RUSSIA: "Every year we watched the huge weapons and troops moving through Red Square," said Moscow pensioner Leonid Bryukin, recalling the May Day parades of the Soviet years. "Now we go out ourselves and try and put things right!"
Mr Bryukin was one of about 15,000 people marching beneath Communist flags through the streets of Moscow yesterday, calling on President Vladimir Putin to resign, berating the "thieves and mafia" in his government and demanding the return of the free services, low living costs and national pride that they remember from decades ago.
But a day once marked by Soviet tanks rumbling past grim-faced party leaders is now a chance for Russians to raise banners and declare allegiance to a gamut of political groups, while celebrating the end of winter and the start of a four-day break from work.
In front of the former KGB headquarters, Communist supporters waved the red and gold hammer-and-sickle flag and rallied support for the left in December's parliamentary elections, while activists sang the Soviet national anthem and revolutionary songs.
A mile or so away, beneath blue and white banners accusing the government of corruption and incompetence, a trade union rally drew about 25,000 people, urged on by accordion players, guitarists and former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.
"It's May, it's spring, it's like the old times - with the slogans and all the people," he said, gazing towards the Kremlin balcony where he watched dozens of May Day parades of Soviet military might, as he made his way up through the Party ranks.
"I like May 1st, and I'm going on the march," he said. "Although I feel like a novice, because I was up on that balcony for about 30 years."
Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov lambasted the government at the trade union rally, as did leaders of Russia's liberal parties at their own, separate marches, each of which drew a few thousand enthusiastic flag-wavers on a sunny spring morning.
May Day in Moscow began with about 200 young members of writer Edward Limonov's extremist National Bolshevik Party marching for the satirist's release from prison for possession of firearms. But Russia's first big rally of the day, in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, was more redolent of Soviet years.
Regional Governor Sergei Darkin led the marchers, many of whom carried banners proclaiming: "We love Darkin" and "We love Putin".