The Moscow Times provides a thorough account of the festivities:

Gays crashed a Communist rally, ultranationalists protested migration and the president’s Twitter account, the mayor got pelted with eggs, and hipsters rallied for raccoon power during unusually colorful celebrations of the May Day holiday in Moscow.

Police said only several of the 40,000 people to rally in Moscow on Sunday were briefly detained, Interfax reported. But about 50 anarchists were held in St. Petersburg.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin was targeted with eggs and mayonnaise while addressing the city’s biggest rally of 25,000 people gathered in front of City Hall on Tverskaya Ulitsa for a joint event by the ruling United Russia party and trade unions, The Other Russia [political party – theotherrussia.org ed.] said on its web site.

The sole successful strike saw an egg grazing Sobyanin’s pant leg, the statement said, adding that, to the mayor’s credit, he did not interrupt his speech. The incident went ignored by state-owned media covering the rally.

A brief scuffle broke out at the second-biggest rally, staged downtown by the Communist Party, when about 100 gay rights activists unfurled rainbow banners and attempted to join the main crowd of 4,500 people, Interfax said.

Riot police separated the two groups and held two gay activists for questioning, Interfax said.

Hundreds of ultranationalists staged a rally in northern Moscow, waving black, yellow and white banners associated with imperial Russia and chanting slogans such as “Migrant, time to go home,” “Down with the Yiddish yoke” and “Twitter! Medvedev! Lies!” — the latter a reference to President Dmitry Medvedev’s fondness for blogging.

Police did not intervene with the sanctioned rally, which was accompanied by a car with loudspeakers, anti-xenophobia watchdog Sova said. The banned Movement Against Illegal Immigration said on its web site that some 2,000 protesters attended the rally, but Sova put their number at 600, unchanged from last year.

The liberal Yabloko party marked the holiday by staging a picnic on the artificial isle Fantasy Island in western Moscow, which houses luxury real estate owned by tycoons and senior officials.

Critics have long accused developers of illegal construction on the island, and Sunday’s event protested the fact that cottages block free access to the coastline, which is a violation of environmental legislation, the party said on its web site. It said activists had to use boats to reach the isle’s coast.

In St. Petersburg, police detained some 50 anarchists who tried to join a sanctioned trade union rally, the news web site Fontanka.ru reported. Many detainees wore masks imitating the anarchist vigilante from the graphic novel “V for Vendetta” and carried knives and brass knuckles.

Among the more unusual events were flash mobs called Monstratsia — a play on the Russian word for rally that comes to roughly mean “monsterization.” The event, initiated by performance artist Artyom Loskutov in Novosibirsk in 2004, spread this year to cover Moscow and some 20 cities in Russia and abroad.

Monstratsias, usually timed to official holidays, require participants to carry nonsensical banners and chant meaningless slogans. This year’s crop in Moscow included offerings such as “Yummy,” “Gas, Oil, May,” “We could be working instead” and “Power to Raccoons.”

According to Ekho Moskvy radio, May Day events in Moscow that had been sanctioned by the city government included five demonstrations, three processions, and eleven rallies. One of the processions was organized by the opposition movement Solidarity, which counted members from a variety of other opposition groups and public organizations among its 500 participants. Prominent figures in the procession included United Civil front leader Garry Kasparov, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity cofounder Boris Nemtsov, and former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky. Participants carried posters, political insignia, and a gigantic Russian flag spanning several meters in length while chanting “Russia without Putin,” “Moscow without Luzhkov,” “Putin is Brezhnev, Putin is Stalin,” “We need the Other Russia,” and “Putin must go,” among other slogans.

Although a smoke bomb was set off at one point during the procession, the police did not move to detain anyone. Protesters believe that a provocateur set off the bomb. Despite that, the procession successfully made its way to Moscow’s riverside Bolotnaya Square, where the event ended with a cultural festival. Police detained several people on the square without explanation, including Andrei Moiseyev, co-leader of Solidarity’s Moscow branch and one of the event’s organizers. Moiseyev was escorted away by police together with a reproduction of a painting by artist Dmitri Vrubel, entitled “The Kiss of Putin and Brezhnev” that he was holding. Also detained were artist activist Pyotr Verzilov, his wife, several musicians, and event co-organizer Sergei Davidis. Police gave no explanations for any of the detentions.

Elsewhere in Moscow, at least five thousand people turned out for a demonstration held by the Communist party. In addition to the Communists themselves, members of the Left Front, the National Bolsheviks, the anti-fascist group Antifa, and anarchist organizations also joined the protest.

The liberal opposition group Yabloko also held a demonstration in Moscow, with approximately 1200 participants. Chief among speakers at the event was Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who warned against allowing Prime Minister Putin to return to the presidency in 2012. “We need a new president who won’t rob the people of their rights and freedoms – who will fight not against the opposition, but against corruption,” he said to the crowd.

Another protest dubbed the Day of Anger was held in Moscow by the opposition group Left Front. A wide variety of oppositions, human rights advocates, environmental activists and social justice advocates came together to express their collective grief with Moscow’s ruling elite – in particular, Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Governor Boris Gromov.

Controversy had surrounded plans for the Day of Anger all last week. Left Front leader and event organizer Sergei Udaltsov had said on Wednesday that the city had sanctioned the event, but the mayor’s office denied this the next day. It remained unclear up to the end whether the rally had really been officially sanctioned or not – a vital factor, since participating in an unsanctioned rally in Russia is punishable by law, and many unsanctioned rallies end with participants being beaten and/or arrested by the police. In any case, the rally went on, but Udaltsov was detained at the end. The official reason cited by police was that more people had taken part than Udaltsov had indicated on the application for sanction. According to Left Front press secretary Anastasia Udaltsova, the unofficial version for Udaltsov’s detention, as told by several police officers, was that “representatives of the Moscow government would like to have a chat with him.”

In the city of Kaliningrad, approximately three thousand demonstrators took part in a rally of various opposition groups. According to Kasparov.ru, what began as a traditional May Day demonstration evolved into an anti-government rally. Participants brought signs to the event reading “Peace, work, May – no work, no housing,” and held up tangerines, which have become a symbol of public protest in the city in recent months. Following that, however, protesters began chants demanding for the federal government to resign.

In St. Petersburg, a procession planned by democratic opposition groups was banned by city authorities. Olga Kurnosova, executive director of the pro-democracy group United Civil Front, said that the reason involved the slogan that the protesters had planning to use, which called for St. Petersburg Governor and Putin favorite Valentina Matviyenko to resign. Supposedly, the slogan did not correspond with the slogan written on the application to hold the rally that was filed with the city. Therefore, the procession was banned altogether. Despite that, about seven hundred oppositionists held a stationary demonstration where the procession was supposed to take off from.

A photo gallery of the various events in Moscow is available here at Grani.ru.

Actor Aleksei Devotchenko, a member of the United Civil Front party, opened the day by suggesting that opposition leaders shorten their speeches and hand over the stage to the musicians. “What is there to speak of, when the patriarch advises [the faithful] to vote for Putin and Medvedev, and they perceive it as their due,” he said. “You don’t have to be a Solomon to see all of this regime’s illegitimacy.”

Garry Kasparov, who leads the United Civil Front, spoke next, noting that the labor holiday was also being marked by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, which he said has “ransacked all of Russia.” “United Russia is not only a party of street thugs, but of cowards,” he continued. “Look at how they try to defend themselves from us,” he added, nodding in the direction of assembled law enforcement. “They remain nothings, in spite of their billions, while we have culture, history and our country behind us. The day will come, when the opposition walks through the streets and reclaims the country,” he closed.

Maxim Reznik, the leader of the St. Petersburg branch of the Yabloko party, thanked all those who expressed support while he was imprisoned in pre-trail detention. He announced that the “dissenters” who protest the Kremlin are ruled not by hatred in their activities, but by love of their country and their city.

Andrei Illarionov, an independent economist, used his time to commemorate all the people imprisoned for political reasons who could not take part in the May 1st celebration. He noted that there can be no more important slogan than, “Freedom for political prisoners,” and said that the opposition should remember those behind bars during all its events and meetings.

A number of other opposition leaders and prominent personalities also spoke at the event, which was followed by musical festivities. Attendees listened to performances by Mikhail Borzykin of Televizor, SP Babay, the Mukhomory, and number of other groups.

The May 1st holiday was also marked by countrywide rallies of the Communist Party, as well as smaller regional gatherings by United Russia, Yabloko, and other organizations.