The centenary weekend of the 1917 October Revolution has seen protests and scores of arrests in Moscow.
It has been a busy Unity Day weekend for police in Moscow, the public holiday that has superceded the original Soviet Union’s October 1917 celebrations marking the triumph of the Communist revolution.
With the centenary this year plenty of groups have chosen to march, many of them on the far-right and ultra-nationalist critics of President Vladimir Putin.
Russian security services said on Sunday they had detained 263 people in the centre of Moscow for “breach of public order” following more arrests on Saturday.
The FSB secret services arrested all the members of Artpodgotovka, an anti-government movement, claiming they planned “arson of administrative buildings…and attacks on police to provoke mass unrest”.
Russian communists walked to Lenin’s mausoleum and the grave of Soviet leader Josef Stalin to mark the October Revolution centenary.
“The October revolution and Lenin rebuilt a collapsed country, forming the great state of the USSR which was a bearer of light for the whole planet,” said leader Gennady Zyuganov.
They were joined by Communists from around the world.
“Some things of course are fine now as well. But there is not enough justice. The rich ones get fatter, the poor ones get poorer,” said one woman.
Nostalgia filled the air along with revolutionary songs of the past, like “Bella ciao” an Italian partisan song.