Does a viral photo featuring a large mass of people gathered in a city square show an anti-COVID-19 vaccination protest in Austria? No, that's not true: The image, taken in 1991, actually shows Russians gathered to protest the leadership of the country at the time.
The claim was suggested in a Facebook post (archived here) published on November 23, 2021. The post featured a cropped and differently-toned version of the original image, with the following text superimposed:
WE WILL NOT COMPLY
The Revolution Will
Not Be Televised!
(AUSTRIA)
This is what the post looked like on Facebook on November 29, 2021:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Nov 29 19:44 2021 UTC)
The text superimposed over the image alluded to the anti-COVID-19 vaccination protests in Austria. Those protests were in response to a national November 2021 lockdown in the country, which was to last longer for unvaccinated Austrians. Austrians also protested a mandate requiring all eligible residents to be vaccinated against COVID-19, which was to go into effect on February 1, 2022. Real images of one large Austrian anti-COVID-19 vaccination protest, held in the country's capital city of Vienna on November 20, 2021, can be found on Getty Images here. That protest was estimated to include about 35,000 people.
The image used in the Facebook post was taken by The Associated Press on March 10, 1991, in Moscow. The crowd of about 500,000 people was gathered to demand that then-President Mikhail Gorbachev -- the last leader of the Soviet Union before it broke apart -- step down from power.
