RUSSIA
Workers in pitched battles to defend jobs
By Bill
Wayland
While the U.S. corporate media have focused on Russian
military action in Chechnya, they have ignored fierce class
battles raging in the heart of the Russian Federation.
On the night of Oct. 14, OMON police commandos attacked the
Sovietsky Pulp and Paper Mill in the Vyborg region, deep in the
Karelian forest north of Leningrad. The cops had to flee,
however, when the workers defending the plant were joined by
nearly all the people of the village of Sovietsky--many of them
bearing scythes, two-by-fours and hunting rifles.
According to Olga Dushkina of the plant's elected
administration, the cops shot and wounded 11 workers and took
eight prisoners. But the cops had to released them in exchange
for owner's representative Alexander Sabadozh, whom the workers
had captured.
This is the third attack on the mill since January 1998.
That was when the workers' strike committee took over the plant
to prevent its being shut down by a British-owned multinational
corporation.
When Workers World visited the plant in November 1998,
production was running smoothly under workers' control. It was
operating below capacity, however, because of the chaos of the
capitalist market--a problem it didn't face when the USSR
existed.
The Sovietsky mill was built in Soviet times and was
equipped with the latest paper-making machinery. In 1996 the
new ly privatized mill was bought by London-based Nimanor
Corp., which owns competing enterprises elsewhere in
Europe.
The British bosses didn't want to keep the plant open. They
just wanted to grab its markets and machinery.
After working for months without pay, the workers learned
that the plant's machinery was about to be removed. They
decided to seize the plant and run it themselves. The town
council of Sovietsky, where the mill is located, supported
them.
Workers chose council member Alexander Vantorin to be
"people's director." The workers got legal aid from Vladimir
Grigoriev, a legislator from Leningrad region who is a member
of the Russia Communist Workers' Party.
The bosses learned of the workers' action when the father of
Nimanor Corp.'s owner showed up to look at his son's Russian
investment.
The workers didn't let his helicopter land.
A column of police sent to retake the plant backed down when
they saw it was guarded by a human blockade of workers and
townspeople massed behind fire trucks. On the plant roof were
workers with hunting rifles. The workers got national attention
when they blocked the highway leading to Finland.
Nimanor sold the plant to Alcem UK, another British firm.
The new owners' agents arrived at the plant on July 9,
accompanied by state officials and 100 men wearing black
clothing and carrying guns.
They entered Vantorin's office, disconnected the telephone
lines and declared: "The factory is ours now! Stop production
and leave!"
But the mill siren sounded an alarm, and hundreds of workers
and villagers rushed to the plant. After a ferocious battle the
attackers were driven out.
In the fight, Alexander Nikolayev, a maintenance worker,
lost an eye to a blow from a club. Galina Shamaeva, a warehouse
worker, suffered a heart attack after being beaten. Village
medical workers saved her life.
The latest battle began at midnight on Oct. 14, when a
special police unit invaded the plant. A government
spokesperson said they were acting on a court order to "remove
... those who illegally took over the mill and stopped the true
owners from running it."
Night shift workers fought back and the cops opened fire.
When 700 workers and supporters rushed to the plant, the cops
barricaded themselves in the second floor of the administration
building with their prisoners, some of whom were beaten.
The workers responded by grabbing bosses' agent Sabadozh.
The police withdrew and released their prisoners. Workers have
vowed publicly to defend the mill with their lives.
Similar battles are taking place throughout the former
Soviet Union as workers seize mills, mines and factories in
order to live. On Sept. 19 workers' defense guards battled
police for control of the Chernigovsky coal-mine complex near
the town of Berezovsky in Siberia's Kuzbass region. The cops
were acting on behalf of a Swiss-owned corporation that had
bought the plant but wanted to cut production.
The Russian government has shut down dozens of mines in
Kuzbass at the behest of the International Monetary Fund.
The labor of workers like those in Vyborg produced the vast
stolen wealth that is now sitting in Western banks or being
played on Wall Street. But the monopoly-run world capitalist
market cannot absorb the productive capacity built up in the
Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and Mongolia during decades of
socialism. As a result, workers in those republics face
starvation. Recapturing the means of production is a matter of
survival.
In 1917, Russia's workers inspired the world with the first
successful working-class revolution. Today they are again
giving workers everywhere an example of how to resist layoffs,
privatization and corporate tyranny.
The Vyborg Workers'Committee are preparing to resist further
police action. They urge that protests be faxed to the governor
of the Leningrad region at 011
7 812 271 56 27. Support messages and copies of protests may be
faxed to the Workers Committee at 7 812 115 28 45 or to Deputy
of State Duma V. Grigoriev at
7 095 92 37 44.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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