Rally Defying Putin’s Party Draws Tens of Thousands

The crowd overflowed from a central city square, forcing stragglers to climb trees or watch from the opposite riverbank. “We exist!” they chanted. “We exist!”

James Hill for The New York Times

In the largest anti-Kremlin protest since the early 1990s, tens of thousands of Russians rallied in central Moscow on Saturday.

The demonstration marked what opposition leaders hope will be a watershed moment, ending years of quiet acceptance of the political consolidation Mr. Putin introduced. The leaders understood that for a moment they, not the Kremlin, were dictating the political agenda, and seemed intent on leveraging it, promising to gather an even larger crowd again on Dec. 24.

Saturday’s rally served to build their confidence as it united liberals, nationalists and Communists. The event was too large to be edited out of the evening news, which does not ordinarily report on criticism of Mr. Putin And it was accompanied by dozens of smaller rallies across Russia’s nine time zones, with a crowd of 3,000 reported in Tomsk, and 7,000 in St. Petersburg, the police said.

The protests were prompted by last week’s parliamentary elections and complicate Mr. Putin’s own campaign to return to the presidency. He is by far the country’s most popular political figure, but he no longer appears untouchable and will have to engage with his critics, something he has done only rarely and grudgingly.

In Moscow, the police estimated the crowd at 25,000, though organizers said there were more than twice that many. The government calculated that it had no choice but to allow the events to unfold and granted a license. There was a large police presence, including helicopters, troop carriers, dump trucks and bulldozers, but remarkably when the crowd dispersed four hours later, no detentions were reported at the scene.

Older participants were reminded of the oceans of demonstrators who marched on the Kremlin in the early 1990s, heralding the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Younger protesters — so digitally connected that they broadcast the event live by holding iPads over their heads — said this was a day when a group that had been silent made itself heard.

“People are just tired, they have already crossed all the boundaries,” said Yana Larionova, 26, a real estate agent. “You see all these people who are well dressed and earn a good salary, going out onto the streets on Saturday and saying, ‘No more.’ That’s when you know you need a change.”

Calls for protest have been mounting since the parliamentary elections last Sunday, which domestic and international observers said were tainted by ballot-stuffing and fraud on behalf of Mr. Putin’s party, United Russia. But an equally crucial event, many said, was Mr. Putin’s announcement in September that he would run for the presidency in March.

Mr. Putin is almost certain to win a six-year term, meaning he will have been Russia’s paramount leader for 18 years. He is currently prime minister.

Yevgeniya Albats, editor of the New Times, a magazine often critical of the government, said that the gathering was the most striking display of grass-roots democracy that she had seen in Russia, and that the involvement of young people was a game-changer. When Mr. Putin revealed his decision to return to the presidency, six months before the election, she said, “this really, really humiliated the country.”

“Today we just proved that civil society does exist in Russia, that the middle class does exist and that this country is not lost,” Ms. Albats said.

The authorities had been trying to discourage attendance, saying that widespread protests could prove as destabilizing as the Soviet collapse, which occurred 20 years ago this month. Officials have portrayed the demonstrators as revolutionaries dedicated to a violent, Libya-style overthrow. Mr. Putin last week said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had set off the wave of activism by publicly criticizing the conduct of the parliamentary elections.

“She set the tone for some actors in our country and gave them a signal,” Mr. Putin said. “They heard the signal and with the support of the U.S. State Department began active work.”

Protesters laughed at this notion. One speaker asked the crowd, “Are we here because Hillary Clinton texted us?”