Denis Sinyakov/Reuters
Activists gathered in Moscow's Pushkin Square on Thursday in support of Sergei Udaltsov, who has been in jail since Dec. 4.
MOSCOW ? Opposition leaders trying to sustain the momentum of their upstart protest movement gathered about 200 people on Thursday for an unsanctioned rally in central Moscow in support of a jailed activist they are hoping to turn into a cause c�l�bre.
The activist, Sergei Udaltsov, is the leader of the Left Front, a radical socialist party. He has been arrested more than a dozen times but has failed to attract much attention outside of a small and devoted corps of activists. But after this month?s enormous protests, opposition leaders see Mr. Udaltsov?s detention as a way to sustain the public?s interest during the holidays, which in Russia stretch through mid-January.
There was tension over the possibility of violence at the protest on Thursday, and opposition leaders told activists not to bring placards or chant slogans and to avoid conflict with the police. Despite a heavy police presence, no arrests were reported, which some protesters saw as a hopeful sign.
The authorities have held Mr. Udaltsov since he was arrested at an unsanctioned protest on Election Day, Dec. 4. He initially received a five-day sentence, but his term was extended twice by a total of 25 days on charges stemming from earlier arrests. He began a hunger strike and is now under guard in a hospital because of concerns about his health.
Aleksei Navalny, an anticorruption protester who has become the most recognizable face of the opposition movement, said on his blog on Sunday that the presiding judge in Mr. Udaltsov?s case should be held responsible if there were a ?rise of riots on the streets of Moscow.? Mr. Udaltsov also got celebrity backing from Tina Kandelaki, a television host and producer with connections to the Kremlin, who released an open letter on Thursday calling for his release.
Alexei Sakhnin, 30, an assistant to the lawmaker who led the rally on Thursday, said the protest served as a message to the authorities that the scattered opposition movement would hold together.
?The regime wants to clear the movement and divide it up the middle between radicals and moderates ? these are their definitions of course ? to show that there are people who will never be included at the negotiating table,? said Mr. Sakhnin, who attended the rally with his 4 �-year-old son on his shoulders. ?That would of course be the death of the movement.?
In a fiery speech at a much bigger rally on Saturday, apparently delivered from his hospital bed and projected on large screens, Mr. Udaltsov invoked the Occupy Wall Street movement, calling the protesters ?the 99 percent? and saying that Russia was led by a corrupt 1 percent of bureaucrats and oligarchs.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2fa471d4739bfdc1338f5c7701da295b
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