Gee, and I thought the communists were the ones who destroyed
Russia's culture and traditions... and 50 mln. people or so.
MOSCOW, May 9 (AFP) - Thousands of Communist Party sympathizers
called Saturday for President Boris Yeltsin to step down, as Russia
marked the anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany.
Yeltsin's government "is a cancer which must be cut from the
body of our great country," Communist Party chief Gennady Zyuganov
told a crowd estimated to number between 15,000 and 60,000.
Earlier, Yeltsin attended a military parade in Red Square which
lasted barely half an hour, symbolizing the economic austerity the
new government of Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko seeks to impose.
In Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, meanwhile, rival parades -- organized
by Governor Valery Zubov and his election rival, General Alexander
Lebed -- marched through the city, Russian media reported.
Lebed, who is believed to be preparing a run for the Russian
presidency in 2000, is the frontrunner in a gubernatorial election
runoff on May 17.
At the Communist rally at Lubyanskaya Square, the crowd adopted
a resolution by acclamation demanding Yeltsin's immediate
resignation.
Referring to the Russian victory in 1945, Zyuganov said that
today, the country was facing "new aggressors.
"They are in the Kremlin, they are rewriting history, ... they
are destroying our culture and our traditions," he said.
At the morning parade at Red Square, some 5,000 soldiers marched
past Yeltsin and Kiriyenko -- a far cry from the massive troop
numbers formerly deployed to mark May 9.
Moscow has traditionally marked the end World War II a day later
than its then allies in the West.
Yeltsin, who appeared on form when television cameras showed him
at the march-past, said that Russia did not intend to threaten
anyone.
"Our priorities are unchanged: the integrity of the country,
international cooperation and strengthened security in Europe and
the rest of the world."
When the Soviet Union split up, Moscow halted the grand military
parades of the past. But it resumed them in May 1995 to mark the
50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
The Soviet Union lost some 27 million people during the war. |
