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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Aug. 3, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Young fighters against capitalism jailed
By Bill Wayland
The crisis of capitalism in Russia has sometimes forced the government of President Vladimir Putin to act sternly toward individual capitalists who have moved much of the country's wealth into Western banks.
When it does so, there are howls of outrage from the State Department and the U.S. corporate media. Such was the case in May, when the Russian state briefly jailed multibillionaire Vladimir Gusinsky.
When partisans of socialism and the working class are imprisoned, however, the silence is deafening.
Over the past five months, the Federal Security Bureau, Russia's FBI, has arrested five young revolutionaries on spurious charges of planting bombs near FSB offices in 1998 and 1999.
The five--Nadezhda Raks, Tatiana Sokolova, Larissa Romanova, Andrei Sokolov and Igor Gubkin--belong to the Revolutionary Young Communist League-Bolshevik (RKSM-B). Raks and Sokolova, who are also activists in the Russia Communist Workers Party (RKRP), have been held since February.
They deny all charges, and no evidence has been presented against them.
The five have been denied rights guaranteed under Russia's Soviet-era laws. Raks was not allowed to see a lawyer until six weeks after her arrest. Sokolova was only allowed to see her relatives twice though the law allows fortnightly visits. The prisoners'letters have been sent out after six weeks rather than in the three days the law requires.
Raks was born in Ukraine in 1973. Despite the destruction of Soviet power, she remained loyal to the ideals of socialism and the Bolshevik Revolution. In 1993 she moved to the Russian city of Kaluga, where she worked as a schoolteacher. She revived the Soviet children's organization Young Pioneers and reorganized summer Pioneer camps, which had disappeared after the fall of the Soviet Union. In 1997 she organized a teachers' strike in Kaluga. She is also a writer for the RKSM-B newspaper Bumbarash.
In a letter from prison, Raks said, "We have chosen our way and found our mission in life, like our grandmothers and grandfathers during the [Second World] War. I do not want to be a lackey. I am glad I have nothing to be ashamed of before those Soviet people who gave their dearest possession, their lives, for the future and for Soviet power."
A Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners Fighting for Socialism has been formed and held a rally in support of the five in central Moscow June 15. "Stop political repression against communists" and "Stop the prison state from jailing the innocent" were among the slogans at the rally.
Protests against the jailing of political activists in Russia may be emailed
to the Ministry of the Interior at
Ministry @MID.ru, the FSB at FSB@FSB.ru and to President Putin
at President@Kremlin.ru. Protestletters can also be faxed to Putin at
011-7-095-206-02-66.The committee asks that copies of the protests and letters of support be sent to N.G. Raks, E-20, p/ja 201, Moscow, Russia 111 020.
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