To please Bush
Russian gov't tries to ban revolutionaries
By Bill Cecil
On May 9 people across the former USSR marched to honor the
57th anniversary of their triumph over Hitler. Two weeks later
another aspiring world conqueror arrived on Russian soil.
Unlike Germany's fuehrer, George W. Bush was welcomed with
pomp and ceremony--at least by the Putin administration.
Ordinary Russians felt different.
On May 23, some 1,000 people rallied outside the U.S.
Embassy in Moscow to protest Bush's plans for global war and
the Putin government's plan to ally itself with NATO. They
chanted and sang a song now popular in Russia: "Want to live!
Down with America!"
Speakers compared the early death, hunger and disease that
returned to Russia with capitalism to the devastation caused by
the World War II Nazi invasion. Veterans of that war took part
in the protest, which was called by the Moscow Committee of the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Russia's biggest
political party.
Members of the Communist Youth Vanguard blocked traffic and
scuffled with police. They formed a human chain, chanting:
"This is the wall of the Soviet border! Bush, go back, and take
Putin with you!" and "Re-vo-lu-tion!"
Protests were also held in Leningrad (St. Petersburg) when
Bush visited there.
Anti-capitalist and anti-U.S. resistance is growing in
Russia, even as the regime bends over backward to please the
Bush administration and U.S. troops occupy former Soviet
republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus. This year's May Day
march in Moscow drew the biggest turnout in years--200,000
people.
On May 29, OMON riot police attacked unionists protesting
the Russia-European Union summit in Moscow. Many were beaten.
Two dozen--including V. Petrov, coordinator of the
anti-capitalist trade union Zaschita Trud (Defense of Labor),
and S. Sychev, union leader at the big GPZ factory--were
arrested.
The protesters carried signs against rent hikes, demanding
an end to debt repayment to Western banks and protesting the
new capitalist Labor Code, which allows a 58-hour work week.
Under Soviet law, the maximum was 35 hours.
In tandem with its efforts to please the Pentagon and
Western investors, the Putin regime is trying to suppress one
of the most active anti-capitalist parties in Russia. On May 16
the Ministry of Justice refused to register the Russian
Communist Workers Party-Revolutionary Party of Communists,
claiming its program is "incompatible with the Constitution."
The cops objected to a paragraph advocating a "revolutionary
transformation of the social order with the view to establish
the dominance of public property in the means of production to
provide the free development and well-being of all."
Under Putin's laws the party would not be able to legally
call a demonstration or run candidates for office. There is a
danger that its newspaper Working Russia may be banned. No
wonder the Bush administration considers that Russia is "now a
democracy."
The RKRP-RPK was formed in defiance of Boris Yeltsin's 1991
ban of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It has been
active in strikes and labor struggles around Russia, and calls
for workers' soviets and the return of socialism. The RKRP,
which merged with the RPK to form the new party, has been
registered for 10 years and has received millions of votes in
elections.
In a statement, the party's leadership quoted Nobel Prize
winner and Duma Deputy Zhores Alferov, who said recently,
"Fascism begins with anti-communism." The statement continued:
"The party will not move away from its aims and will continue
waging the struggle of the working people against forthcoming
fascism. We will not tremble at continuing on the road we have
chosen."
The RKRP-RKP urges that protests be sent to the Ministry of
Justice of the Russian Federation, Russia 109830 GSP, Zh-28,
Moscow Ulitsa Vorontsovo Pole, d. 4, by fax to 011 7 095 916
2903 or by email to www.minjust.ru/contacts.html.
Reprinted from the June 13, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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