The following is part one of News and Views, the "news" part (even
though there's probably just as many views). Please
distribute freely.
NEWS AND VIEWS
FROM THE EDITOR It's that time again to get news from the former Soviet Union.
My comrades in America it seems are
stuck with the same ol' president, and it seems, so are we, so now that we know
the status quo, it's time to go. I'm
glad to report that following our pre-election doldrums, actually there has
been a considerable amount of activity.
In September I ventured to the dread ADA conference to have a look at my fellow
anarchists. For those of you who aren't
up on our Russian groups and federations, ADA is the Association of the Anarchist
Movement, a federation whose
history is rather odd. Let's just say that one could find there such wonders
as anarcho-monarchists, capitalists and,
the ever-popular and once numerous anarcho-democrats. Whereas last year there
was just a handful of wierdos, this
year there were quite a number of people from different cities present, so I
lucked out. Of course I did get rather
odd literture - like leaflets on constitutional anarchism - but it was rather
interesting to hear about whats going on
around the X and it was a good sign to see that there were people interested
in making contacts and doing something.
What did I find out during this conference? First, that in many cities there
is nothing much happening. The anarchists
there are quite isolated as you can imagine. Well, what we need to do is buy
(or get) a bus, make an anarchy bus, and
tour the country spreading goodwill and mischief. Really, we are quite lucky
in Moscow that we have some people around us
to do things with and we have more access to information than in places like
Kustanai. (That's a city in Kazakhstan,
where comrade Vasily is from. Of course he's taken refuge in the squat here
in Moscow and maybe he'll never go back.) So,
what I'd like for my dear comrades to keep in mind is that wed like it if they
occasionally had contact with these
poor lonely souls because what winds up happening is that we get all the info
here in Moscow and although we have no real
problems passing it along, Moscow has always been seen as the center of everything
in Soviet life and it's time to
think regionally and decentralize. There are some really good people out there
and there are good opportunities for
them to organize something.
It was interesting to find out that in Alma-Ata there are three anarchist groups,
but they don't have much to do with
each other. In fact, they didn't seem to have a lot to do except sabotage ski
slopes. The same could be said of a
number of groups - they don't quite know what to do or are rather small. The
places that seemed the most active were
Moscow, Petersburg and Donetsk. More about what we're doing later. Another place
where there was quite a lot of activity
was Kaliningrad. This is exclusively ecological activity and I wanted to say
a few words on this topic.
Perhaps the main type of activity that people seem to be involved in now is
the ecological protest movement. I must
say that some of the recent actions that have been organized have been quite
well done. Our ecological comrades, that is
Rainbow Keepers and the Social Ecology Unionm as well as a few others, are quite
energetic and are constantly doing
something. A lot of young people are attracted to their actions. There are two
publications, "Trety Put" and
"Rainbow Keepers" (the last issue of which is about the nicest looking
zine I've ever seen in Russia). To be honest,
I don't know much about the other groups outside Moscow, Nizhny and Kaliningrad,
but what I do know is that there are
lots of these ecological groups throughout Russia. To a large extent, many of
these groups exist because they get
grants from the US government to carry out their activity. I saw a list once
of these grant-receiving groups, (in a USAID
publication) and I was amazed. Well, our friends would be fools to turn down
the opportunity to finance themselves,
especially when self-financing is so difficult given the general poverty here.
That hardly bothers me. What does
bother me is that too many of our people pay too much attention to these problems,
to the exclusion of all else.
And I'm sure that's what USAID people want and had in mind when they gave out
these grants.
Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against this sort of activism. I hate industrial
consumer society. I was at
Seabrook, was an animal liberationist, am a vegetarian for more than 20 years,
have never smoked, protested the fur
expo on Red Square, lobbied for the bottle bill, praticed recycling before the
city of NY took care of it, collected
signatures for clean water, don't drive, ride a bike, have done some direct
actions... This is all great. (Although I'd
rather that they stop smoking at the meetings and try to start a recycling movement
in Moscow than hugging trees, but
OK.) But ecological issues are only part of the problem. As a matter of fact,
one can argue that much of the ecological
problems in the world, particularly here, are part of larger problems, like
poverty. It's a shame that someone can
concentrate all their political efforts on shutting down nuclear reactors and
spiking trees when there is civil war,
when people are starving... I understand why, because, as Max (our RK guy) said,
people have to feel like there's
something that they can win. And we're not exactly in a good position to organize
say, a general strike.
So you will read a lot about these ecological actions this time. Also, I'll
tell you about what the Donetsk group is up
to, about our fabulous international brigade, what one of our old comrades is
up to in Karelia, about the KRAS
conference and the return of the Wobblies. In addition, an article about corruption
in the government and the problems
of the workers' movement.
Finally some annoucements. First of all, I'd like to congratulate Petr Ryabov
with the completion of his
dissertation on "The Problem of the Individual in Anarchist Philosophy".
It's a giant two-volume work, hopefully which
will sometime see the light of day, by my fellow graphomaniac and comrade. I'd
also like to congratulate him
for making it out of Belarus in one piece after serving a stint in a lovely
barren cell this October. We'd like to
thank all the comrades who bombarded the Belarussian government with telegrams
and phone calls. It worked.
Second, we are planning some interesting things for the summer and invite foreign
guests. Actually, since we invite
you, we feel obliged that these things be interesting, so, unfortunately, we
haven't made any definite decisions yet as
to whether to drag people to a collective farm, or Bakunin's house or to a nuclear
reactor, but if you want to visit
Russia, we can guarantee you neon green wheatgrass drink and lots of drunken
songs in languages that you don't
understand. And last, but not least, please copy and distribute this bulletin
as you see fit. Absolutely no
copyright. As a matter of fact, I should mention that all opinions in this bulletin
are the opinions of Com. Akai,
unless otherwise stated and that, in the spirit of the ANC (absolutely no copyright)
I have comandeered the publication
of this rag from Com. Tsovma, who may ultimately protest that I've stolen his
idea for the name, but he's stolen lots
of ideas from me, so no matter.
News and Views comes out sporadically, and if you would like to receive the
next issue, please make an effort to bribe or
impress the editor. Apologies to those who have requested it and havent gotten
a reply from me - life is chaotic. Send
comments to L.Akai at cube@glas.apc.org or P.O. Box 500, Moscow 107061. Please
note that delivery time is up to one
month - each way.-
DOWN WITH LUKASHENKO!
Why we hate him and risked life and limb to go to Minsk.
Don't make me to all the work! All you have to do is read the paper to understand
why we hate Luka.
Lukashenko is a return of the cult of personality, of lies, censorship, the
party, political hegemony, the absence of
opposition. To watch Luka on TV during his Congress (and it was impossible to
do otherwise as the Russian channels were
cut), was like stepping back into the Soviet Union of the Brezhnev era. The
man wants to be dictator for life, and to
achieve this aim, he's decided to play good Luka and play up his public image
while harassing and arrested opposition,
banning journalists, ignoring the parliament, etc. The CIA wants to overthrow
the guy, but their plot was discovered
and people fled the country. Luka got paranoid about this and of course understood
that the world was watching when
they brutally beat demonstrators last spring, so he needed to do something,
and, as hes pretty smart, decided that he
likes this referendum idea, because he can falsify it but look like a democrat
at the same time. He got into a bit of
a standoff with the parliament, and we got wind of coup rumours so we decided
to help out our comrades in Belarus
and go to Minsk so that they wouldn't have to be stuck with the BNF (Belarussian
National Front). We went in the middle
of October.
Us Moscow adventurists were pleased to find that others had also organized
themselves to help out - namely the
Ukrainians had also formed a brigade, ironically, with the same name. We met
anarchists from Gomel and Grodno, who
similarly understood the need to go to Minsk and, unfortunately, some nazis
from Brest, who don't know the
difference between Hitler and Makhno. (I have a theory that the Soviets were
secretly testing chemical weapons near the
Polish borders and that these morons are an unfortunate side effect.) Well,
as you've figured out, there was no coup,
and, try as we did, we didn't manage to overthrow the government, so instead
we sang revolutionary songs and
planned further action. I must say our brothers from Minsk and Kiev have great
voices and I'd especially like to urge
our Minsk comrades to give up politics and become singers so that they can support
us financially and be of better use.
There was sort of a story here, about the trip. See, Luka is smooth and he had
the cops carry out arrests before and
after this big demo, but not during. So, while miners were going to Minsk, he
had them arrested. Some people got busted
on their way into the city. Others, like our comrades, got busted afterwards,
near the house where we were going to
meet. (There was to be a meeting of the FAB - Belarussian Anarchist Federation
(which has a hymn and everything), at
that place because the place it was originally supposed to be at was raided
the day before.) I saw a number of people
get busted, but it's not clear how many because it was done in such a way that
nobody saw the arrests and nobody heard
about them. In April they also arrested people in such a way, but it was a massive
sweep and the word got out. In any
case, they tried to make it difficult for us - they wouldn't tell us were they
were being held, where the trial would be,
etc., but our comrades were great and the General Attorney was bombarded with
phone calls from journalists, the
parliament got telegrams, and in the end our friends got off easy. Still, we're
far from happy. We know that the
political activists out there are getting harrassed, and if Luka has his way,
their days are numbered. So we're
continuing our campaign against the creep and are waiting to see what develops.
WEEK OF ANTI-NUKE PROTESTS: Chernobyl week in the Ukraine Last year, on April
12, 1995, the Ukrainian government
secretly adopted decree # 267 on the development of nuclear energy. At the same
time, all unofficial commerations of the
Chernobyl disaster were oulawed. This year even the publication of anti-nuke
literature was forbidden. Lots of
troops were called in. Rainbow Keepers held an action on April 23, 1996. About
40 people from Russia, Ukraine and
Belorussia, as well as a couple of people from other countries took part in
it.
The participants in the action, as well as a few people from the streets, marched
onto the Cabinet of Ministers. They
demanded that Chernobyl and other nuclear power stations be shut down and that
alternative forms of energy be developed.
The OMON (riot police) started to beat the demonstrators and arrested 19 people.
Ukrainian Greenpeace refused to get involved with the whole affair. Too radical
for them. As the 26th drew near, people
were getting ready for some action. On the 25th the police arrested some activists
right in the metro. And on the 26th,
it was all too surreal as the city held a party for its citizens. Wagner blasted
through the loudspeakers and then
pop stars gave concerts. And in the meanwhile, a fire burned for the fourth
striaght day in a row in the zone. A third
leak was found at Chernobyl and the level of radioactivity increased significantly.
How's that for learning a lesson from the past?
WHERE THE HELL IS VOLGODONSK? That's where the action was!
The Rainbow Keepers held yet another summer camp-protest action, this time
at the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant. The
center of their protest was at Volgodonsk, a city of 200,000 inhabitants, situated
13 kilometers from the plant. The
plant was built very poorly and the inhabitants of the city, especially those
who live in cheap Soviet hi-rises, are
being steadily contaminated. In 1990 there was a large local movement to shut
down the reactor and the local authorities
voted to close it, only to be turned down by the central authorities in Moscow.
Then this year, the regional
government got a letter from the Ministry of Atomic Energy saying that the reactor
would be put into use. Ironically
this letter was written on April 26, 1996, the tenth anniversary of the Chernobyl
disaster!
The Rainbow Keepers were thus invited by "Nuclear Free Don" and "The
Green Wave" to do an action in that city. The camp
started on August 10 and ended on the 28th. More than 40 people from Russia,
Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Tadzhikistan
took part in the action.
On the 21st the camp was attacked by some guys with machine guns and clubs.
Luckily nobody was killed, although a number
of people were hurt. All the banners were burned and photo and video cameras
stolen. Three of the attackers were
recognized as guards at the plant. They threatened to shoot everybody if they
hadn't left by the morning. The press and
police later showed up and nothing happened. In general the people of the city
were very supportive of the action.
Little old ladies came by to feed the camp. And quite a lot of contacts were
made and a bit of activism sparked the
city. The Keepers are even considering going back next year to keep up the struggle.
HUG A TREE and have a nice day!
In May RK went to the Akhunsky Forest (near Penza - if that means anything
to you) to spike some trees. Although its
forbidden to cut down trees in the area, a lot of it has been going on. They
repeated this type of action in June in
the Bolshoi Tkhatch mountains, near Krasnodar.
All this follows last years' actions to save some trees in Moscow where they
were cut down so that the city could waste
money on a Galina Vishneskaya opera school. (Like, we need this. There's no
money to pay workers, mind you. Besides,
Galina is a foul bitch and her husband is a daffy-ducklike, dick-brained, semi-fascist,
elitist moron.) Such neighbourhood initiatives, as well as other anti- construction
demos are popping up in Moscow left and right. (Of course, there is a great
housing shortage, so not everyone symapthizes with these actions. The city is
a monster.) Directions on how to sabotage lumberjacks were printed in this issue
of "Rainbow Keepers".
ANTI-ANTI FASCISM?
My "second-favourite" Trotskyist sect, the Militant, (only outdone
by the Sparts), is up to organizing youth again. The
unsinkable Robert Jones (probably a pseudonym), who is the local rep of Youth
Against Racism in Europe, organized an
anti-fascist month in Moscow. Well, I didn't go to anything, so I can't say
much about what happened, but I know that I
smell a two-headed (Moscow River) fish. First of all, why are many of the favourite
local participants of this group fascists? Or
if not outright fascists, then just lovers of totalitarianism? Mr. Svetkov,
for example, the national bolshevik. Or Mr. Kostenko, who joined the RKRP, and
well, is just a major asshole provacateur. An avocator or Stalinist terror and
Kim il-Sun. And the artist Osmolosky, whose exhibition "Anti-fascism and
Anti-anti-fascism" was the centerpiece of the conference. We already experienced
the "pluralism" of this sect and understand it all to be just more
entrism, but unfortunately, some of our stupider
comrades do not. A number of anarchists were invited to Moscow, all expenses
paid, to take part in this conference
but I didn't see them at the so-called anti-fascist rally. It was rather sad
- in all 6 or 7 people standing on Soviet
Sq. (well, actually it's not Soviet square anymore, but I can never remember
what they renamed it). They didn't say
anything, but there were at least 7 or 8 foreign journalists there filming,
presumably French and other Trots who want to
show their comrades what they organized to keep their allowances coming. Well,
militants, since we generally
gather three times as many people at our anti-fa shit, I'd suggest you send
us the money and send Robert packing.
RKAS ACTIVE IN MINERS'STRIKE
The Revolutionary Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists were very busy this
summer as the miners in the Donbass region
went on strike and the government repressed Mikhail Krylov, a trade union leader.
The A-Ses published quite a number of
anarchist papers, put up posters, talked with workers and participated in many
meetings and actions.The Donetsk group
is actively continuing their work with the workers and continue propogating
anarchist ideas of self-organization,
self-management and so on.
KRAS CONFERENCE GOES OVER POLITELY
The Confederation of Radical Anarcho-Syndicalists, not to be confused with
the renegade Radical Confederation of Anarcho-
Syndicalist (furthermore not to be confused with the more modest Group of Radical
Anarcho-Syndicalist, or the living
dead, not-so-radical, Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists) held its conference
at the end of August in Gomel, Belarus.
A whole bunch of resolutions were adopted, nobody was killed. The group wants
to represent the CIS in the IWA but
some other anarcho-syndicalists, namely the Radicals, are not in favour of such
representation. The KRAS ministry of
information was set in Moscow. (What did you expect?)
WHAT INTERNATIONAL TO JOIN? THE WOBBLIES RISE UP FROM THE DEAD.
For those who don't want to join the International, there's always the IWW.
Organizing efforts are under way here to
start a wobbly group, but the project isn't on its feet yet. However, as the
situation here is quite unsteady, we're
hoping that some people will stop hobbling about, rocking forth between different
authoritarian groups and take their
first baby steps on the road to the great general strike and self-organization.
WHAT TO DO IN KARELIA
Well, if you've tried all the flavours at the Petrozavodsk Ben and Jerry's,
you might as well try to force a
referendum. The story of how a small group made big news in Karelia is downright
inspirational for all who want to start
up grassroots movements.
It all started on Feb. 15 when two women went to a consultant to get advice
on alternative service for their
loved ones. Who wants to send a son or husband off to Chechnya? To fight a war
that even Lebed didn't want to
fight? They decided that they wanted to do something to end the war in Chechnya,
so they figured that Karelia should
hold a referendum. Not that my anarchistic soul cares much for voting, but such
things are preferable to the rule of
the Kremlin, especially considering that the people, by and large, are not only
against the war, but definitely against
compulsory military service. On Feb. 20 they formed a small group of 5 people
and on the 27th they already went to the
government with the idea and started phoning people en masse. By March 5 a big
media campaign was started and they
had started collecting signatures but there were some problems because the group
wasn't registered, and without
the almighty registration in Russia, nothing works. On the 12 of March, the
government said that it couldn't consider a
referendum because this was a matter of national defense, but the group argued,
successfully, that it couldn't be a
matter of defense because first of all, Russia hadn't been invaded, and secondly,
Russia doesn't recognize the
independence of Ichkeria, so it's a matter of internal politics, a matter of
the governing of the Russian
Federation. On the 14th they refused to register the group, but the Mayor of
Petrozavodsk (who definitely has tried all
the B&J flavours), intervined and they were registered by the 23rd. They
then needed to just collect 25,000 signatures
to force the referendum and set up info stands in the city. Unfortunately the
bureaucrats sabotaged the group, saying
that they were incorrectly registeres, so they had to go back to GO. Still,
our friends there are still working hard
and we hope that the experience they're getting in organizing will do them some
good.
MORE ECO-NEWS
What - more eco-news? O.K., I'll spare you. Just be aware that they were protesting
aginst this and that, here and
there. People were arrested, nobody was killed.
WE HELD A CONFERENCE AND NO ONE CAME
Yeah, we held a Stirner Conference, but the guy whose idea it was backed out
at the last minute so it was poorly
organized and no one came but Ryabov and I did some kick-ass lectures and we
dont care that nobody came, because we like
talking to ourselves anyway. So there.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Any workers group that feels unrepresented in the Russian Federation,
please send us an essay, 50 words or less about why your group is better than
our groups, along with a cheque for 25,000USD to The Radical Confederation of
Radical Anarcho-Cynicalists, Moscow Group, P.O. Box 34, Moscow 117485 or to
the Friends of the IWW, IWA and IWOK
International, c/o Friends of Friends, P.O. Box 500, Moscow 107061. Or vice-versa.
That's all for now. Please forgive me for any gross omissions. More to follow.