Russian oppositionists ruin their own actions

Traditional demonstrations of the Communist Party on November 7 did not go smoothly in Russia. The police of Moscow and St. Petersburg detained dozens of young men, who took part in the demonstrations. It goes about representatives of the Left Front and Eduard Limonov's National Bolsheviks, who decided to march under uncoordinated slogans.

To celebrate the 93rd anniversary of the Great October Revolution, from 3,000 up to 50,000 people took to the streets in Moscow on November 7. The maximum number - 50,000 people - was announced by official spokesmen for the Communist Party. However, a Pravda.Ru correspondent was given a completely different number of demonstrators - 3,000 - by a high-ranking official of the Moscow Internal Affairs Department.

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The column, uniting numerous leftist movements, from CPRF and the Union of the Communist Youth to Labor Russia, started its march at midday on November 7, on Moscow's Tverskaya Street. An hour later, the demonstrators gathered on the Teatralnaya Square for the meeting.

The events in the tail of the communist column, among the members of Eduard Limonov's National Bolsheviks and Sergey Udaltsov's Left Front - not more than 100 people altogether - were developing dramatically. The police did not let the oppositionists follow the rest of the column because the Bolsheviks unfolded a banner with a slogan "Down with police state." Such a slogan was unauthorized for the demonstration.

Police officers and Communist Party members urged Limonov's Bolsheviks to remove the banner and join others for the demonstration, but the members of Limonov's movement were persistent in their intention to chant their slogan even if they agreed to take the banner down. The police officers said that they did not mind the chanting, but the National Bolsheviks did not agree to get rid of their banner. Instead, they decided to break through the police cordon chanting their slogan. The group of people representing the Left Front movement, which was standing behind National Bolsheviks, started worrying too, because they could not start their movement either.

The SWAT team quickly pushed the protesting Bolsheviks off the Tverskaya Street to the sidewalk. Five people were arrested during the fight, including the leader of the Left Front, Sergey Udaltsov.

As a result, National Bolsheviks and Left Front members found themselves encircled by the police on the sidewalk of Tverskaya Street. Radical oppositionists started burning their flyers, some tried to climb up the scaffolding at the nearest building. The police were quietly watching all that happening, apparently letting the people let off steam.

Five other "revolutionaries" were arrested later, at about 13:00 o'clock, after they tried to make their way to the street. As a result, the action of the non-system opposition in Moscow on November 7 ended even though it did not even commence.

Eduard Limonov's activists took part in the communist demonstration in St. Petersburg too. In St. Petersburg, there were more than a hundred National Bolsheviks arrested. According to Fontanka.ru, all of them, except for one person, were released soon afterwards.

Dmitry Lyskov
Pravda.Ru

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