Moscow May Day Rings of History and Rhetoric : Russia: Last year’s scenes of riot police and rebellion are replaced by a celebration of spring and the spirit. At a workers’ march, hard-line Communists blast Yeltsin.

The bells of a Kremlin church silenced for 76 years began tolling the advent of Orthodox Easter just before midnight Sunday, heralding a May Day holiday on which religion and the pleasures of spring triumphed over political strife.

Thousands of die-hard Communists celebrated the international workers’ day with red-flag-filled marches and speeches bashing President Boris N. Yeltsin as an ethically bankrupt traitor who has impoverished his people.

“Capitalism is dung,” proclaimed the banner carried by one group of hard-liners.

But Easter fell on May 1 this year, and millions more Muscovites celebrated midnight Mass, greeted their neighbors by saying, “Christ is risen,” and feasted on dyed eggs and kulich , a round, sweet Easter cake. Many of the secular visited cemeteries or escaped to their country dachas to revel in the sudden, glorious spring.

Last year’s May Day turned bloody when hard-line Yeltsin foes brawled with riot police in the streets of Moscow, killing one policeman, injuring hundreds of demonstrators and setting the scene for months of street clashes that ended with a tank attack on the Russian Parliament building on Oct. 4.

This year, the political mood was calmer. The mostly aging demonstrators seemed weary and disorganized.

Early Sunday, up to 8,000 demonstrators representing 42 Moscow trade unions, as well as the Communist Party of Russia and several other smaller left-wing parties, began gathering under the statue of Vladimir Mayakovsky, chief poet of the 1917 Revolution. Students and children joined the demonstration.

Last month, the unions had gathered nearly 2.5 million signatures in Moscow alone on a list of demands that the government pay workers a fair wage on time, prevent mass unemployment and protect against crime. On Sunday, they marched under the slogan “Economic Policies to Help Working People, Not the Moneybags!”

“I would rather have gone to the dacha with my family,” said Yegor Gritsov, 14, who attended the march not out of political conviction but because his school sports coach had organized the outing. “But maybe we will still have some fun, because as you can see, our group is followed by the Communists, and that means there might be some head-bashing.”

But riot police stayed off the main marching routes, apparently determined to avoid confrontation, and the protest was held without incident.

On the other side of the Kremlin, about 6,000 people gathered under a giant Lenin statue in October Square for a separate march organized by hard-liners, including Viktor I. Anpilov, a leader of the October rebellion who was released from prison in February.

Anpilov called for a general strike Oct. 3--the anniversary of the assault on government buildings by pro-Parliament protesters that precipitated the government’s counterattack--in hopes of toppling the Yeltsin government. But the strike idea was immediately shot down by Communist Party leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, who noted that Russia’s economic crisis has already led to widespread work stoppages.

The event brought together the strange political bedfellows who characterize the new Russian far left. Some people sold anti-Yeltsin and anti-Semitic materials, some held up portraits of V. I. Lenin and Josef Stalin, and others waved the czarist flag. One banner read “Christians for Communism.”

But the march proceeded peacefully for nearly five miles to the Lenin Hills in southwest Moscow. Some elderly people sang songs from the 1930s, accompanied by an accordion.

“Today inspired us with hope that we need no longer be afraid of holidays,” said Georgy Satarov, a Yeltsin aide.

Clearly, the Russian religious revival is beginning to influence politics. In an Easter eve survey of 1,256 Russians by the Public Opinion Polling Service, 41% said they would celebrate both Easter and May Day, 39% said they would celebrate only Easter, and 4% said they would celebrate only May Day, which just three years ago was the highest holiday of the Soviet calendar.

The Easter festivities began late Saturday with the ringing of 15 bells from the Ivan the Great bell tower, a 16th-Century masterpiece in the heart of the Kremlin. The bell-ringing so beloved by Muscovites was banned by Lenin in 1918. Thousands of people, some holding candles, stood in Red Square to hear the bells for the first time in their lives.

Several thousand more Muscovites, mostly young people, waited outside Epiphany Cathedral, where Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II celebrated an all-night Easter Mass attended by Yeltsin, Prime Minister Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov and other notables.

The tall, graceful cathedral, newly restored to a robin’s-egg blue topped with gilded onion domes, was spotlighted for the ceremony. Shortly before midnight, Alexei led a resplendent procession of priests in a circle around the church.

The service, like a czarist-era fairy tale of white and silver robes, icons, clouds of incense, golden crucifixes and sublime singing, was carried live on national television.