 40,000 people in the square in front of the Belorussky Railway Station. One of the members of the CPRF leadership who asked to remain anonymous, explained to Kommersant that the agreement about the meeting was reached “between party leadership and heads of the presidential administration.” In return for permission to have a meeting, the communists refused from the traditional march in the city.
The security measures adopted because of the meeting were unprecedented. The beginning of Leningradsky Prospekt next to Belorussky Railway Station was blocked not only by reinforced units of Special Police but also by the trucks filled with sand. In the yards of First Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street there were a lot of buses full of Special Police officers and armored vehicles of Internal Military regiments. The communists had fewer than 40,000, announced participants. According to the CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov, about 5,000 members of CPRF showed up for the meeting, though police said it was only 1,500. The list of participants was pretty strange: besides the communists there were several columns of ultranationalists from Union of Christian Orthodox Banner Carriers, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, National Republican Party and Russian National Unity (RNU). The RNU column who were carrying the flags with stylized swastikas first was standing next to the Maxim Gorky monument and then after requests from police moved close to the podium. “We did not call these fascists to our meeting,” one of the CPRF leaders told Kommersant. “They have been brought by police to discredit us.”
The column of the leftists organizations didn’t look traditional as well. The activists from Avant-garde of the Red Youth (AKM) showed up without its leader Sergei Udaltsov and without a couple thousand other activists. The column of youth from Rodina was represented by one row of five geeky-looking teenagers. The column of the National Bolshevik Party (NBP) had no more than 50 participants. As Kommersant found out, the majority of activists of these organizations were arrested by police in the morning for different reasons. Practically all the youth from Rodina were arrested next to the Latvian Embassy during the protests. Sergei Udaltsov was arrested early in the morning without explanation of reasons in his apartment. The rest of the AKM members were stopped in the metro by police for document check and then were taken to precinct “until further identification.” Several dozens of the National Bolsheviks were seized next to their party headquarters on Maria Ulyanova Street and in their homes. The member of the Central Committee of the NBP Dmitry Bakhur told Kommersant that officers from the Organized Crime Police Unit came to his apartment in the morning. They told him that if Mr. Bakhur will not immediately agree to stay in the house until 3 p.m., then he would be immediately arrested under the charges of his participation in events next the Hotel Russia when NBP activists put out on the hotel’s wall a big poster saying “Putin Leave By Yourself.” Kommersant wrote about that on May 5. When the meeting next to the Belorussky Railway Station and Celebration on Red Square were over around 3 p.m., all of the arrested were freed. Police headquarters of Moscow told that all of the arrests were sanctioned by the Minister of Internal Affairs of RF. The head of the Center for Public Relations of the Minister of Internal Affairs Valery Gribakin confirmed this information to Kommersant, explaining that the arrests were made “as a precautionary measure to stop several non-sanctioned events in the center of the city.” “According to operative information, these non-sanctioned actions were planned in the first part of the day and that’s why their potential participants were isolated until 3 p.m.,” Gribakin said.
Without radicals in the meeting it was pretty boring. Communist poet and singer Alexander Kharchikov had to come out twice on stage with new songs. CPRF leader Zyuganov made a speech where he retold the whole history of the Great Patriotic War. The leader of the NBP Eduard Limonov told that even in jail his celebrated Victory Day.
After the meeting, seven activists of AKM were trying to break through the police barriers but force was not on their side and they were arrested by police to be freed after 3 p.m.
Oleg Kashin
All the Article in Russian as of May 11, 2005
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