Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Hard-liners show off 'strength' in gripe fest Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 15:50:37 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \HD Hard-liners show off 'strength' in gripe fest \BY Gerald Nadler \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT MOSCOW MOSCOW - For 75 years on Nov. 7, rocket carriers, tanks and other weaponry poured by the hundreds through Red Square in a show of strength celebrating the Communists' ascension to power in 1917. Yesterday, as opponents of President Boris Yeltsin's market reforms sought to march in protest on the platinum jubilee of the Great October Socialist Revolution, Red Square was closed for repairs to its cobblestones. "Times have changed. Why should they allow the crowd to go into the square? Who is on the reviewing stand to see them march past?" asked one middle-aged Russian. The demonstration, billed as a giant show of strength by the National Salvation Front, failed to draw anything like the 50,000 people that some Western observers expected. In the northern city of St. Petersburg - formerly Leningrad and the cradle of the Communist revolution - only about 10,000 demonstrated on a snowy day. The turnout was pitiful for a city of 5 million people that is filled with workers rather than the bureaucrats of Moscow. Itar-Tass reported that a rally in southern Siberia on the border with China lasted 15 minutes. In the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, only 3,000 turned out. Those who braved the cold in Moscow were gentle, aged workers, pathetically holding red flags, their lives ruined by the new market reforms that have made the ruble worthless and wiped out their pensions. Joining them were the new national patriots, many of them former Communists, and many blaming the United States for ruining Russia by destroying the Soviet Union - just as many blamed Russia's Jews. "This Yeltsin administration is just temporary; it is against the people. It defends only the interests of the capitalists, speculators. It supports your [President] Bush and the American perception of this thievery," said one man who refused to give his name. "I am a veteran of the Great Patriotic War," he added. "Did I fight that I should not be able to buy a piece of bread." One middle-aged man, a mathematician whose breath smelled of vodka, said: "Moscow has become a Jewish city." He then hissed: "Do you know the difference between a Jewish fool and a Russian fool? A Jewish fool works for the benefit of the Jews, and a Russian fool works for the benefit of the Jews. You never understood, that, huh?" He broke into a self-satisfied smile. Yesterday was the first Revolution Day holiday since the Soviet Union was declared legally dead by Mr. Yeltsin last December, and the second since the Communist Party was banned in August 1991. Parliament has let the holiday remain, just as it has not removed Lenin's body from the mausoleum out of respect for those who lived their entire lives under the promises of communism. A small group of former Communists, allowed past the barricades into Red Square, laid a wreath at Lenin's tomb while those at the rally were harangued by leaders of the National Salvation Front. "The gang of reckless occupiers who sell out the motherland should be sacked," said Col. Stanilslav Terekhov, a leading member of the Salvation Front, in one of the first speeches. While several in the crowd carried portraits of former dictator Josef Stalin, other Russians gathered in front of the Lubyanka headquarters of the former KGB for a memorial service to the millions of people Stalin killed and incarcerated. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM