MOSCOW -- More than half a million people demonstrated in Moscow Sunday in the largest pro-democracy rally in Soviet history, and tens of thousands gathered in peaceful protests across 11 time zones from the Far East to the Volga River heartland of Russia.
'Our children, who will live in a free country, will remember this day and our decisiveness,' radical Deputy Gavril Popov told the Moscow demonstrators.
The protesters along the Soviet capital's main Garden Ring road were cheered by people leaning from windows, grouped on balconies and standing on the rooftops of huge apartment buildings built by dictator Josef Stalin.
'The country today stands before a choice,' lawmaker Arkadi Murashev said. 'But it is not a choice between capitalism and socialism, as is sometimes claimed, but between freedom and slavery.'
Columns of troops assigned to keep order appeared relaxed, smiling and taking souvenir photos of one another against the background of the throng and even snapping shots for tourists who requested mementos to take home.
Radio Moscow's Interfax news service said 1 million Muscovites joined the rally. Popov, one of its organizers, put the figure at a half million and the state-run Novosti news agency said at least 200,000 people took part.
Crowds ranging in size from several hundred to 100,000 gathered in scores of other cities, news reports said.
Popov drew large cheers as he read out telegrams he said had flooded into Moscow from fellow reformists across the country.
In the republic of Georgia, about 35,000 nationalists demonstrated on 'Occupation Day' to mark the Red Army's invasion of Tbilisi on Feb. 25, 1921, and the end of brief independence for the Transcaucasian nation, participants told United Press International by telephone.
The nationwide rallies, staged by radical legislators and activists to keep up pressure for democratization, took place in a period of enormous political ferment including mounting rebellions against local Communist Party chiefs, contentious regional election campaigns and recent Moslem insurrections against communist rule.
Liberal deputy Yuri Afanasiev, his voice amplified by dozens of loudspeakers strung from cranes, prompted a roar up and down the Moscow beltway when he called for direct multi-candidate elections for a Soviet president free of all Communist Party ties.
Speakers also called for the complete separation of the Communist Party from all government organs and mass media, the immediate legalization of other parties, a new Soviet Constitution, all forms of property ownership and land distribution to the farmers, and minimal central interference in the economy.
The Moscow demonstrators erupted into cheers when influential lawmaker Sergei Stankevich said: 'It is my birthday today. I am 36. The fact that you have come here today -- that there are so many of you and that you are in such a fine mood -- is the best present.'
The protests throughout the Soviet Union showed 'that the people's vision of perestroika (reforms) and the vision of the leadership have begun todiffer widely,' Popov told the huge throng.
Police broke up an unsanctioned gathering of several hundred conservatives at a separate site in Moscow, but there were no reports of violence in the Soviet capital or elsewhere in the vast country.
'Perestroika has come to an impasse,' legislator Alexei Emelyanov said in Moscow. 'Not a single problem has been solved on time.'
The crowd filled the capital's Garden Ring from the U.S. Embassy to Krymsky Bridge, forcing all traffic to be diverted from a 2-mile stretch of the busy beltway girding the downtown area.
Banners, posters and nationalist flags stretching as far as the eye could see turned the beltway into an arc of color on a gray but warm winter day with occasional light rain.
'The people must determine the fate of the country, not the (Communist Party) Central Committee,' said one sign.
Another poster, typical of many that sharply criticized Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, asked: 'Who will defend perestroika against its architect?' A third demanded, 'Investigate the Kremlin's corruption.'
The demonstrators ignored a weeklong stream of warnings from the government and the party, which raised the specter of violence and urged people to stay home for the sake of safety.
Viktor Saveliev, 62, stood up in his subway car on the way to the Moscow protest and urged fellow passengers to join him.
'I knew they weren't announcing this over the radio,' he explained. 'They were trying to scare people away. I wanted to get this out to the people.'
Six-year-old Georgi said he and several pals had come to the rally 'to have a good time' and asked: 'What's there to be afraid of?'
The groups joining the Moscow demonstration in Mikhail Gorbachev's newly pluralistic Soviet Union ranged from the Social Democratic Association and the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists to Christian Democrats, the Democratic Russia Association and the recently formed Shchit union of military servicemen.
'We must follow the example of Eastern Europe,' said Lev Ubovshko, head of the Democratic Party claiming 2,000 members. 'Dozens of millions of people must take to the streets and bring down the (Communist Party) monopoly.'
One protester carried a funeral wreath in memory of Article 6 of the Soviet Constitution, the clause dictating Communist Party monopoly, which the Central Committee pledged to discard at a historic plenum three weeks ago.
Despite the democratization program adopted at the plenum Feb. 7, speaker after speaker criticized Gorbachev for failing to bring change quickly enough and for reported plans to create a super-presidency that would vest enormous power in his hands.
'The plenum took a half step forward, but the party is still several kilometers behind society in supporting democratization,' said lawmaker Vladimir Lysenko.
Added Afanasiev, another main organizer of the Moscow demonstration: 'Perestroika is marching in place.'
Numerous speakers and protesters called for the immediate resignation of Gorbachev and the rest of the ruling Politburo.
'For the first two years of perestroika, Gorbachev kept up with the people and was even a half step ahead,' scientist Valeri Smirnov said as he listened to the speeches. 'But now he has lost leadership. His vacillations have made him lost the people's trust.'
Sergei Kuznetsov, an independent journalist who went on a hunger strike to force his release from jail, demanded immediate freedom for all remaining political prisoners.
'So-called socialism, the basis for Gorbachev's perestroika, is a system of government banditry,' he said. 'There is still a criminal regime of the government mafia just like before.'
Novosti and the official Tass news agency reported additional demonstrations in the Far Eastern cities of Vlodovostok, Khabarovsk and Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the Siberian cities of Omsk and Kemerovo, the Byelorussian capital of Minsk and the Volga cities of Gorky, Ulyanovsk, Kazan, Volgograd, Kuybyshev, Saranck and Saratov.
Tass also reported protests in the Russian cities of Leningrad, Syktykvar, Smolensk and Vologda, the Ural cities of Sverdlovsk and Ufa, the White Sea port of Arkhangelsk, the Ukrainian city of Rostov among others.
Interfax cited rallies in the Siberian hub of Novosibirsk, the Russian city of Voronezh, the Ukrainian city of Kharkov and the coal-mining center of Donetsk and the Volga city of Yaraslavl.
Popov said demonstrations were held in the Uzbek capital of Tashkent, the Ural city of Chelyabinsk, the Siberian cities of Irkutsk and Tomsk and the Russian cities of Novocherkassk and Oryol.
Rallies were banned in various places including the Russian cities of Saranask and Ryazan, the Ukrianian city of Lvov and throughout the Baltic republic of Latvia and in Azerbaijan, one of two mainly Moslem republics wracked by violence in recent weeks.
