
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 16, 1990                   TAG: 9007160259
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/2   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: MOSCOW                                LENGTH: Medium

50,000 SOVIETS MARCH AGAINST COMMUNISTS

President Mikhail Gorbachev has moved to end the Communist Party's longtime control of the airwaves, decreeing that the state broadcasting monopoly must provide access to competing voices.

His decree "on democratization of television and radio" was read on the main evening news program, "Vremya," Sunday just hours after some 50,000 people braved a driving rain to gather at the Kremlin gates in the capital's first mass demonstration against the Communist Party.

Although the decree did not appear a direct response to the demonstration, Gorbachev's decision to open the airwaves to groups other than the Communist Party and government comes amid growing criticism of central authorities.

The Communists' fortunes are in decline as forces of democracy gain strength and demand that the party, blamed for plunging the country into economic crisis, be stripped of all its political monopolies.

The decree on broadcasting was issued a month after the Supreme Soviet legislature passed the nation's first law guaranteeing freedom of the press and creating broad rights for journalists and publishers.

The press law gave non-government and non-party groups the right to own and operate newspapers and magazines, ending what effectively had been a decades-old monopoly held by Communist authorities.

Rather than appeasing popular opinion, however, greater media openness has helped fuel public anger toward central authorities, as demonstrated in the march on the Kremlin.

"Communist worms - this corpse won't feed you anymore," read a poster carried by a demonstrator on Sunday. One woman hoisted a pair of shoes worn into tatters and labeled, "Slave of the Party."

Police used trucks and barricades to block the entrance to Red Square, and the marchers instead gathered around a sound truck in the adjacent Manezh Square, just under the red brick walls and towers of the Kremlin.

The demonstrators cheered when a speaker called out the names of three leading reformers who last week announced they were quitting the Communist Party: Russian republic President Boris N. Yelstin, Moscow Mayor Gavriil Popov and Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak.

The protesters shouted, "Down with the criminal Communist Party!" as they huddled under a sea of umbrellas.

by CNB