MILLIONS of people around the world marked May Day yesterday, but protest marches and demonstrations were devoid of the Cold War era's rigid military displays and, in at least one case, held a note of humour.
In Moscow some 15,000 communists demonstrated near Red Square as President Yeltsin reminded Russians that the post-Soviet holiday was quite different from the regimented affairs of the past.
Mr Yeltsin, who returned to Moscow from the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Wednesday, made a brief appearance in Red Square but did not approach the crowd.
Earlier, the communists, many of them elderly, marched through central Moscow in festive mood, holding red flags and anti-government placards to the accompaniment of Soviet-era patriotic songs.
Throughout Asia the occasion passed peacefully in most countries.
In China, thousands of people took to the streets to spend a day out with their families.
In South Korea, however, the holiday was marked by violent clashes in two cities between riot police and anti-government demonstrators demanding the resignation of President Kim Young-Sam.
The police lobbed scores of tear-gas grenades as protesters kicked and punched their way through police lines after a rally by some 7,000 militant workers in a park in Seoul. Several bleeding protesters were taken away by colleagues witnesses said.
Masked demonstrators hurled stones, bottles and beer cans at Berlin police yesterday and set fire to two builders' huts, as violence by right-wing and left-wing extremists marred May Day rallies across Germany.
Police tried to break up the clashes with batons and water cannon. The trouble followed a demonstration by around 6,500 left-wing extremists in the city and came after hundreds of neo-Nazis rampaged through the northern town of Muenden.
The Berlin left-wingers built barricades out of rubbish bins and vehicles and tore up paving stones.
In Zurich, police said they arrested about 100 demonstrators when May Day celebrations turned violent. They said they also confiscated Molotov cocktails and objects which could be used as weapons from young members of a far-left group.
Turkish trade union leaders laid a wreath yesterday in Istanbul's main square in memory of 37 people killed at a May Day rally there 20 years ago.
Turkish police cordoned off Taksim Square in Istanbul with armoured cars and so-called "robocops" police with plastic body armour - for about 150 trade unionists carrying a wreath which they laid at a monument.
No one was ever charged for the deaths on May Day in 1977, when a gunman fired on protesters from a building above the square. Most of the victims were crushed to death in the resulting stampede.
In Prague, the communist leader, Mr Miroslav Grebenicek, called on supporters to hold massive anti-government demonstrations and to plan a "civic disobedience" campaign.
In Warsaw, meanwhile, some 2,000 to 3,000 former communists, union supporters and retired people demonstrated in the city centre waving red flags and a huge banner that read "Good luck, Tony Blair."
The demonstrators clashed at one point with several anti-communists who greeted their march with jeers.
In the Serbian capital, Belgrade, several thousand people marked May Day by taking to the streets in protest against President Slobodan Milosevic's regime.
"We want to remind everyone that we are still demanding changes and the departure of Slobodan Milosevic, who has destroyed everything," Mr Milan Nikolic, head of the independent Nezavisnost union, said.
At Oxford University students gathered to watch the more daring make the traditional May Day leap from one of the town's historic bridges.