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Page 206
Deborah, his wife, was beside herself with worry. The air force band was playing Chopin's funeral march. The music lay heavy in the air, like a slow rain of black diamonds, dignified, grieving. Far too good for a man like Orgonev, Milstein thought.
Evidently others thought so, too, for suddenly a ragtag procession of young people came bursting out of 25th October Street. They were dressed in worker's clothes, some in western jeans and German parkas, others in the absurd motley of the recently very active Moscow street theater. They carried signs demanding immediate action on a multiplicity of things: relief for Armenia; the return of the army to Russia from all former republics; an end to the military draft; immediate nuclear disarmament and cessation of both the building of nuclear weapons and power plants; free tuition at Moscow University; a thousand percent increase in research money for AIDS. The young people of Moscow had taken to protest demonstrations with vast anger and enthusiasm.
Suddenly, counterdemonstrators, perhaps a hundred young men and women in the czarist uniforms favored by the rightwing organizations of Moscow, appeared, also from 25th October Street, marching in unison, singing and chanting Soyuz slogans, blocking any retreat by the first group.
The dissidents, absorbed by their own passions, paid no attention. As the Orgonev cortege reached the center of the square, they began to chant obscenities and wave their banners and signs.
Piotr Kondratiev called out in a commanding voice to Ivan Yulin, his replacement as the head of State Security. ''Where are the militia?'' he demanded loudly. "This is a state funeral! Is there no decency?"
The right-wing counterdemonstrators immediately took up the cry. "Is there no decency?"
As if at a signal, blue-uniformed members of the militia began to pour out of the Kremlin's Red Tower gate into the square. Some carried electric cattle prods, others were armed

 
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