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Representatives of 27 trade unions from around Primorye gathered in Vladivostok April 9, calling for payment of back wages for public workers, guaranteed employment, and the resignation of the President Boris Yeltsin and his newly-formed government.

The protest was part of a nationwide action of protest by unpaid workers and others dissatisfied with the nation’s economic woes.

«We are protesting the anti-people’s course of reform in this country,» Nikolai Kostyukov, deputy chairman of the Primorsky Federation of Trade Unions, told a crowd in which flags of the Soviet Union and of the Russian Navy fluttered, along with a myriad of political parties’ banners and slogans.

Politicians shared the stage with a variety of union representatives, ranging from the local sanitation workers union chairwoman to doctor of science from the Institute of Geology.

«This protest is for wages, for work, and for children’s benefits,» said Vladivostok Mayor Victor Cherepkov. «That’s why any right-minded individual should be in support of this. People aren’t demanding revolution, or bloodshed. They just want what is rightfully theirs.»

While most speakers called for the payment of back wages, others demanded the reestablishment of the Soviet Union and the outright resignation of the federal government, eliciting cheers of support from the mostly middle-aged and elderly crowd.

«The capitalists have taken the third course to the destruction of Russia,» shouted one speaker. «They’ve taken state manufacturing abroad, back to the U.S. and left us with nothing, only slavery.»

According to Olga Mayakochigura, chief specialist and press spokeswoman for the union federation, some 6,500 people attended the demonstration, though unofficial numbers estimate that there were closer to 2,000 in attendance at the hourlong meeting.

Today’s demonstration was part of larger protest, organized by the federation, with 11 cities across the krai holding similar gatherings, and 33 factories reportedly halting production for the day, said Mayakochigura.

«People’s indignation here is genuine,» said Victor Kondratov, presidential representative in Primorsky Krai, who attended the demonstration. «However, I’m far from the thought that the government and the president are chiefly to blame.»

Krai Duma chairman Sergei Dudnik agreed that many of the protestors’ demands for wages and employment were justified, though, he, too, observed that existing labor problems might stem more from local politics and instability.

«Today we see that the system doesn’t work,» Dudnik said. «There are a lot of issues that depend on those who are standing here today… If we set things right here in the krai, I think we could find some $100 million in the krai's budget, which today has just disappeared.»

To the rear of the protest, against a backdrop of portraits of Lenin and Stalin, members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation circulated petitions objecting to federal legislative efforts to allow the purchase and sale of land. Members of the Liberal Democratic Party passed out copies of their political platform while the Russian Labor Party distributed their party newspapers.

Standing among banners reading «Power to the People -- Wages to the Workers,» «The Reforms of Yelstin Are Destroying Russia,» and «Only Slaves Work for Free,» one pensioner who gave her name as Zinaida, placed blame for the public sector’s labor difficulties squarely on a local level.

«All this outrage begins here in Primorye, with Nazdratenko, personally,» she said. «I personally wasn’t a Communist, but I will become one. Democracy has s--- its pants in Russia. Democracy has sold its guts. Those who were democrats in their souls are now becoming Communists in practice.»