Aging Russian Activists Renew Commitment to Rights : Reunion: On 30th anniversary of seminal protest, prominent dissidents gather to reaffirm goals. They worry that hard-won freedoms could be lost.

They gathered, these veteran dissidents, to remember their first shaky cries for freedom. Exactly 30 years after their first protest rally, they gathered Tuesday to take pride in their progress, yes, but also to lament the hard road still ahead.

They had gained the freedom to speak out, to organize demonstrations, to hold seminars in a room decorated, as theirs was, with black-and-white photos of dissidents dead after years of persecution. In that sense, renowned human rights activist Sergei A. Kovalev said, “we’ve done better than I expected.”

But they want more.

When they shout, they want the government to listen. When they march, they want the people to follow.

“We want everyone to be out defending their rights,” Vyacheslav Bakhmin explained.

These dissidents want reassurance. They want to be certain their vaunted new Russia will not slip back into Soviet ways. But certainty eludes them.

After all, tough-talking Communists are poised to do well in parliamentary elections this month. Presidential candidate Alexander V. Rutskoi on Tuesday advised “pesky” journalists to stock up on quilted jackets, because they’ll be heading for Siberian labor camps if he wins.

Meanwhile, the war in Chechnya drags on--the bombs crushing homes, bloodying bodies, destroying commerce.

“We can lose everything we have gained if we don’t keep up our fight,” magazine editor Kronid Lyubarsky concluded. “We cannot close our eyes.”

Natalia Gorbanevskaya echoed his words. “We need to pay attention not only to our history,” she said to applause. “We need to think also of today, of the people who are now living” and counting on free speech, a free press, free elections and other human rights.

Gorbanevskaya, like many of the aging dissidents at Tuesday’s seminar, traces her activism to Dec. 5, 1965. Infuriated by the arrest of two authors who had dared publish their works in the West, several dozen intellectuals rallied in Pushkin Square on that date, calling for the Soviet government to respect its own constitution and hold fair, open trials.

“I understood then that . . . we had to define what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong,” activist Larisa Bogoraz recalled.

To commemorate that realization, Bogoraz and a dozen admirers bundled up in the frigid air Tuesday evening and trekked to Pushkin Square clutching red carnations.

Much has changed in Pushkin Square since their first, bold rally: McDonald’s golden arches gleam near the park, and street vendors in leather jackets peddle American beer. A neon Coca-Cola sign blinks.

Despite this burst of capitalism, the dissidents complained that Russia remains stuck in the past. The very slogan that animated the 1965 rally --”Respect the constitution”--remains valid today, they said, as officials seem to acknowledge only the laws that are convenient for them.

Kovalev, who was fired from his post as human rights commissioner because of his fierce criticism of the war in Chechnya, called for Russian citizens to step forward and demand change.

“We need to make those in power understand that they are supposed to listen to the people,” he said. “A civil society can never be built by orders from above.”

Pointing to the United States as an example, veteran activist Ludmilla Alexeyeva added: “A government stays democratic only when there are 2,000 groups fighting for their rights.”