***************************************************************** We've got an attitude! -Bad Brains ================================================================= NEWS & VIEWS FROM (THE FORMER) SOVIETSKY SOYUZ No.3 February 1995 ================================================================= Jahrbucher fur Psychoanalitik und Psychopatalogik der Russischer Radikalbewegungs ***************************************************************** GENERAL COMPLAINTS Greetings from the weak link of the worldwide revolutionary resistance! In spite of the word 'news' in the name of this bulletin it has always been views that dominated it. Just as any other publication from the former USSR, ours is very opinionated, not to say sectarian (we haven't got a sect). Since, due to our irregularity, we fail to deliver news that doesn't stink, we always make reviewing some tendencies in the anarchist scene here our main preoccupation. This time too, we offer you the following general complaints. (Well, there will be some news and events.) The period since the previous issue of 'News & Views' (August 1993) was characterized by the more and more evident withering away of the ideological federations (that is the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS) and the Federation of Revolutionary Anarchists (FRAN).A third federation,the Association of Anarchist Movements (ADA) never was an ideological federation and due to its very informal character just can't die, because it was never actually so much alive). This fact however shouldn't bother you so much, since in places where there's enough will to continue anarchist activities, they are still carried on - on a more humane and non-sectarian basis. Unfortunately not everywhere it is so and anarchist groups that actually do something can be counted by numbers, plus, information exchange between different groups is in fact falling apart due to the fact that almost all the anarchist info-bulletins collapsed -the Petersburg-based "An- Press" which was published by libertarian capitalists is now defunct while its publishers finally did what they should have done long ago - joined some liberal party. "KAS-Contact" that was moved from Moscow to Tomsk 2 or 3 years ago finally collapsed, too, and was moved to Irkutsk where it was being published very irregularly due to lack of actual information and activities and technical problems. The only bulletin that carried some occasional news that was buried under heaps of gossip was Moscow IREAN's "Novy Nestor", that many people were forced to read since there was nothing else. (When I say the bulletin was filled with gossip and not news, I present not my personal point of view, but the position of the editors of the bulletin, who from the very beginning looked at it as a joke. It's very ironic that they were delivering crap ahead of schedule (about 30 or 40 issues were published since the beginning of the last year), while they failed to publish their paper with the same regularity - although the latter only served the interests of anarchism in Russia since the paper was filled with RAF communiques and salivating about how IREAN loves them.) UKRANIAN ANARCHISTS RE-GROUP (WHAT ELSE CAN THEY DO?) In September-October last year some Ukranian anarchists, tired of sectarian fights between KAS and FRAN and the absence of any workable anarchist network in Ukraine itself, decided to launch some kind of an all-Ukranian federation. Although not all the Ukranian anarchist groups participated in the gathering, the organizers (the Donetsk KAS group) got positive responses from various groups and activists from Lvov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Nikolayev and some smaller towns. As a result of discussion at the conference they decided to put an end to sectarian debates (that were mainly 'imported' from Russia anyway) and quit all the federations they were part of - KAS, FRAN and ADA - and form the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists (KRAS). (In fact the Donetsk KAS group proposed to create the Confederation of Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists with a more traditional, IWA-type program at the last KAS gathering in Moscow, but this proposal was declined partly because of the lack of substantial reasoning behind it and some rather bureaucratic proposals for how this new federation should be run.) The new all-Ukranian federation adopted a traditional anarcho-syndicalist program modelled on the one of the IWA. The latter seems to arouse a lot of comradely interest for KRAS, although their position on the possibilities of affiliation with the IWA is different from that of the "Friends of the IWA" in Moscow - KRAS feels that the question of affiliation is still not on the agenda and it won't be in 1996 (the planned date of the next IWA Congress) due to the obvious weakness of anarcho-syndicalists in the former USSR and the absence of the "critical mass" for a syndicalist union. And it's true - none of the syndicalist groups in this country can be called a union, because of their miniscule size. Although the anarchists of Donetsk region who were the motor behind the creation of KRAS are rather optimistic about the future of this organization, they obviously will face some serious problems - like the one they had last year when the officials warned them that they can't be an "anarchist federation" and publish a paper of this "federation" since it is not legally registered with the state. In case they will try to violate this, they were promised to be charged several hundred dollars worth of fines. This was one of the reasons why the second issue of their "Anarchy" paper wasn't published (the other reason was the primitive stage of capitalism in Ukraine and virtual inavalability of accessible printing places). Anyway, Ukranian anarchists didn't abandon their desire to continue their publication. So far they launched a small internal discussion bulletin that aims at creating a discussion about the activities and principles of their organization. REVOLUTION OF THE SPECTACLE IN THE SOCIETY OF EVERYDAY LIFE The lack of appeal of 'radical' ideas and actions to the general population forces 'radicals' to think of new ways to seek popular support. The latest frenzy in the anarchist, communist and proto- fascist circles is the concept of being 'cool' and presenting your ideas and activities in the most spectacular way. The first to dive into this marketing strategy was Edward Limonov, a scandally-famous Russian writer, founder of the spectacular- extremist National-Bolshevik Party. That Limonov, this re- incarnation of Malcolm MacLaren, decided to gain some popularity and money on the scandals surrounding his 'political' activities was quite predictable. What was hard to predict was the recent obsession of pretty traditional Young Communists (RKSM) with creating a new image of communism, which is to be marketed to the youth. I doubt that they would ever have arrived at such a 'modern' concept, had they not been surrounded by some 'anarchists', who were in fact the main orchestrants of this frenzy. Already a while ago some people from IREAN headed to the Stalinist-lead "Student Defence" "trade union", where some monarchists and other miserable creatures were also involved. Anarchists wrote some 'cool' articles for the Young Communists' paper giving these bores some brand new ideas and images - some class war, some poorly-digested feminism, etc. "Student Defence" managed to organize some 'cool' protest in April last year with some occasional 'anti-capitalist actions', which were afterwards disproportionally blown up in their papers. After that the concept of 'spectacular revolution' was given final shape with statements like "to make a revolution today... it is enough to film the moment of rebellion and make a videoclip". On January 17, 1995 Young Communists organized a "theoretico- practical conference on "New Revolutionary Communism", where they talked a lot about the need for a new ideology. Also they spoke a lot about the 'similarity' between the new left and new right and the necessity of acting together on some concrete issues. The reason for that was found in the 'numerous historical examples of Communists acting together with {left} fascists'. However, the reasons for such activities and their possible outcomes were not analyzed at all - it seemed that analysis of any kind is out of their reach. These tendencies were rather well articulated in the papers of IREAN, RKSM and the National-Bolshevik Party recently and thus it became possible for the Russian Section of the Last International and the Clandestine Committee for the Eradication of Professional Revolutionaries, Militants and their Sympathizers to go to considerable lengths denouncing all these stupidities of these self-proclaimed 'radicals'. The communique of these organisations called "A Good Cure for Obsolete Communism: An Appeal to the Victims of the Theoretico-practical Conference..." attacked the superficial claims about putting the spectacle to the service of revolution, the discovery of the similarity between the new left and the new right that we should somehow 'use' and the general stupidity of the above-mentioned tendencies. ================================================================= CHRONICLE ================================================================= On December 7, 1994 about a dozen anarchists picketed the Indonesian embassy in Moscow, protesting against the continuing occupation of East Timor and the genocide of its population. A couple of articles about the tragedy of East Timor was published in some (almost mainstream) paper, thus putting an end to the 20- year-old silence of Russian propaganda on this topic. Protesters handed a letter to the ambassador. Unfortunately this time the Moscow office of the BHP (a company extracting oil from East Timor in spite of occupation and genocide there) wasn't spraypainted and thrashed, but we'll sure do it next time. Protests against the war in Chechnya sparked some life into the anarchist scene in Moscow. Anarchists participated in most of the demonstrations and pickets against the war. On December 12, which saw the biggest demonstration against the war (several thousand people, ranging from Communists to liberals and the Chechen community of Moscow), they tried to organize a small 'radical' march on the Defence Ministry together with some young Communists, Trots and radical liberals, but were stopped by the police. Several people were arrested later in the evening. On December 19 five activists of radical Democratic Union and anarchists painted the Defence Ministry with anti-war slogans and even 'bombed' it with fireworks. Some of them were reported to the police and arrested, but the court set them free without any fines. There was also some leafleting in Moscow metro (which is now filled with policemen and military, looking for "Chechen terrorists"), with a couple of people arrested and fined, and some spraypainting around the city. On January 30 some Moscow anarchists and radical liberals from the Democratic Union (DS) spraypainted 13 military call-up stations with anti-war and anti- imperialist slogans. They are also planning an active campaign against the military call-up this spring. In Nizhny Novgorod (former Gorky) the local Anarchist Club, Rainbow Keepers and the local Green Party launched a campaign against the military institutions and the war in Chechnya. Local call-up stations were spraypainted with slogans like "Russia shouldn't be a gendarme!", "Turn your arms against those who send you to kill!" and "Here are the headquarters of the fascist army". This happened after the local authorities remained deaf to the demands of protesters who were organizing pickets. Well, if they still will be deaf, anarchists promised to go further than words. Khabarovsk in the Far East is also bubbling - some anarchists make a radio show "While Mommy Watches Santa-Barbara", bringing some music and attitude to a young audience. Khabarovsk anarchists also launched a campaign against bus controllers, agitating for going without paying, collective obstructing of controllers and damaging some bus equipment. This campaign is an answer to another increase in the cost of public transport. Among the other activities of these joyful Far Easterners are continuing attempts to organize a rock club and a 'free university' (regular seminars and discussions on different topics). In Tver, a city located in the middle of the road between Moscow and St.Petersburg, anarchists participate in a campaign against the construction of a superhighway between the two capitals. Construction of the superhighway, that will have a deep base is likely to destroy the natural underground water system of the region. On February 11 activists from various anarchist, ecological and radical liberal groups held a discussion in Moscow. Originally, the topic of the discussion was rather broad - from the traditional ways of organizing in this country (and why they can't help us achieve anything) to the role of family in undermining broader communities to what we can do this spring. However, people who have gathered for the discussion preferred to discuss how it happened that radicalism lost even the tiny grounds that it had in the emerging social movements of the perestroika era (this discussion has been around for several years already), but didn't pay attention to what was really wrong with the existing forms of organizing (i.e. ideological groups). Anyway, since recently we witnessed the creation of some down-to- earth groups oriented on specific issues (mainly ecological), the radical movement is moving in the right direction. It's a pity that this is done in some unconscious fashion. As the discussion proceeded, issues of cooperation between different groups were discussed, namely around the anti-war and anti-draft campaign. It was more or less agreed to hold regular meetings and stop inter- personal and inter-group infights that were going on for several years. The groups that decided to participate in the future meetings included the Confederation of Anarcho-syndicalists, the Group of Radical Anarcho-syndicalists (GRAS), Rainbow Keepers (anarcho-ecological group), "A" Cultural Centre, "Cherepovets-95" ecological group,the Democratic Union (radical liberals), The Emma Goldman Dancing Brigade and some other activists that are active in other groups. (All of these groups are rather or very tiny.) ----------------------------------------------------------------- DON'T EAT YOUR REVOLUTION! MAKE IT! On November 7 all the Stalinists gathered on Oktyabrskaya Square in Moscow under the still-standing huge Lenin. Later they headed to Red Square, followed by some small groups of Trotskyists and even some anarchists who successfully created an illusion that "young people" were with them. While the latters' red-n-black banners and dull papers were surely unable to destroy the traditional way of celebrating the October revolution day, the assault came from where nobody expected it. As the demonstrators were going down their route they inevitably confronted a small group of some vocal revolutionaries who were standing on the side of the road under the banner of 'primitive communism' (made of fake red fur) who were fearlessly banging their big drum. As the crowd passed by them and tried to find out what they wanted to say, the atmosphere was getting more and more tense. "The Blind" (that is the name of an artistic group) announced that people who gathered at the demo had nothing to do with revolution, that they 'ate' their revolution and shitted it out, that the only thing they can do is ask the government for more money. Their poster announced "Proletarians of all lands, enough eating!" Instead of asking the government for money, The Blind announced, we should make another revolution and realise the real - primitive - communism. We should care less about material things and instead turn our attention to people around us. After the demo passed and the shouts "They are Jews, Zionists! Go back to Israel!" addressed to The Blind finally dissolved in the air, the 'primitive communists' headed back home and were stopped by police, who asked for their IDs. In spite of that, the affair ended peacefully. STRANGE FRUIT On September 5 some Moscow anarchists and punks were trying to defend their 'property rights' to a basement that was for some time used as a non-commercial club named first after the infamous sell-out Jerry Rubin and later after Ho Chi Min (due to the fact that the club was situated not far from a square named after him and a surreal monument to Ho). On New Year's Eve anarchists had a rather nice party there after which the club finally moved out - into nowhere. Since both the Jerry Rubin/Ho Chi Min Club and the "A" Club which was run by anarchists were homeless, they decided to join their forces. There are some reasons to believe that this union will bring about not only a cheap club where kids can hang out, but some constant place for radical meetings and activities. So far we found a basement that was given to us and now we are looking forward to cleaning it up and using it for meetings and some kind of infoshop and anarchist library. ----------------------------------------------------------------- THE ABC OF LIBERTARIAN LENINISM (this will be a comix) Characters: Male announcer - a hero of some comix, more or less like a Superman Comrade Lenin - the leader of proletarian revolution, founder of Leninism Male announcer: Contrary to what is usually believed, Leninism too has strong libertarian potential. Unfortunately anarchists tend to disregard it while they point out that only on one occasion Lenin supposedly 'stole' their ideas when he wrote "State and Revolution". If we dig a little deeper, we will discover the unknown terrain of Leninism which is highlighted by aphorisms, not less poetic than those of Bakunin, Marx and the situationists. Please, comrade Lenin, give us just one example. Comrade Lenin (sitting on a chair, his arms on his knees, seems a little depressed, announces in mechanic voice): You can't live in society and be free from society. Male announcer: Brilliant, don't you think? For years and years philisters exploited just one of the numerous creative methods appropriated by Marx from Hegel, namely Marxist dialectical double-speak. Here we find another creative tool for building a critical social theory, the one that can be called critical reductionism. Let us now take the same phrase, but this time without the last word. Please, comrade Lenin! Comrade Lenin: You can't live in society and be free... Male announcer: Terrific! But we still haven't seen the rest of the method. Let's take out some more words. Please, comrade Lenin! Comrade Lenin: You can't live in society and be... Male announcer: Fantastic! Do you understand now what a great potential libertarians missed when they claimed Leninism to be inherently authoritarian? Contrary to this narrow opinion it is as critical as, say, young Marx... Let's see, what will happen if we take out some more. Comrade Lenin: You can't live in society... You can't live... (Clenching his fists, angrily.) You can't, you can't, you can't!!! Male announcer: Assistant, please! Can you take comrade Lenin and provide him with another dose of morphine? His authoritarian syndrome is back, we need to calm him down!.. ================================================================= some @narchist e-mail contacts in the former USSR: cube@glas.apc.org : a little cell of cyberspace occupied by Laure Akai and Mikhail Tsovma. The name comes from Cube Press, a project that they hope to lift off the ground sometime. So far one pamphlet was published - on Bakunin's philosophy and social ideas. The plan for 1995 includes Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism", George Bradford's "Triumph of Capital", Fredy Perlman's "The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism" and probably a small anthology which we so far plan to name "Mickey Mouse, Fuck Off! An introduction to critical theory" (it will contain some articles from "Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed", some Bob Black, Fredy Perlman, etc.) tretyput@glas.apc.org : "Trety Put" (Third Way) anarcho-ecological magazine edited by Sergei Fomichov, part of the rather loose network called Rainbow Keepers that is organizing some ecological campaigns every year since late 80's ecodefense@glas.apc.org : Vladimir Slivyak in Kaliningrad/Konigsberg on Baltic Sea, also an anarcho-ecologist nadia@glas.apc.org : Nadezhda Shevchenko from Kiev, Ukraine, anarcho-ecologist volga@glas.apc.org : Olga Pitsunova, anarcho-ecologist in Saratov rk@glas.apc.org : Moscow group of Rainbow Keepers, still in the process of building their technical base, that's why you might not get response if you write to them Also available for GlasNet (Russian APC network) is a conference glas.radical. We intend to keep it mainly Russian-language and thus it is not networked to other APC networks (there's also a problem with transfering/decoding cyrillic letters. ================================================================= COMING SOON: In the next issue of News&Views I hope to give some materials about: - anarcho-ecological groups in Russia and their activities, both in the recent years and the ones that they plan for the next summer - the activities and the current state of syndicalists groups in projects - "the wonderful world of ZAIBI", THE most interesting (anti)music (anti)group and some of its ideas ================================================================= Contact us: via e-mail: cube@glas.apc.org via regular mail: POB 500, 107061 Moscow, Russia Compiled by Mikhail Tsovma. Long live the ANC (Absolutely No Copyright)! Materials published above reflect only the personal opinion(s) of the author(s), but this doesn't mean they should be treated differently from the positions of the so-called federations. ================================================================= If I can't be a graphomaniac once a year, I'm not part of your revolution! (Sorry for all the non-existent English words that I put into this bulletin.)