The biggest protest rally took place in Vladivostok, where 2,500 people marched down Svetlanskaya Street defying an official ban. The Communists, joined by car-owners' movement activists carried posters addressed to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: "Vlad, out" and "Putler Kaput".
In St Petersburg a picket of "those who disagree" attracted about 30 people who carried the poster: "Put Government Under People's Control". Police did the opposite and took down the picketers' passport details.
In Ulyanovsk the police detained all the leaders of the radical opposition to prevent them from demonstrating. Igor Toporkov of the People's Democratic Union, who had barricaded himself in his flat, was challenged to come out with the words "Come out, you cowardly bastard".
In Yekaterinburg Yuri Basok, a photographer with an online publication, an aggrieved party in a case involving chief of the Sverdlovsk Region traffic police, Yuri Dyomin, was detained. The local police authorities claimed he was found in possession of "leaflets aimed to provoke panic during the economic crisis".
It will be recalled that on January 8, during a protest rally staged by car owners in Yekaterinburg, Mr Dyomin hit the photographer in his face, was detained but later released after signing a written pledge not to leave town.
In Blagoveshchensk the head of the KPRF faction in the parliament of the Amur Region, Tatyana Rakutina, joined the protest rally riding a horse. "The rise of import duties on foreign cars will not benefit the Russian car industry," she declared, adding that even a horse "is more reliable than Russian-made cars".
In Omsk, members of the Yabloko Party staged a rally with a poster that quoted from one of Vladimir Putin's speeches: "If a person is happy about everything, he is a total idiot."
The rallies staged in the regions by United Russia were carbon copies of those in Moscow. In Vladivostok the picketers carried a poster "We are together and everything is fine." Our correspondent spotted a woman with a sheet of paper ticking off the names of those who had shown up for the rally, with every participant then putting his signature next to his or her name.
In Perm more than 1,500 people showed up for a United Russia rally in spite of the freezing weather. "We must renounce any extremist actions," the secretary of the party's regional political council Gennady Tushnolobov cajoled those present.
In Kazan, along with the nationwide slogan "The People! Medvedev! Putin! Together We Shall Win!", the demonstrators carried the name of Tatarstan's President Mintimer Shaimiyev. A United Russia rally in Tyumen was cancelled because of the weather - it was -30 degrees outside.
The biggest pro-government rally brought together 10,000 people in Grozny. Judging from the speeches by the leaders of United Russia's Chechen branch they pinned their hopes on President Ramzan Kadyrov to take Chechnya out of the financial crisis. "Under the leadership of the member of the Supreme Council of the Party, the President of the Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, it is possible to effectively implement our plans and ideas," said the head of the regional party executive committee, Abdulbek Vahayev.
Ivan Tyazhlov