“We see by the number of people that literature still has authority in our society because no one called these people — they came themselves,” said Lev Rubinstein, 65, a poet and one of the organizers. “We thought this would be a modest stroll of several literary colleagues, and this is what happened. You can see it yourself.”

“I don’t know how this will all end, but I can say that no one will forget it,” he said.

Russian history is full of confrontations between leaders and writers, whom Stalin once described as the “engineers of the human soul.” Sunday’s march alluded to this, beginning at a statue of the poet Aleksandr S. Pushkin — who was sent into exile by Czar Alexander I — and ending at a statue of Aleksandr S. Griboyedov, a playwright whose sendup of the Moscow aristocracy was not released by czarist censors until after his death.

Though writers can no longer be said to guide public opinion, they can still prompt near-delirium among their fans, and several of the writers strolled with great difficulty on Sunday because of the press of well-wishers. Valentina V. Zimilova, 73, a retired teacher, was overcome with emotion when Dmitri L. Bykov, a poet and critic, signed a copy of one of his books for her.

“I am enraptured by his courage, his bravery, his wit,” she said. “I wrote down no less than 20 words that were new for me. It’s a wonderful book. You can’t tear yourself away, even though it is very thick. It has 900 pages.”