vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #165 / Social life / Reading article...

Public-sector workers and representatives of some 27 trade unions from around Primorye gathered on Vladivostok’s main square on April 9, as part of a nationwide day of action to demand the payment of back wages.

But, though boisterous and vocal, the demonstration, attended mostly by middle-aged and elderly protesters, fell far short of predictions made by union leaders.

Protesters called for guaranteed employment for all able-bodied workers and the resignation of the President Boris Yeltsin and his new government.

“We are protesting the anti-people’s course of reform in this country,” Nikolai Kostyukov, Deputy Chairman of the Primorye Federation of Trade Unions, told a crowd in which flags of the Soviet Union and the Russian Navy fluttered, along with a myriad of party banners and slogans.

Although federation spokeswoman Olga Mayakochigura claimed some 6,500 people attended the hour-long demonstration, unofficial police estimates put the figure closer to 2,000. Nationwide, unions staged about 900 rallies in various cities, and Interior Ministry officials in Moscow reported that 265,000 people had attended 240 mass protests in provinces and cities east of the Urals.

In Primorye, 11 cities across the krai held similar gatherings, and 33 factories reportedly halted production for the day, said Mayakochigura. Two of Primorye’s better-known defense contractors, Progress in Arseniev and Zvezda in Bolshoi Kamen, confirmed that operations had ceased on Thursday in observance of the protest.

While most speakers’ demands were for the payment of wages, others were for the reestablishment of the Soviet Union and the resignation of the federal government, eliciting cheers of support from the 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.”

To the rear of the protest, against a backdrop of portraits of Lenin and Stalin, members of the Communist Party circulated petitions objecting to the federal government’s efforts to allow the purchase and sale of land. Meanwhile, members of the ultra-right-wing Liberal Democratic Party passed out copies of their political platform while the Russian Labor Party distributed its party newspapers. Banners read, “Power to the People, Wages to the Workers,” “Yelstin’s Reforms are Destroying Russia,” and “Only Slaves Work for Free.”