The Investigative Committee, Russia's main investigation agency, said officers had seized "a large quantity of propaganda material and literature with anti-state slogans, electronic databases and computers containing information relevant to the criminal case" opened over violence at the May 6 protest.
Former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov and Sobchak, a TV presenter, socialite and restaurateur who has become a critic of Putin despite her late father's close ties to the president before he rose to power, were among those targeted for searches.
"People barged in at 8 a.m., gave me no chance to get dressed, robbed the apartment, humiliated me," she tweeted. "I never thought we would return to such repression in this country."
"Vova is crazy," one Twitter user wrote, referring to Putin by the common nickname for Vladimir. Others messaged under the tag that translates as "hello1937" - a reference to the deadliest year of dictator Josef Stalin's repression.
"What we are witnessing today is in essence the year 1937," opposition activist Yevgenia Chirikova said at an emergency meeting in a cramped office to discuss the protest on Tuesday.
Two armed police guarded the entrance to Navalny's modest, Soviet-built apartment building, allowing in only residents.
Navalny's lawyer was barred from his flat for hours, Ekho Moskvy radio said. P olice emerged carrying boxes 13 hours after entering Navalny's building, and his spokeswoman Anna Veduta said armed police also went to an office Navalny uses.
"This is the rape of the Russian constitution," she said.
She said one item authorities confiscated was a T-shirt with the phrase "crooks and thieves" - Navalny's mocking nickname for United Russia, the party Putin has used as a lever of power.
"They rifled through everything, every wardrobe, in the toilet, in the refrigerator. They searched under the beds," Udaltsov told reporters of the search at his home.
Maria Baronova, aide to an opposition lawmaker, said her flat was searched while she was out with her 5-year-old daughter. Investigators took four computers, protest signs, posters, a sonogram from her pregnancy and a badge referring to LGBT - the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
She told Reuters she had not signed the summons and communicated with the investigators only by phone. "I told them, 'You have robbed my home, isn't it enough?'"
Opposition politician Sergei Mitrokhin said the raids were a sign Putin was relying on oppressive measures to rein in dissent rather than conducting political reforms. "Putin has stopped even imitating democracy," he said on Ekho Moskvy.
музыка
Bye Bye Love, Live in Hollywood 1968, Simon & Garfunkel
The duo Simon & Garfunkel recorded it live for their 1970 Bridge Over Troubled Water album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0gLnfSgdLA
I`m through with romance
I`m through with love
I`m through with counting
The stars above
And here`s the reason
That I`m so free
