------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 13, 2002 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
TO PLEASE BUSH: RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT 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 e-mail to www.minjust.ru/contacts.html. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
