Over 100,000 Join Protest Against Gorbachev in Moscow : Dissent: Crowd assails nation’s leaders as turning reactionary. Sympathy is expressed for Lithuanians slain by Soviet troops.

Chanting, “Dictatorship will not succeed,” more than 100,000 people protested Sunday against the Soviet leadership’s conservative turn and mourned the 13 Lithuanian civilians killed by Red Army troops.

“We came to this meeting to say our resolute nyet to the reactionary course of Gorbachev and his team,” Yuri N. Afanasyev, a leading reformer and member of the Congress of People’s Deputies, or national parliament, told the angry crowd in central Moscow.

“Shame!” the assemblage shouted in response.

“Isn’t this an attempt to restore the totalitarian regime?” Afanasyev added. “We have come here to say that dictatorship will not succeed!”

Other speakers accused Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev of being responsible for the brutal attack a week ago on broadcast facilities in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, saying his failure to condemn the military’s act shows he supports it. Demonstrators honored the victims of the bloodshed with a moment of silence. In addition to the civilians, one soldier was killed.

The demonstration occurred on a day of rallies and memorial services throughout the Soviet Union. Only hours after the gatherings were held, Soviet troops attacked the Latvian Interior Ministry in Riga.

In Baku, the capital of the southern republic of Azerbaijan, a million people attended a memorial service marking the first anniversary of a clash between Soviet troops and Azerbaijanis in which 130 people died, the official Tass news agency reported.

A year ago, troops were sent to Baku to stop pogroms against the Armenian minority living in the city. When nationalist Azerbaijanis resisted the soldiers’ attempts to bring order, the troops attacked. Women, children and non-Azerbaijanis were among the victims.

“An endless stream of people headed for the Alley of Victims,” a memorial to those who died Jan. 20, 1990, in a downtown park, Tass said.

All the routes leading to Freedom Park were covered with “a sea of red carnations,” Leila Yunusova, a leader of Azerbaijan’s Social Democratic Party, said.

Gorbachev, in a message published in Azerbaijani newspapers, expressed condolences to families of those killed and called for unity of all nationalities living in Azerbaijan, Tass said.

During the Moscow protest, waves of defiant demonstrators marched down Kalinin Street, one of the capital’s main thoroughfares, and filled much of Manezh Square in the city’s center.

Protesters shouted, “Gorbachev is a fascist!” and “Gorbachev resign!” as they passed the Kremlin’s golden onion domes. Many of them waved the pre-Soviet flags of the Baltic and other republics, including the white, blue and red flag of pre-revolutionary Russia.

Estimates of the crowd size varied greatly. Tass reported that 300,000 people participated in the Moscow rally, even though the square, which holds 250,000 people when full, was partly empty. Organizers said that as many as 500,000 people had participated in the anti-Gorbachev demonstration, and the Inter-Regional Group of Deputies claimed that more than 700,000 took part.

“Economic reform has been blocked, democracy betrayed, glasnost trampled upon, arbitrariness and lawlessness are being restored in the Soviet Union,” Russian Federation President Boris N. Yeltsin said in an address read by his chief of staff, Gennady E. Burbulis. “The danger of dictatorship, about which key leaders of our society have warned, is becoming a reality.”

Raising their fists in the air, protesters punctuated each speech with chants of “Freedom to Lithuania!” and “Hangmen out of the Kremlin!”

Yeltsin, Russia’s most popular politician, did not attend the demonstration for security reasons, but his name was evoked again and again as the leader most able to keep the country on the path toward democracy.

“Yeltsin! Yeltsin!” the crowd cheered repeatedly throughout the afternoon-long demonstration.

Just as Yeltsin was clearly the hero of the rally, Gorbachev was the chief villain. Many participants held banners with sayings such as: “Westerners: You are mistaken, Gorbachev is not who you take him for,” “Gorbachev Is the Main Murderer” and “Hands off Lithuania.”

The crowd roared its support for creation of a Russian Federation army, as Yeltsin has proposed, for the withdrawal of troops from Lithuania, trials for all people involved in the violence in Vilnius and the resignations of the members of the national parliament.

“We are here on this square on one of the most critical moments in Russian history,” Sergei B. Stankevich, Moscow’s deputy mayor, said. “If we now become frightened, if we scatter like roaches to the corners seeing the approaching dictatorship . . . then the words we have said over the past five years are not worth half a cent.”

Burbulis also urged the people not to give up their fight for democracy, even if conservatives try to convince them that life will be better if the country returns to the old order.

“Do not believe that the dictatorship will feed you,” Burbulis cautioned. “Violence can bring violence.”

Speakers urged the crowd to stand firm behind Yeltsin and the Russian parliament.

In Leningrad, 40,000 people reportedly attended a similar rally, while Radio Russia said other demonstrations were held in Donetsk, a Ukrainian coal city, in Sverdlovsk in the Urals, Kishinev in Moldova and Kaliningrad on the Baltic coast.