Datum: den 3 april 1999 01:14
ämne: From Samara Strike Committee to the International Working Class
To the International Working Class
The Samara Strike Committee--the host of the Second All-Russian
Congress of Strike Committees--had to postpone the beginning of the
congress from March 28 to April 17 due to the lack of money to
transport the delegates of the congress to the city of Samara (the
Volga river).
The coffers of our most militant working class organizations are empty.
Our workers cannot fill them. They do not get paid their wages. Their
families starve. Yet without some minimal financial resources the
desperately
needed higher level of class organization cannot be reached. This is
why we, the
organizers of the congress, have no choice but to appeal to the
international working
class, its organizations and all progressive people around the world to
help us in
making this event happen.
Why do we need this congress now?
We need it because all illusions that the anti-capitalist working class
movement in our country can be organized from the outside, by the
existing communist parties have been proven to be nothing but illusions.
We can now clearly see that the organized communist movement
("komdvizhenie") formed and led by the remnants of the former CPSU has
broken with Marxism, with the ideas and ideals of communism , has broken
with the working class and has become either the agent of the
nationalist bourgeoisie
and the state-capitalist bureaucracy or has ossified into sectarian,
self-centered
formations--politically sterile and hopelessly removed from the actual
struggles of
Russian proletariat.
The accelerated disintegration and decay of the communist parties in our
country has been accompanied by the profound weakening of the physical
and moral strength of the working class under the terrible blows of the
cannibalistic regime of capitalist restoration who now denies to us even
the means of bare subsistence, of mere reproduction of our physical
capacities to
work, which even the slaveholders of the past did not deny to their
slaves.
We have been driven millennia back to the conditions of primitive want,
of pure, unmitigated barbarism.
But the modern barbarism of the bourgeois society breeds fascism. The
self-appointed "saviors" of workers and the nation are already marching
in the streets of Moscow and other cities brandishing swastikas under
the slogans "Russia for Russians!" and "Russians Are Supermen!" And
they are not
alone. They find sympathizers among the members of the monstrous
apparatus
of repression created by Yeltsin's regime to defend those who stole from
us
our factories, among broad sections of the petty bourgeoisie, among many
intellectuals,
and, yes, even among not a few workers, demoralized by the abysmal
conditions of
their existence.
We now stand alone against the barbarism of 'liberal' capitalism and
the rising barbarism
of its fascist twin. We now know that no savior will come to our help.
We must save
ourselves. We must save society. We must save the country. We can do
this only
by making it OUR society, OUR country, OUR dictatorship--the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
This is why we need this congress, the congress of strike committees who
have already proven their will to fight in the battles of the rail war
in the spring of 1998, in the occupation of enterprises, in establishing
the de-facto power of the workers' soviets in a number of towns across
Russia.
This is why we believe that we have the right and the duty to ask the
international proletariat to help us now.
All Power To Strike Committees!
Workers of All Countries, Unite!
Donations can be sent
1) by wire to
Viktor Alekseevich Kotel'nikov
443074, Russia, Samara, ul. Morisa Toreza 71-77.
2) by money order or check to our international representatives
In Europe:
Robert Malecki
Ekenstamsvagen 7
915 32 Robertsfors
Sweden
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In USA ($US only):
Vladimir Bilenkin
P.O. Box 5192
Raleigh, NC, 27650-5192
USA
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Grigory Isayev, Vice-Chairman of the All-Russian Strike Committee
Victor Kotel'nikov, Vice-Chairman of the Samara Strike Committee
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7871/
443086, Russia, Samara, ul. Novo-Sadovaya 179, bunker
Tel/fax: (846-2) 352691, 353262.
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