Supporters demanded justice for murdered Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Sunday while President Vladimir Putin celebrated his birthday with some of the security forces and spy chiefs criticised in her writing.
Up to 2,000 people, clutching carnations and pictures of the reporter, attended a sombre rally in Moscow's Pushkin Square under bleak skies to mark the first anniversary of her death.
Thousands more young people waved Russian flags and danced to pop music at a riverside party in Moscow organised by a pro-Kremlin youth movement in honour of Putin's 55th birthday while in the Kremlin, military top brass, the FSB director and other intelligence agency figures mixed with the President.
"We should fight for freedom," the editor of Politkovskaya's newspaper, Dmitry Muratov, told those who gathered in her memory, including members of the "Other Russia" dissident group.
The crowd also endorsed a demand from the organisers that the authorities must bring her killers to justice. Putin, who enjoys strong support among Russians, held a birthday reception for top military officials and friends in the Kremlin, his last as president before he steps down next March, possibly to become prime minister.
There was a strong military presence, including widows and family members of Russian soldiers killed in the Chechen wars, which Politkovskaya had written about repeatedly, to attack brutal tactics from the armed forces.