The plan calls for the eligibility age for retirement pensions to be raised by five years, to 65 for men and 60 for women. Opposition to it spans the political spectrum.
The rallies got started in the Far East and Siberia when it still was early morning in Moscow, where a downtown demonstration in the afternoon ended in scuffles when riot police stopped participants from marching to the Kremlin.
Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption activist who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent foe, urged supporters to protest the pension proposal Sunday before he was sentenced to 30 days in jail for organizing an unsanctioned January protest involving a different issue.
Demonstrations took place throughout the sprawling country, from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on a Pacific island and in Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania.
The OVD-Info organization that monitors political repression reported that as of Monday morning more than 1,000 people were detained in connection with the protests around the country. That figure included 452 which occurred in St. Petersburg, OVD-Info said.
Factory worker Olga Sokolova, 52, said she was "dumbfounded" when the proposal was introduced in June because she had hoped to retire from her physically taxing job at age 55.
"I can’t keep being afraid anymore," she said of her decision to risk detention by showing up at Moscow’s Pushkin Square for the protest that attracted several thousand people.
The demonstrators, predominantly people in their 20s and decades away from retirement, chanted "Russia without Putin" and held signs with messages such as "Putin, when will you go on pension?"
They later marched toward Red Square and the Kremlin, chanting "Down with the czar!" as they passed the building of the Federation Council, the upper house of parliament, and leisurely Muscovites enjoying a hot afternoon.
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