[Marxism] Victoria Lomasko: The BORN Trial

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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'Moscow Regional Court Judge Alexander Kozlov presided over the trial.
Overall, he was exceptionally tactful and pointedly polite.

'“I understand nationalism and all that, but why did you have to kill?” he
asked at one point.

'Only one thing was forbidden in Kozlov’s courtroom: mentioning that the
criminal case had obvious political overtones, that the ultra-rightists had
been communicating with people from the presidential administration through
a series of intermediaries, and that BORN itself was a project that could
not have been conceived without their involvement. Kozlov ruthlessly barred
all attempts to discuss this.'

Victoria Lomasko's graphic reportage of the recently concluded BORN trial,
englished by The Russian Reader.

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/04/25/lomasko-born-trial/
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[Marxism] New from The Russian Reader: Interviews with Moscow doctors on work-to-rule strike; Russian legislators to discuss bill reintroducing penalties for "social parasitism"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"Why have others not dared to follow your example? Why has the strike not
taken on a broader scope?"

"Because people do not believe you can change anything in this country. The
general opinion is that fighting the system is useless. Because the changes
are implemented from the top down, they are government policy, Ministry of
Health policy, everyone thinks the system cannot be moved. It will just
crush its tiny functionaries—that is, those of us who do not agree with it.
Plus, those who at first had almost decided to go on strike with me (they,
as I have said, were in a really difficult situation) immediately came
under pressure with the aim of putting the whole thing to a stop.
Management acted against us with all possible means, mainly verbal. They
accused us of sabotage and treason. They told us that the state had given
us a job, and now we had gone against the state. And so on. Many people
simply abandoned the idea. They decided to spare themselves the trouble."

Open Left presents a unique set of interviews with the doctors involved in
the first protest in the Moscow medical care system since 1993.

Read in full at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/04/28/open-left-moscow-doctors-talk-about-their-work-to-rule-strike/

or

http://ktr.su/en/content/news/detail.php?ID=3826

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Let’s call it the Joseph Brodsky Law, especially since it was drafted in
that incubator of shamelessness and obscurantism known as the St.
Petersburg Legislative Assembly, in Brodsky’s hometown.

I have an acquaintance who was laid off seven months ago from his job of
many years in the marketing department at a reputable, Soviet-era
instruments manufacturing company. He has been diligently looking for a
comparable job (or any good job) since then, but has found nothing.

Part of the reason his company tanked was that the wise guys (pun
intended?) who now own it, diversified into real estate development and
construction during the “boom” times a few year ago, and lost tons of money
building luxury high-rises somewhere in the middle of Leningrad Region
which no one wanted to move into.

Igor will be thrilled to learn his country has plans to label him a “social
parasite” and assign him to a life of slave labor because he, a
hard-working, pleasant, smart, decent guy, had the bad fortune to be born
in a country where, in reality, “labor” and hard work have always been
vilified and criminalized, whether by the serf-owning noblemen of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the vanguard of the proletariat during
the twentieth century or the new overlords, the Ozero dacha co-op and their
minions from the worlds of organized crime and petty officialdom.

Read the rest at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/joseph-brodsky-social-parasitism/
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[Marxism] A Home for Every Russian: How Putin Delivers

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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The first thing you should know about the so-called housing boom is that it
has largely been made possible by incredibly cheap, disempowered labor from
Central Asia. Labor that has often verged on slave labor. Totally
non-union, dirt cheap, if you don't like the conditions, non-Slavic laborer
(my euphemism: this isn't the local "term of art"), fuck off, because we'll
find another ten "blacks" (a term of extreme abuse in Russian) to take your
place. And the local police and migration service are taking a cut from the
cutthroat developers and taking caring of things if the Tajiks or Uzbeks
get uppity. Like deporting them back to Central Asia lickety-split. And the
neo-Nazis and skinheads were also, until recently (maybe they're still
doing it) coming in to bust heads and slice a few hundred or thousand
throats just in case someone missed the point.

All this stuff has been documented and heavily reported, mind you, but not
on fly-by-night Putinist sites like New Cold War and Russian Insider that
sprung up only yesterday.

The second thing you should know about the so-called housing boom is that
what it has been fueled by dollar- or euro-denominated loans that people
are now unable to pay back because the economy has flatlined. Or financed
by co-op buy-in schemes that went south when the ruthless developers split
with the money, and the co-op members were left holding empty bags and
staring at unbuilt or partly built apartment blocks. There have be tons of
such sad stories over the past ten years (again, heavily documented in the
Russian and even the western media), and the authorities have usually been
very reluctant to help these people get their money back or their
apartments built.

The third thing you should know about about the so-called housing boom is
that, especially in the big cities like Moscow and Petersburg, is that it
has been realized at great (at times, devastating) expense to the existing
built environment, whether in the older (pre-Revolutionary) districts of
cities, which should be heritage listed (especially in Petersburg, ALL of
whose central districts and large parts of its suburbs are a UNESCO
Heritage Site), as well in the post-war Soviet new estates, which the
Soviet planners had the wisdom to equip with lots of green space, parks,
leafy courtyards, and lots of other great amenities (like schools and
kindergartens!), etc.

All this "empty space" has been been a favorite target of the utterly
ruthless developers in their quest to squeeze more real estate into less
and less space. If you'd been really interested in what was going in Russia
(and Ukraine, by the way) over the past ten years, you would know that one
of the big social movement to emerge was the movement against reckless and
infill construction both in the inner cities and the new estates. In fact,
you can probably say lots of bad things about Sergei Udaltsov (now doing
jail time for "planning a riot" on May 6, 2012) and his Left Front, but
there are probably tons of ordinary Muscovites who were glad to have them
in neighborhood when they were fighting off the ruthless developers trying
to destroy their nice, superiorly planned Soviet or pre-Soviet neighborhood.

This allegation about the superior quality of the new housing versus the
bad old Soviet apartment blocks is also quite hilarious. A friend of mine
lives next to a tower of such "elite" flats in southern Petersburg. She
told me there had been a rash of burglaries in this building because the
walls were built so thin the crooks could literally punch their way through
them from one flat to the next, and grab whatever loot they liked. And this
was in, I repeat, an "elite" block of flats. ("Elite" is the buzzword among
the cutthroat developers.)

In my own experience, substandard architectural and infrastructural quality
has been the rule in the "housing boom", because the point has been to
throw up as many square meters as possible, as if Russia were still the old
Soviet Union, where high figures like this were touted every years a signs
of the progress toward communism -- but that made sense back then, because
those figures represented real people moving from crowded communal flats
and barracks into individuals flats with plumbing and all the mod cons.

Now, on the contrary, the point has been to do everything as cheaply as
possible in terms of labor inputs and environmental impacts, while
front-loading as much of the profit in the preliminary financing stages
(which is also when the high-percentage bribes and cutbacks get passed
around to compliant and interested officials), which often means that
buildings just don't get built at all, because the devel

[Marxism] [UCE] A Home for Every Russian: How Putin Delivers

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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A postscript to my previous message on the Putinist housing boom miracle as
revealed by the suddenly emergent ("Beta Version") reliable news source
known as Russian Insider.

In 1975, when my wife's family moved into a three-room apartment in a newly
built block of flats in one of Leningrad's central districts, the apartment
was FREE. FREE. FREE. As in, my wife's family didn't have to pay kopeck for
it. Not one kopeck.

Similarly, my wife got a (terrific) free education at a specialized
English-language school and, later, at the Slavic department at Leningrad
State University. She didn't pay a kopeck for any of this, either. It was
all FREE.

Even more insanely, when my wife got ill as a child and young woman (she
lived under this horribly oppressive state of affairs for half her life, by
the way), the generally good medical care she got was also free.

This system was called socialism.

After 1991, my wife's family privatized their flat for a nominal fee, as
did millions of other Russians around the same time

In 2000, they sold it for around 25,000 dollars. That was the going rate
then. At today's going rate, the same flat would probably sell for around
250,000 dollars.

There is a fairly substantial class of people, although they are distinct
minority, who could afford to buy my wife's family's old flat cash on the
barrel head, but the vast majority of people living in Petersburg wouldn't
be able to do this, unless they had their own, similarly priced, privatized
flats that they could sell to generate the cash necessary to trade up (or
down, for that matter) to another flat. There are still quite a few people
in the big cities who have this important asset, a legacy from the Soviet
era, and one could say to a great extent that it made life livable for many
of these people in the lean years.

But it also generated a real estate market, which didn't exist (or at least
in this way) in Soviet times. And this real estate market has been as
cutthroat as they come. In the 90s, when I worked for a Big Issue-style
newspaper called Na Dne (The Depths), we did a special project where we
advertised all over the city asking homeless people to come in and tell us
their stories. (These stories were eventually published as an anthology, in
Russian and English.) What we discovered was that easily over half these
people had been swindled out of their flats and rooms in communal flats, to
which they had been legally entitled, by so-called black realtors, many of
whom were able to launder their ill-gotten gains and resell them on the
"legal" estate market.

As for the "homes" being touted by Russian Insider as proof that "Putin
delivers," they are not being handed out for free, as most of them would
have been under socialism. (In the late Soviet period, there were also
co-op houses paid and, to some extent, built by their inhabitants.) No,
they're sold for the going rate.

In September 2014, the going rate in Petersburg per square meter in newly
built residential buildings was about 94,000 rubles, while the average
price per meter in the four historic central districts (Central, Petrograd,
Vasilyevsky Island, and Admiralty) hovered between 120,000 and 160,000
rubles, according to real estate website bsn.ru (
http://www.bsn.ru/analytics/liveestate/spb/17139_deshevye_metry/).

At the then-current exchange rate, this translates into a price range
between 2,600 and 4,500 dollars per square meter.

A friend of mine who does IT work and has been trying to organize an
independent IT workers union in Petersburg, wrote on his Facebook page the
other day that, according to Headhunter.ru, the average (not the median)
monthly wage in the city was 35,000 rubles. At current exchange rates this
amounts to around 680 dollars.

He also cited a screenshot, taken from Yandex's jobs page, that the average
monthly wage for the fifty-five thousand some vacancies is currently
listing, is 33,000 rubles per month, or 640 dollars.

I should add that before the "crisis" set in, that is, during the "boom
times," the average wage in the city was better, but only marginally soon.

So who could and can afford all the "homes" "delivered" by the
international left's new kewpie doll, Vladimir Putin? A) the wildly and
mostly illegally rich, including oligarchs, sub-oligarchs, and corrupt
government officials, who need some place (lots of places, actually, if you
think about the distorting effect they've had on real estate in London and
New York, for example) to park their loads of cash; B) honest, hardworking
people with average or higher than average salaries who, of course, would
have take out loans, sometimes big loans, to afford these "ho

Re: [Marxism] A Home for Every Russia: How Putin Delivers

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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A comrade recommended this book on the job. It's written by someone who has
studied the subject in depth, apparently.

http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100924090

In Housing the New Russia, Jane R. Zavisca examines Russia's attempts to
transition from a socialist vision of housing, in which the government
promised a separate, state-owned apartment for every family, to a
market-based and mortgage-dependent model of home ownership. In 1992, the
post-Soviet Russian government signed an agreement with the United States
to create the Russian housing market. The vision of an American-style
market guided housing policy over the next two decades. Privatization gave
socialist housing to existing occupants, creating a nation of homeowners
overnight. New financial institutions, modeled on the American mortgage
system, laid the foundation for a market. Next the state tried to stimulate
mortgages—and reverse the declining birth rate, another major concern—by
subsidizing loans for young families.

Imported housing institutions, however, failed to resonate with local
conceptions of ownership, property, and rights. Most Russians reject
mortgages, which they call "debt bondage," as an unjust "overpayment" for a
good they consider to be a basic right. Instead of stimulating
homeownership, privatization, combined with high prices and limited credit,
created a system of “property without markets.” Frustrated aspirations and
unjustified inequality led most Russians to call for a
government-controlled housing market. Under the Soviet system, residents
retained lifelong tenancy rights, perceiving the apartments they inhabited
as their own. In the wake of privatization, young Russians can no longer
count on the state to provide their house, nor can they afford to buy a
home with wages, forcing many to live with extended family well into
adulthood. Zavisca shows that the contradictions of housing policy are a
significant factor in Russia's falling birth rates and the apparent failure
of its pronatalist policies. These consequences further stack the deck
against the likelihood that an affordable housing market will take off in
the near future.
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[Marxism] Milonov on May Day in Petersburg: "We will liquidate all homo-organizations"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/05/01/police-stop-the-author-of-russia-s-gay-propaganda-ban-from-disrupting-lgbt-rights-demonstrators

Police stop the author of Russia’s ‘gay propaganda’ ban from disrupting
LGBT rights demonstrators
1 MAY 2015 FONTANKA.RU

At a May Day parade in St. Petersburg today, police prevented city
councilman Vitaly Milonov from disrupting a group of LGBT rights
demonstrators. Milonov is considered the author of Russia’s controversial
laws against “gay propaganda” in the presence of children.

According to the news website Fontanka.ru, Milonov arrived at today’s May
Day parade with a group of his supporters that included several children.
When he spotted a group of LGBT rights activists carrying rainbow flags, he
began making his way toward the demonstrators, apparently intending to
interfere with their march. Before he could reach the activists, however,
local police intercepted Milonov and kept him away, asking him calmly not
to cause a disruption.

In videos recorded at the demonstration, Milonov can be seen shouting abuse
at the LGBT rights activists, as police keep him at a distance from the
parade.

After the incident, Milonov complained in a radio interview that
demonstrations with LGBT flags are illegal and should be stopped. “These
flags should have been removed,” he said, “and the people carrying them
should have been detained. Leningrad stood up to the fascists [in World War
II] for 900 days, and now here they are walking quietly through our
streets. And they’re doing it openly. We oppose them. We will liquidate all
homo-organizations.”
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[Marxism] Kyiv: Commemorating Stalin's Nakba a Year after Maidan // Deportation of Crimean Tatars Remembered in Petersburg

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Kyiv: commemorating Stalin’s Nakba a year after Maidan
Sergii Kutnii
May 19, 2015
http://nihilist.li/2015/05/19/kyiv-commemorating-stalin-s-nakba-a-year-after-maidan/

Deportation of Crimean Tatars Remembered in Petersburg
David Frenkel
May 20, 2015
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/deportation-crimean-tatars-remembered-petersburg-frenkel/
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[Marxism] Alexei Gaskarov: The Robin Hood of Zhukovsky

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Alexei Gaskarov: The Robin Hood of Zhukovsky

Three years have passed since the opposition March of the Millions on
Bolotnaya Square in Moscow ended in a physical confrontation with riot
police, hundreds of arrests, and, later, dozens of criminal cases brought
against protesters, who had engaged, allegedly, in "rioting" and "violence"
against the police.

Although more than thirty defendants have been tried as part of the
Bolotnaya Square Case, police investigators and prosecutors continue to
unearth new suspects to this day.

This is the story of leftist social activist and antifascist Alexei
Gaskarov, a 29-year-old economist from the Moscow suburb of Zhukovsky, as
told by his family and close friends. Gaskarov, who is also an elected
member of the Opposition Coordinating Council, was sentenced to three and a
half years in prison on August 18, 2014.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH8qtmWEKlg
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Re: [Marxism] Fwd: ?Novorossiya?s? ?Leftist? Friends | The Interpreter

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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*Also, it's apparently published by the mouthpiece of a New York-based
thinktank run by the family of one of Russia's oligarchs, namely Mikhail
Khodorkovsky's son Pavel.

- Amith

The original article was published in Russian on a website called
"Chetvertaya vlast" (Fourth Estate):

http://vlada.io/levyie-druzya-novorossii/

Who is "behind" Fourth Estate, I have no idea. The Interpreter just
translated the article into English and posted it. They post lots of stuff,
some things useful and interesting, some things quite biased.

It's odd that you refer to Khodorkovsky as "one of Russia's oligarchs"
without referring what Putin did to him. The fact that he didn't flee the
country and did his prison time means that he is not just "one of Russia's
oligarchs" anymore (in fact he's not an oligarch at all anymore), but
someone with a certain amount of moral authority among many Russians,
especially those of a liberal bent.

But in cayse article wasn't written by a Russian oligarch or liberal, but
by a Ukrainian anarchist named Alexander Volodarsky who usually knows what
he's talking about.

And speaks both languages used in Ukraine.
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[Marxism] Ilya Orlov: A Revolutionary Museum after Ideology (On the Lenin Memorial Complex in Razliv)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"[This artistic reflection on history makes a difference only if it is done
politically. Lenin’s renewed significance was proven in the spring of 2014.
Ukrainians had begun demolishing Soviet monuments to Lenin (for a lack of
monuments to Stalin to destroy, as someone aptly remarked), and they are
still engaged in this process of wholesale demolition today. But in fact,
Lenin was the only major political figure in 1917, in the midst of a
full-scale war among the imperial powers, who insisted on a radical,
uncompromising anti-war agenda. Lenin’s stance was the immediate cause of
his prosecution by the Provisional Government, and the reason he took
refuge in Razliv.

"We intended our project to shed light on a historical period when this
anti-war stance was in the underground, on the periphery of public
politics, as it is today. It was important for us not simply to represent
an alternative historical narrative but also to approach history in a way
opposed to current official cultural policy, to critically revise rather
than re-enact, to deconstruct rather than recreate."

Petersburg artist and historian Ilya Orlov on the Lenin memorial complex
outside of Petersburg.

Read the rest here:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/orlov-revolutionary-museum-after-ideology/
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[Marxism] Vlad Kolesnikov: A Real Russian Hero for Russia Day

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/06/12/vlad-kolesnikov-a-real-russian-hero-for-russia-day/

“At the military enlistment office, I turned on the Ukrainian national
anthem”: 17-year-old Vlad Kolesnikov talks about his decision to combat
Putin’s propaganda
Dmitry Volchek
June 10, 2015
svoboda.org

Hundreds of people have been writing to Vlad Kolesnikov, a 17-year-old
technical college student from Podolsk. They have been writing with offers
of assistance and shelter, and to thank him and advise him to be more
careful.

“I cannot express in words the emotions I feel reading Facebook,” says
Vlad, his voice trembling with emotion. “There has been so much support
from strangers, it is simply incredible.”

Vlad has acquired a lot of friends on the Internet, but his own
grandfather, a former KGB officer, has condemned him. At the technical
college where he studied he was assaulted. (Vlad asked not to write that he
had been beaten up: “It was only a split lip, a couple of bruises, a couple
of blows to the head, and three drops of blood.”) And now the police have
taken an interest in him.

And all because Vlad Kolesnikov not only does not hide his political views
but has also decided to declare them openly.

Vlad Kolesnikov: Putin sits with his pack of criminals and runs the country
with the aid of powerful propaganda. This is my subjective opinion. Maybe I
am wrong, but I believe it is true. You know the Russian media have been
vigorously promoting the image of khokhly [a Russian term of abuse for
Ukrainians] and pindosy [a Russian term of abuse for Americans] as enemies.
I also supported this until I watched a video on YouTube. It was 2014, and
I will probably never forget it, because the video changed my life. The
content of the video was completely banal. It was just an American family.
The wife is Russian, the husband, American. He gives her a gift, they go to
a shooting range. And instead of the propaganda we get—that it is a fascist
regime where everyone is obsessed with sex and money, and everyone betrays
each other—I saw people like myself. The only difference was that they
smiled more. Since then I have been digging more, looking for different
kinds of information, and reading the western press. I have realized the
Russian media makes lots of mistakes, exaggerates, and in most cases just
blatantly lies.

Radio Svoboda: And your relations with your relatives have been complicated
because of the fact they do not share your views?

Vlad Kolesnikov: Yes. And not only my relations with relatives, but with
everyone, you could say. I know only two people who more or less share my
views: my friend Nikolai Podgornov and one other person whom I won’t name.
But all the people I know—my whole college, all my relatives—they are all
against me. It is just Nikolai and me,

Radio Svoboda: You and Nikolai decided to hang up a banner in Podolsk that
read, “Fuck the war”?

Vlad Kolesnikov: Yes, it all started when I was at the military enlistment
commission and told them I did not want to serve in the army and did not
want to fight against my brethren. Maybe that sounds sentimental, but that
is the way it is. We decided we could not tolerate it anymore and would
voice it openly. First, we wanted to hang a banner in Moscow, but then we
thought it would be torn down quickly, and so we looked for a good place in
Podolsk. We walked around for a long time and found a building with an
accessible rooftop in the middle of town and decided to hang the banner
there. We went to a fabrics shop. We bought a five-meter-long piece of
cloth. We spent a long time picking out cloth that would be sturdier. We
bought paint. This is expensive for a college student, but it was worth it.
We spent all night making the banner and sitting on the rooftop. We
fastened the banner to iron cables so that it would hang longer, and we
locked the door [to the rooftop] so that it would take the police longer to
get in. They had to summon the Emergency Situations Ministry guys. I think
we gained two or three hours more time on them that way.

Radio Svoboda: You told the military enlistment commission straight out
that you did not want to fight?

Vlad Kolesnikov: I don’t have very good eyesight, so I am not fit for
military service. I went through the medical examination, and there was I
before the draft board. There were tables shaped like the letter П set up
there, and the people who did the assessments were seated at these tables.
I had the Ukrainian national anthem recorded on my telephone. I don’t like
the Russian national anthem, because I consider it mendacious. Everything
it says about freedom and so on is just pure rubbish. Bef

[Marxism] Svoboda versus Svoboda

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Back in the heady days of my adolescence, Ronald Reagan said the problem
with the Russians was that they had no word for "freedom" in their
language. I forget now which of his top-flight national security advisers
or CIA/NSA whiz kids had advised him on this score, or whether the Gipper
had just thought it sounded "right" for the occasion, but there is a word
for "freedom" or "liberty" in Russian, and that word is "svoboda." It's the
same word in Ukrainian.

Hence, the word, since it existed in fact, was adopted, probably wrongly
and maliciously, by the Russian-language station of the US-funded media
outlet RE/RFL, Radio Svoboda.

I found the interview with Vlad Kolesnikov, who I really do think should be
an example to anti-war resisters everywhere, on the website of Radio
Svoboda.

http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27064318.html

Kolesnikov gave the interview to Dmitry Volchek, who far from being a
Ukrainian fascist of any sort, is a long-time publisher of underground and
marginal literature in Russian and Russian translation, including LGBT
literature, through his literary almanac Mitin Zhurnal (which started out
as a samizdat publication in Soviet times) and the affiliated Kolonna
Publications imprint:

http://kolonna.mitin.com/
http://rbth.co.uk/literature/2013/07/25/lgbt_literature_under_new_fire_survives_in_russia_28341.html

I won't go into greater length about Mitya Volchek's great services to
Russian literature and journalism, but if this were a slightly more just
country (and not the fascist cesspool it's quickly becoming, with Marxmail
subscribers like Amith and Roger Annis cheering it on from the sidelines),
then Mitya would be awarded a knighthood or Medal of Freedom or whatever
it's called here in Russia.

Then I took the interview and translated it from Russian, a language I
speak, read, and write fluently, into English.

But then I made the big mistake of sharing my translation with this list,
which has far too many self-made "experts" on Russian and Ukrainian affairs
for its own good, including Amith and Roger.

Where, Amith, was there any indication that either the interview itself,
the brave anti-Putinist TEENAGER Vlad Kolesnikov (who has been speaking
truth to power in the world's biggest country, which has so many nasty
secret and other police that they're stumbling over each other looking for
"dissidents" and "extremists" to crack down on) or the Petersburg-born
Russian Jewish publisher and journalist Dmitry Volchek (
http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/rje_v.htm) had anything to do with the
fascist Ukrainian political party Svoboda?

Just because you're apparently totally ignorant of all things Russian (and
Ukrainian) doesn't mean you get to insult me and my work, and wonderful
people like Vlad Kolesnikov and Mitya Volchek.

For the record, in 2012, I published a report, on the blog I used to edit,
on an attack by Ukrainian neo-Nazis on a presentation of the leftist
journal Spilne ("Commons") in the city of Ternopil. At the time, it was
alleged that the attack had been coordinated by a member of Svoboda.

https://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/ukrainian-neo-nazis-attack-commons-ternopil/

Interestingly enough, Marxmail subscriber Sergii Kutnii reported on this
same attack to the list at almost the same time:

http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.politics.marxism.marxmail/164387

I don't remember if I shared my own translation of Spilne's report with the
list as well, and I don't recall that Sergii's dispatch generated any
discussion among list members at all, although as he knows better than me,
Svoboda, their affiliates, and other Ukrainian far-righters and neo-Nazis
were already causing a lot of trouble for Ukrainian leftists and others
already "way" back then. It was just that back then this mattered to almost
no one outside Ukraine, including, I suspect, Roger and Amith.

But now everyone and their grandmother is an expert on "Ukrainian
fascists," and Amith, a fluent Russian and Ukrainian speaker, just figured
out that I have been aiding and abetting the Svoboda party of Ukraine, the
cause of all evil in the known universe since February 2014.

I want a full apology from Amith for this digusting insult to my
reputation, competence, and leftist, anti-fascist political convictions.

Failing that, I want Amith kicked off this list.

If the moderators are unwilling to do that for any reason, then I'll kick
myself off, because if this is what "Marxism" has come to in the 21st
century, I don't want to have anything to do with it.
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Re: [Marxism] Svoboda versus Svoboda

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Thanks, Amith, for the apology.

Yours,
Thomas

On Mon, Jun 15, 2015 at 10:28 AM, A.R. G  wrote:

> Hi Thomas,
>
> Sorry about the mistake I made. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.
>
> Best,
>
> - Amith
>
> On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:03 PM, Thomas Campbell via Marxism <
> marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu> wrote:
>
>>   POSTING RULES & NOTES  
>> #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.
>> #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.
>> #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern.
>> *
>>
>>
>> Back in the heady days of my adolescence, Ronald Reagan said the problem
>> with the Russians was that they had no word for "freedom" in their
>> language. I forget now which of his top-flight national security advisers
>> or CIA/NSA whiz kids had advised him on this score, or whether the Gipper
>> had just thought it sounded "right" for the occasion, but there is a word
>> for "freedom" or "liberty" in Russian, and that word is "svoboda." It's
>> the
>> same word in Ukrainian.
>>
>> Hence, the word, since it existed in fact, was adopted, probably wrongly
>> and maliciously, by the Russian-language station of the US-funded media
>> outlet RE/RFL, Radio Svoboda.
>>
>> I found the interview with Vlad Kolesnikov, who I really do think should
>> be
>> an example to anti-war resisters everywhere, on the website of Radio
>> Svoboda.
>>
>> http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27064318.html
>>
>> Kolesnikov gave the interview to Dmitry Volchek, who far from being a
>> Ukrainian fascist of any sort, is a long-time publisher of underground and
>> marginal literature in Russian and Russian translation, including LGBT
>> literature, through his literary almanac Mitin Zhurnal (which started out
>> as a samizdat publication in Soviet times) and the affiliated Kolonna
>> Publications imprint:
>>
>> http://kolonna.mitin.com/
>>
>> http://rbth.co.uk/literature/2013/07/25/lgbt_literature_under_new_fire_survives_in_russia_28341.html
>>
>> I won't go into greater length about Mitya Volchek's great services to
>> Russian literature and journalism, but if this were a slightly more just
>> country (and not the fascist cesspool it's quickly becoming, with Marxmail
>> subscribers like Amith and Roger Annis cheering it on from the sidelines),
>> then Mitya would be awarded a knighthood or Medal of Freedom or whatever
>> it's called here in Russia.
>>
>> Then I took the interview and translated it from Russian, a language I
>> speak, read, and write fluently, into English.
>>
>> But then I made the big mistake of sharing my translation with this list,
>> which has far too many self-made "experts" on Russian and Ukrainian
>> affairs
>> for its own good, including Amith and Roger.
>>
>> Where, Amith, was there any indication that either the interview itself,
>> the brave anti-Putinist TEENAGER Vlad Kolesnikov (who has been speaking
>> truth to power in the world's biggest country, which has so many nasty
>> secret and other police that they're stumbling over each other looking for
>> "dissidents" and "extremists" to crack down on) or the Petersburg-born
>> Russian Jewish publisher and journalist Dmitry Volchek (
>> http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/rje_v.htm) had anything to do with the
>> fascist Ukrainian political party Svoboda?
>>
>> Just because you're apparently totally ignorant of all things Russian (and
>> Ukrainian) doesn't mean you get to insult me and my work, and wonderful
>> people like Vlad Kolesnikov and Mitya Volchek.
>>
>> For the record, in 2012, I published a report, on the blog I used to edit,
>> on an attack by Ukrainian neo-Nazis on a presentation of the leftist
>> journal Spilne ("Commons") in the city of Ternopil. At the time, it was
>> alleged that the attack had been coordinated by a member of Svoboda.
>>
>>
>> https://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/12/02/ukrainian-neo-nazis-attack-commons-ternopil/
>>
>> Interestingly en

[Marxism] 'Radio Freedom' in Ukraine

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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This "exposé" of "Radio Freedom" (Radio Liberty), aired on Petersburg
Channel Five just yesterday, should be grist for your mill then, Roger:

http://www.5-tv.ru/glavnoe/broadcasts/508717/129/

Maybe you can translate it and publish it on "New Cold War."
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[Marxism] Alexander Markov: A Soundtrack to Soviet Africa

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXWwF08U6zQ

Alexander Markov
Soviet Filmmakers in Africa from the 1960s to the 1980s

In 1960, seventeen African countries gained their independence. For the two
superpowers, competing for influence in the Cold War, these “new” countries
were obvious opportunities for deploying their own power. Under
Khrushchev’s Thaw, Soviet foreign policy increasingly focused on Africa and
the Arab world, which became priorities for proactive Soviet diplomacy.

The 1960s thus witnessed the heyday of African studies in the Soviet Union.
A number of Soviet filmmakers were dispatched to the continent to produce
newsreels and documentary films whose mission was to record the
“friendships” between the Soviet socialist specialists at the helm of
scientific progress and the African socialist hopefuls who had just broken
free from the yoke of colonialism.

The films were given titles such as Hello, Africa!, We Are with You,
Africa!, and Good Luck to You, Africa!, to convey that desire for
friendship unambiguously, and to contrast starkly with films produced on
the other side of the Iron Curtain, such as the notorious Italian
documentary about the “dark continent,” Farewell Africa (Addio Africa,
1966), which speculated that civil wars and bloody conflict would set the
continent ablaze after the European colonialists exited it.

Read the rest here:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/06/20/alexander-markov-a-soundtrack-to-soviet-africa/
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[Marxism] Hunger Games in Russia

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Ivan Ovsyannikov, Russian Socialist Movement (RSD):

The companies engaged in this business are the very same “domestic
producers” whose profits are the cause of the comedy with the produce
crematoria on the border. To assure yourself this is the case all you need
to know is that the man who encouraged Putin’s decree, agriculture
ministerAlexander Tkachev, is a major latifundista. (Some label him one of
the largest landowners in Europe.) Relatives of the former governor of
Krasnodar Krai own 450,000 hectares of farmland. When they speak of
defending Russia’s economic interests, they are talking about defending the
sharks of Russian agrobusiness from foreign competition, not about the
welfare of consumers, the plight of the poor or the salaries of farm
workers. How import substitution has affected the condition of farm workers
can be seen from the Timashevskaya Poultry Farm (the largest poultry
producer in the Samara Region), where an attempt by workers to organize an
independent trade union has met fierce resistance from the farm’s
prosperous owner.

Of course, the destruction of produce appears cynical given that seven
percent of Russians suffer from chronic malnutrition, an even greater
number of people have been forced by the crisis to save on food, and there
are three to five million homeless people, of whom over fifty thousand are
children. However, the reaction of public, who have demanded the
confiscated produce be given to orphanages or sent as humanitarian aid to
Donbass, is insufficient, despite its moral validity. To deal with the
social consequences of the crisis, what we need are not random acts of
charity but consistent policies of redistributing incomes, defending jobs,
and providing assistance to the poor. We must introduce progressive
taxation, provide citizens with social benefits on which they can live,
index pensions and wages, and regulate the labor market and prices of
essential goods. In other words, we have to reject neoliberal policies that
deliberately lead to the destruction of the welfare state. The issue of
social welfare should not be an appendix to Internet discussions of the
plight of Spanish ham and parmesan, but the central point in the agenda of
all opposition forces claiming popular support.

Meanwhile, as bloggers crack jokes about the cheese Auschwitz at the
Russian Customs Service, the government is preparing a draft budget for
2016–2018. It provides for measures such as raising the retirement age,
reduction of the number of free tuition spots in universities, higher taxes
and charges on ordinary citizens, a freeze on social benefit payments, and
a refusal to index pensions, benefits, and teachers’ salaries. The specter
of austerity has risen in Russia. Against this truly ominous threat, the
games at customs appear to be nothing more than a red herring.

Read the full post here:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/08/09/hunger-games/

George Losev, Petersburg leftist activist:

The EU and US have imposed sanctions against a number of Putin’s friends
and several major Russian companies. The sanctions basically boil down to
the fact that these people and companies cannot borrow money from
foreigners.

In response, the Russian authorities have announced that these sanctions
are against the whole of Russia. The Russian authorities have been seeking
to make it possible for Putin’s friends and major Russian companies to
borrow from foreigners once again.

In addition, the Russian authorities have imposed retaliatory sanctions.
They have banned the import of produce from several countries. Not from
specific individuals and companies, but from whole countries. Of course,
even just six months before the sanctions were introduced, no one knew
anything about them and was not preparing for anything of the sort. This
has led to yet another hike in food prices and has primarily hurt the
working class.

And yet the official propaganda of the Russian Federation declares that
this produce is dangerous (!), and that all countries destroy contraband
(!!), and the murderer and mafioso [Russian agriculture minister Alexander]
Tkachevhas been doing the rounds on TV, explaining that the problem should
be solved once and for all.

That is the picture. Total capitalist whack jobs who have privatized the
state and have been using it for their own personal interests are
plundering the working class and the poor and pushing the country towards
war with the whole world.

And yet half the folks on my Facebook feed, including leftists, have
started moaning, Oh, enough of this destroying produce already, oh, shame
on them, shame.

But what do you want to see? What issues are 

[Marxism] Ilya Orlov: On the Field of Mars

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Ilya Orlov
The Field of Mars: Revolution, Mourning, and Memory

We are on the Field of Mars in Petersburg, at the Monument to the Fighters
of the Revolution. That is the official name. The question immediately
arises: to the fighters of which revolution? This is not specified in the
official name. The epitaphs, penned by the first Soviet minister of
education Anatoly Lunacharsky in 1919, are more lyrical than informative,
referring to previous revolutions and historical figures, including the
Jacobins and the Paris Communards. Only this humble gravestone refers to
the primordial event: here lie the victims of the February Revolution of
1917...

Read the rest here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/11/13/ilya-orlov-field-of-mars/
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[Marxism] "But Crimea is ours..."

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/russia-s-traditional-economic-barometer-swings-toward-crisis/511479.html

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/business/article/ten-months-after-russian-annexation-crimean-savers-ask-where-is-our-money-/511482.html
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[Marxism] Ilya Budraitskis: The Perpetual “Trotskyist” Conspiracy

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Who Is Behind the Trotskyist Conspiracy?
Ilya Budraitskis
November 21, 2014
OpenLeft.ru

Speaking at a meeting of his United People’s Front a couple days ago,
Vladimir Putin said, “Trotsky had this [saying]: the movement is
everything, the ultimate aim is nothing. We need an ultimate aim.” Eduard
Bernstein’s proposition, misquoted and attributed for some reason to Leon
Trotsky, is probably the Russian president’s most common rhetorical
standby. He has repeated it for many years to audiences of journalists and
functionaries while discussing social policy, construction delays at
Olympics sites or the dissatisfaction of the so-called creative class.
“Democracy is not anarchism and not Trotskyism,” Putin warnedalmost two
years ago.

Putin’s anti-Trotskyist invectives do not depend on the context nor are
they influenced by his audience, and much less are they veiled threats to
the small political groups in Russia today who claim to be heirs of the
Fourth International. Putin’s Trotskyism is of a different kind. Its causes
are found not in the present but in the past, buried deep in the political
unconscious of the last generation of the Soviet nomenklatura.

The strange myth of the Trotskyist conspiracy, which emerged decades ago,
in another age and a different country, has experienced a rebirth
throughout Putin’s rule. Sensing, apparently, the president’s personal
weakness for “Trotskyism,” obliging media and corrupted experts have turned
this Trotskyism into an integral part of the grand propaganda style. Until
he died, the indefatigable “Trotskyist” Boris Berezovsky spun his nasty web
from London. Until he turned into a conservative patriot, the incendiary
“Trotskyist” Eduard Limonov seduced young people with extremism.
Camouflaged “Trotskyists” from the Bush and, later, the Obama
administrations have continued to sow war and color revolutions. Unmasking
“Trotskyists” has become such an important ritual that for good luck, as it
were, the famous Dmitry Kiselyov decided to launch a new media resource by
invoking it. So what is the history of this conspiracy? And what do
Trotskyists have to do with it?

Read the rest here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/11/21/budraitskis-trotskyist-conspiracy/
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[Marxism] Ilya Matveev: Austerity Russian Style

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Austerity Russian Style
Ilya Matveev
November 19, 2014
OpenLeft.ru

Reforms of the social sector in post-Soviet Russia have always had a very
important feature: their course has been completely confusing and opaque,
and everything connected to the reforms, even their strategic goals (!),
has been shrouded in mystery. This is partly a consequence of the extreme
fragmentation of the Russian state apparatus, unable to implement a
completely coherent reform strategy, but in many ways it is a quite
deliberate policy: a policy of disinformation.

The Russian authorities are confident that painful reforms are not
necessary to explain, let alone announce, sometimes. One can always give
journalists the shake, because who are they anyway? As for the public, it
suffices to blame them for not understanding the grand design, for
confusing reform and optimization, optimization and modernization,
modernization and business as usual. This “spy” policy towards reform
leaves wide room for maneuvering. It is always possible to note the level
of public indignation and pull back a bit (while making the obligatory
remark, “That was the way it was intended!”).

Read the rest here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/11/22/ilya-matveev-austerity-russian-style/
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[Marxism] Russian LGBT Activist Seeks Asylum in Germany

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=100&story_id=41342
LGBT Activist Files for Asylum in Germany
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times

Prominent local LGBT activist Kirill Kalugin announced last week that he
had applied for political asylum in Germany, while an anti-gay crowd in St.
Petersburg assaulted his lawyer later that same day.

“In the course of my internal referendum I took the decision to separate
myself from the Russian Federation and join Germany. That’s about it. Auf
Wiedersehen, Russland. Willkommen in Deutschland,” Kalugin wrote on his
Facebook account on Nov. 25.

Kalugin is best known for his one-man LGBT rights protests on Palace Square
during Paratroopers’ Day on Aug. 2 in 2013 and 2014, which he staged as a
reaction to remarks by officials who mockingly suggested that LGBT rights
activists stage rallies on that day, implying that the protesters would be
beaten by the macho veterans. According to Kalugin, he left Russia on Nov.
16 but did not make a statement until he had made all the necessary
arrangements.

Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times on Sunday, Kalugin said he made the
decision because of persecution from Center “E” counter-extremism police
rather than threats from anti-gay campaigners.

“I made the decision in August, when Center ‘E’ officers attempted to put
me in a car by force,” Kalugin said. “I told them that if they wanted to
speak to me, they should send me a notice. They replied that a notice is
sent only when there is a criminal case, but if that’s what I wanted, then
they would open one.”

President Vladimir Putin launched the Center “E” police department in 2008
allegedly to fight extremism, but its officers are reported to be present
at protest rallies and dealing with activists.

According to Kalugin, the local Center “E” has officers who deal
specifically with LGBT rights activists.

“There was a certain Dmitry among those three [officers], who goes to all
the protests on a regular basis and who visited me at the police station,
where they held me after the Aug. 2 protest,” he said.

He pointed out that his emigration was not caused by threats from anti-gay
activists.

“These Orthodox activists have threatened me for three years and usually
these threats don’t go any further,” he said.

Kalugin said he first came in contact with Center “E” in 2013 when either
anti-gay lawmaker Vitaly Milonov or his aide, Anatoly Artyukh, who chairs
the local branch of the Orthodox nationalist organization People’s
Assembly, reported him to the Investigations Committee for alleged
extremism.

“I did not know yet that the officers were from Center ‘E’; they took me to
the Investigations Committee and I was questioned there. The case did not
work then and they threw it away after I said I did not plan either to
offend anybody or incite anything,” Kalugin said.

“My position is that I was not going to cooperate or communicate with this
agency because I know that it was created specifically to put obstacles in
the way of activists and opposition. The thing is that there are LGBT
activists who communicate and cooperate with them. But I don’t support this
position and they apparently don’t like it.”

Kalugin said that the situation for LGBT activism has worsened following
the annexation of Crimea and the massive anti-Western campaign in the
Russian media.

“In the beginning we tried to get through to people and say that the
authorities were deceiving them, that LGBT people are not guilty of
anything, and that elections get rigged. Now, with the annexation of the
Crimea and the total support for the current president, it’s obvious that
people are not very eager to listen and understand what is happening,”
Kalugin said.

“Many people write to me saying, ‘Why did you leave? Now when oil prices
collapse, people will reconsider their views and changes will start.’ But I
think that they will simply start to think with their empty stomach, rather
than with the television as they do now, and a revolt of the hungry has
nothing to do with change.”

Nevertheless, Kalugin said that he would have remained active in Russia if
it had not been for the pressure from Center “E”.

“I simply did not want to wait until they produced some criminal case,” he
said. “They could put me in prison for blocking Nevsky Prospekt with
feminists. They took me to a police station then and told me obstructing
traffic on a public road was a criminal offense.”

According to Kalugin, he has been placed in a social house in Detmold,
North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany until the decision is made by
authorities, which can take up to several months.

Later on Nov. 25, Kalugin’s lawyer Vitaly Cherkasov,

Re: [Marxism] Links Magazine in Australia: a sinkhole of Great Russian chauvinism

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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I agree that we are ill served by our moderator, who is not only an
irritable duffer prone to ad hominem attacks, but also willfully ignores
the overwhelming evidence that Putinist Russia, since it has already solved
all its own problems at home in the most egalitarian, progressive,
democratic, and humane way possible, is an anti-imperialist, leftist
paradise uniquely placed to liberate "millions of Ukrainians" from
their brutal "far-right regime":

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/sex-slavery-thrives-in-russia-out-of-public-view/512215.html

I could supply this list with items like this by the yard and daily. I
don't do so mostly because I'm busy with other things but also because I
imagine there are comrades here more worried about the problems around them
at home, wherever it is they live, or problems elsewhere in the world that
they have a real capacity and will to analyze.
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[Marxism] Fwd: Moscow embraces 'hipster Stalinism' | Cities | The Guardian

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Here is a recent video on this same topic, made this summer by some folks
in Petersburg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-TiaIxyeU
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[Marxism] Socially engaged graphic art in Russia

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Artist Victoria Lomasko on the new socially engaged graphic art in Russia:

http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/lomasko-socially-engaged-graphic-art-russia/
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[Marxism] Solidarity with Leonid Tikhonov, leader of Russian dockworkers' union, convicted in a frame-up

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/free-leonid-tikhonov/
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[Marxism] Russian Conscripts' Relatives Fear They'll Be Sent to Ukraine Amid Alleged Coercion

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Conscripts' Relatives Fear They'll Be Sent to Ukraine Amid Alleged Coercion
By Sergei Chernov
Jan. 29 2015
The Moscow Times

ST. PETERSBURG  — Russian army conscripts are being tricked or pressured
into signing up to become contract soldiers, human rights groups say — and
their relatives fear that once they turn professional, they run the risk of
being secretly dispatched to fight in eastern Ukraine.

Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg, an NGO that battles to uphold the
rights of Russian military personnel and their relatives, said it had
received a number of complaints regarding a military unit in Kamenka, a
village in the Vyborg district of the Leningrad region, around 100
kilometers northwest of St. Petersburg. Soldiers' relatives called the
organization's hotline, submitted complaints by e-mail and also came to its
offices to file written reports, the NGO said. No state agency has either
confirmed or denied the reported information, and the Western Military
District's press service declined to comment immediately on the matter when
called Thursday.

"When you see the news [about the conflict in eastern Ukraine] these days,
it breaks your heart," said Irina, who asked to be identified only by her
first name to protect her identity and that of her nephew, who is serving
in Kamenka and who she said refused to sign a contract when ordered to
earlier this month.

"They were assembled together in a room and told to sign contracts," Irina
told The Moscow Times by phone on Tuesday.

"No physical force was used against them, of course, but there was
psychological pressure. […] They were told, 'If you sign the contract,
you'll be paid more.' Obviously, they were not told it had anything to do
with events in Ukraine."

Another soldier's father, who asked to be referred to only by his first
name, Alexei, said his son, who was called up in June to perform his
military service in Kamenka, signed up for the professional army in
December.

"No explanation was given; he was told 'You must sign it,'" Alexei told The
Moscow Times by phone on Tuesday.

"He was on assignment in the Tver region for three months, and when they
came back, that same day or the next, their squadron was assembled in a
room, handed out contracts and told to sign them. They were promised that
the contracts would only be valid for the same duration as their national
service."

According to Alexei, no pressure was exerted on the soldiers in his son's
case. "He just bought it, [they were obedient] like a flock of sheep, and
signed everything."

Under Duress

A written report from one of the parents of a soldier named Vladimir
serving in Kamenka and submitted to the Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg
— which was added to the "foreign agent" list of NGOs by the Justice
Ministry on Aug. 28 — says that he was "forced to sign a contract by means
of threats and insults."

Several e-mails from soldiers' relatives sent to Soldiers' Mothers of St.
Petersburg and seen by The Moscow Times this week, with the senders' names
redacted, describe similar situations in Kamenka.

One says that a conscript who had signed an army contract found that his
military ID contained no record that he was now serving on contract, while
he and his fellow soldiers who had signed the contracts were told they
would be sent on Feb. 9 for military exercises for three months to the
Rostov region, which borders Ukraine.

Numerous reports have claimed that Russian soldiers have been sent across
the border into eastern Ukraine to bolster the efforts of pro-Russian
separatists fighting government troops there. The Kremlin has repeatedly
denied the allegations, insisting that any Russian troops fighting in
Ukraine are there as volunteers.

Another e-mail alleges that an officer blackmailed soldiers into signing
contracts.

"We were told that we would be labeled traitors of the motherland and shot
if war breaks out. That they would alter our military records so that we
would never be able to get a job," the letter said. Another message,
apparently concerning the same person, said that 10 other soldiers had
signed contracts following the threats.

False Pretenses

According to Soldiers' Mothers of St. Petersburg spokesperson Alexander
Peredruk, the shortest term for a service contract under Russian
legislation is two years, so the soldiers were apparently deceived when
they were told that they would not have to serve as professional soldiers
any longer than they would have as draftees. Compulsory military service in
Russia lasts for one year.

Aside from pressure, soldiers are also lured into signing contracts by
promises of higher wages: at least 20,000 rubles ($295) a month

[Marxism] Russia Has No Troops in Ukraine, but a Mother of Seven Faces a Treason Trial for Warning Ukraine They Were Coming

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/30-000-people-ask-putin-to-let-mother-of-7-await-ukraine-treason-trial-at-home/515247.html

https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/daniel-kennedy-grigory-tumanov/russian-woman-accused-of-treason-for-phoning-ukrainian-emba
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[Marxism] St. Petersburg's Channel Five shows how Russia can easily invade the whole of Europe

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KGa9baVh2k

*Channel Five: The Victory Parade Can Happen in Warsaw, Berlin, and even
Washington*

Journalists at Petersburg Channel Five have endorsed the idea of a number
of western leaders of moving the WWII Victory Parade to Poland.

In her program, TV presenter Nika Strizhak said that Russian tanks could
easily reach not only Warsaw but also Washington.

According to the broadcast segment, it is only 1,300 kilometers from Moscow
to Warsaw, so the T-90 tank could enter the suburbs in less than
twenty-four hours. During this time, airborne troops, who need only two
hours for redeployment, would be able to rehearse the parade, rest, iron
their parade uniforms, and cook a festive meal of buckwheat porridge and
stewed meat.

The TV journalists also reminded viewers that it is only 1,800 kilometers
to Berlin: "For a modern army, that is no distance, all the more so because
many Russian officers know their way around the city." Well, and Prague,
Helsinki, and Vilnius are all very close, so the Russian Army could go
there on foot, the journalists added.

Channel Five also pondered more distant routes, such as London and
Washington.

"Planning for them will have to be done well in advance, and here one
cannot dispense without the air force and navy. But there is still time,
and applications are being accepted," it says in the segment.

http://lenizdat.ru/articles/1126992/
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[Marxism] New from The Russian Reader: Without Stalin, Crimea Is Not Ours! / Russian Society Has No Future / Petropatria

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Ilya Matveev: Without Stalin, Crimea Is Not Ours!

The unveiling of a monument to Stalin (and Churchill and Roosevelt) in
Yalta is an event both outrageous and telling. It is clear why it is
outrageous, but it is telling for the following reasons.

On the one hand, the monument displays the state’s current approach to
historical memory, an approach that is one-dimensional, instrumental, and
mobilizing. The message is clear: “There were times, sonny, when we would
shake our fist at everyone. Everyone feared us, and we decided the fate of
the world on a par with Europe and America. Yes, and there was order at
home, too. Don’t worry, sonny, those times will return. They’re already
coming back!”

On the other hand, in a gesture of self-justification and self-defense
typical of the current regime, Stalin was returned to the streets not alone
but with two other rulers, as part of a well-known grouping, on the
principle that “you’re sure not going to toss Stalin out of this spot!” It
is embarrassing, of course, and a bit frightening to erect a monument not
just to anyone but to Stalin. But these feelings can be suppressed if you
strike a defensive posture: this is not just Stalin, but Stalin at the
Yalta Conference, the world-famous Stalin.

Read the rest at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/02/15/stalin-monument-yalta/



Vladislav Inozemtsev: Russian Society Has No Future

Nowadays, when discussing whether the political system produced in Russia
in the 2000s is secure, the majority of discussants ignore its internal
complexity. Arguments about authoritarianism, the return to the Soviet
past, the oil curse, and the propaganda effect, like many others, divert us
from the vital principles of how current Russian society functions and
prevent us from assessing the potential and prospects of the Putinist
stability.

In my opinion, in recent years Russia has developed a unique type of
societal structure for which it is difficult to find an analogue. I am
least inclined to believe that its image was first shaped in the minds of
the inhabitants of the Ozero dacha cooperative and then brought to life,
but what has eventually emerged requires long and deep analysis.
Essentially, it is a kind of “non-social society,” however clumsy the term
sounds.

Russia has entered the second decade of the twenty-first century an utterly
peculiar country on several grounds. It is an open society whose citizens
are most afraid of this openness. It is a relatively rigidly controlled
society, but it has no ideology. It is a society encumbered by a mass of
formal constraints, but it permits an incredible degree of personal
freedom. Finally, and most importantly, it is a society that seems to be
united and cohesive, but is based on unrestricted individualism.

Read the rest at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/02/14/vladislav-inozemtsev-russian-society-has-no-future/

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Ilya Kalinin: Petropatria

Extractive nationalism is a machine for turning the nation into a resource
for the imaginary regeneration of empire (whose present prospects are,
nevertheless, ever more real). Hence the demographic policies of the 2000s,
the concept of the “Russian world” (now also equipped with the right to
intervene militarily on behalf of compatriots abroad), and the precedent of
territorial expansion. In this case, there is another, geopolitical aspect
to the resource state’s demodernization: a return to the imperial idea,
which ignores both the postmodernist model of globalization and the
modernist model of the nation-state. (Although the new empire has been
assembled under the quasi-national cover of the “Russian world,” the
Russian language, and Russian culture, thus papering over the conflict
between the national and the imperial.) The conversion of fossil fuels into
one of the main instruments in the war for imperial influence is only the
most brutal and aggressive version of the total resource-driven mentality
we are discussing.

Read the rest at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/ilya-kalinin-petropatria/
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[Marxism] Saratov Journalist and Anti-Fascist Sergei Vilkov Accused of “Nazi Propaganda”

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/02/26/sergei-vilkov-antifascist-nazi-propaganda/
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[Marxism] A Tale of Two Countries

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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I wonder if our list's newly minted Kremlin troll and drive-by-shooting
apologist, "Stepan Kutuzov," would care to comment on these two stories:

Finland:
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/feb/27/finnish-punk-band-take-punt-eurovision-title

Russia:
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/maidown-banners-show-inhumanity/516452.html

In case anyone is wondering, Pertti Kurikka’s Nameday won Finland's New
Music Contest last night with 37% of the popular vote, sending them on to
Eurovision in Vienna this spring.
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[Marxism] Opera director charged by Russian authorities with offending Christians

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/25/opera-director-charged-by-russian-authorities-with-offending-christians
Opera director charged by Russian authorities with offending Christians
Timofei Kulyabin attacks ‘absurd’ charge over his production of Richard
Wagner’s Tannhauser which is alleged to have ‘desecrated’ the image of
Jesus Christ

Agence France-Presse
Wednesday 25 February 2015

Russia on Tuesday accused the director of a production of a Richard Wagner
opera of publicly offending the feelings of religious believers following a
complaint from a senior Russian Orthodox cleric.

Thirty-year-old director Timofei Kulyabin told AFP he has been charged over
his production of Wagner’s Tannhauser at Novosibirsk’s State Opera and
Ballet Theatre in Siberia, which premiered in December.

“It’s absurd and I don’t want to take part in something absurd, to be
honest,” he said.

“I just have a sense of deep incomprehension.”

Prosecutors said the director, who last year won Russia’s prestigious
Golden Mask award, “publicly desecrated the object of religious worship in
Christianity – the image of Jesus Christ in the Gospels”.

The administrative offence carries a maximum fine of 200,000 rubles
($3,165) for an official.

The case comes three years after a probe against the Pussy Riot punks who
were sentenced to two years for “hooliganism”, specifically offending
believers, after a performance in a Moscow church.

The case against the opera was opened after a senior Orthodox cleric, the
Metropolitan of Novosibirsk, Tikhon, told the prosecutors that he had
received complaints from offended believers.

“I wrote (to prosecutors) that Tannhauser breaches the rights of believers
... Believers are offended, so to say,” Tikhon said at a news conference
this month.

“I don’t want to and I cannot understand the system of values of Orthodox
activists,” Kulyabin said. “They have nothing to do with theatre.”

He said that he and the theatre’s director, Boris Mezdrich, had been
summoned by prosecutors several days ago to give statements.

Kulyabin said he feared a court could order that the offending scenes be
cut or the production could be removed from the theatre’s repertoire.

“It just depends on the level of their imagination,” he said.

After the Pussy Riot case, Russia in 2013 introduced a new criminal offence
– carrying out public acts that offend believers – which carries a jail
sentence of up to three years. It is unclear how this differs from the
“administrative” misdemeanour.

Wagner’s opera, first performed in 1845, is about a hero who falls for the
charms of Venus but eventually returns to the Catholic church.

Kulyabin’s production shifts the action to the present day, making
Tannhauser a film director, which the director said is “fairly radical”.
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[Marxism] [UCE] The church, the state, and the arts: a crackdown on Russian theaters

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://meduza.io/en/news/2015/03/04/the-church-the-state-and-the-arts-a-crackdown-on-russian-theaters
The church, the state, and the arts: a crackdown on Russian theaters
4 MARCH 2015 TASS

Russia's Investigative Committee has launched an inspection of the
Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater in relation to their
production of Richard Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser, which allegedly violates
the right to freedom of conscience and religion in Russia.

The complaint was filed by a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church,
Metropolitan bishop Tikhon of Novosibirsk and Berdsk. He has stated that
those behind the production have exhibited “clear disrespect towards
society, have transgressed universally acknowledged norms and rules of
conduct, have set themselves against all others in terms of their religious
feelings, have behaved with insolence.”

On March 4, a court in Novosibirsk began the hearing of the case against
the theater. The district attorney office has stated that the offense is
obvious and that there is no need for further expertise. The final ruling
will be announced on March 10.

A source which spoke to news agency Tass said that “the inspection is
carried out in accordance with a Russian law on the ‘obstruction of the
right to freedom of conscience and religion.’ The inspection will last one
month.” Punishment for this offense is custody for up to one year.

Several federal laws criminalizing offenses towards religious feelings were
passed in Russia since 2013. On June 30, 2013, a law was passed to
counteract offenses against citizens’ religious convictions and feelings,
and against the desecration of facilities and items of religious
veneration. The law came into effect despite opposition from the Supreme
Court of Russia and from the Presidential Council on Human Rights.

Timofei Kulyabin’s production of Tannhäuser uses a modern-day setting in
which the protagonist Heinrich Tannhäuser is a filmmaker. In the opera, a
poster of his film The Grotto of Venus depicts Jesus Christ crucified
between the spread legs of a woman.

On February 24, Novosibirsk State Academic Opera and Ballet Theater
director Boris Mezdrich and producer Timofei Kulyabin were accused of
insulting people’s religious feelings. The Novosibirsk district attorney
office initiated legal proceedings against them for an administrative
offence regarding their production of Tannhäuser.

According to Taiga.Info, upon investigation the district attorney office
concluded that the theater director and producer publicly desecrated “the
image of Jesus Christ, an item of religious veneration for Orthodox
Christians.” Producer Timofei Kulyabin has rejected the claims made by
representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church. Director Boris Mezdrich has
said that the opera will remain in the theater’s program and that tickets
to this production are still being sold. He has also noted that parts of
the production may be “adjusted.”

Other complaints against theater productions which offend people’s
religious convictions have been filed in Russia. Russian Orthodox Church
representative of the episcopate of Izhevsk, a city in the Western Urals,
has requested of administration of the region to “react accordingly” to a
production of Alexander Pushkin’s The Blizzard at the State Russian Drama
Theater in Izhevsk. The Ministry of Culture of the region has allowed for
the production to continue, but the administration is putting together an
advisory board for the assessment of theater productions so as to avoid
offenses in the future. Petr Shereshevsky, theater director of the State
Russian Drama Theater, has rejected claims that the production offends
religious convictions.
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[Marxism] "God, Tsar, Nation": Russian Nationalists Train Volunteers in St Petersburg to Fight in Eastern Ukraine

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://uk.news.yahoo.com/video/russian-nationalists-train-volunteers-st-171503135.html
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[Marxism] "I'm a Russian Occupier": Celebrating the Triumphs of Russian Imperialism

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Sanctions-Hit Military Chief Rogozin Tweets: 'I'm a Russian Occupier'
(Video)
The Moscow Times
Mar. 05 2015

A video that celebrates the triumphs of Russian imperialism titled "I am a
Russian Occupier" has been shared on Twitter by Deputy Prime Minister
Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the country's military-industrial complex.

"Hello. I am a Russian occupier. This is my profession, it just so happened
historically," says the video, tweeted Saturday by Rogozin. It has been
viewed more than 3 million times since last week.

Rogozin was one of the first Russian officials to be blacklisted by the
U.S. over what the West claims was the illegal takeover of the Black Sea
peninsula Crimea in March last year. He was later added to the EU and
Canadian sanctions list.

Set against backdrop of cartoon graphics and dramatic music, the video
lists the benefits of Russian occupation and the comparative drop in life
quality now experienced by those who proclaimed their independence from
Moscow.

Siberia, which was conquered by Russia in the sixteenth century, is now
home to oil, gas and aluminum-mining industries. Women are no longer traded
in exchange for "sable skins," the video's voiceover says.

In the Baltics, Russian occupation brought rapid development to the region,
which became known for its production of high-quality radio equipment and
cars. But, the video says, "they asked me to leave," and now the region
produces only sprats — a type of fish — while some of its residents are
cleaning toilets in Europe, the voice adds.


Factories, canals and cosmodromes were built in Central Asia after it was
occupied by Russia. Now, the region relies on American credit and marijuana
production, says the video, noting that part of the Central Asian
population travel to Russia in search of employment by their former
occupiers.

Ukraine is also mentioned in the video, with the voiceover saying the
country went into free fall after gaining independence from Russia and is
now heading toward bankruptcy under its new pro-Western "dictatorship."

"Yes, I'm an occupier and I am tired of apologizing for it," says the
voiceover, before detailing a list of those who have tried and failed to
conquer Russia — including French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and Nazi
leader Adolf Hitler.

It also says that Russians don't need Western "freedoms" or "democracy,"
while images of the detention camp Guantanamo Bay and the rainbow flag
associated with gay rights flash across the screen.

"I politely ask you for the last time, don't mess with me! I build peace, I
love peace, but I know how to fight better than anyone. Sincerely, your
Russian occupier," concludes the almost 3-minute long video.

The U.S. military this week estimated about 12,000 Russian soldiers are
supporting pro-Moscow separatists in eastern Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly
denied allegations it is militarily involved in the region.

Video with English subtitles:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T65SwzHAbes
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[Marxism] "Smash the Kikes and Save Russia!"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/antisemitism-petersburg-frenkel/

Smash the Kikes and Save Russia (2015)
Hard on the heels of migrants and gays, another minority has begun to fear
for its safety: Jews. Svetlana Reiter spoke with two women who feel
directly threatened
Svetlana Reiter
March 2, 2015
Colta.ru

Leokadia Frenkel
Program Coordinator, St. Petersburg Jewish Community Center
I set up a volunteer program to help the children of migrants three years
ago, in May. Basically, we teach Russian to children of migrants from
Central Asia, primarily from Uzbekistan, but there are children from
Kyrgyzstan and a few from Georgia. Twice a week, they have Russian lessons,
and every Sunday in the summer we go to a museum, take a trip to Pavlovsk
or Peterhof, or just walk around the city. The younger group, preschoolers
and first graders, we teach conversational language through games. We teach
the older children, who already know how to read and write, Russian as
foreign language. There are fourteen children in the younger group, and
eight in the older group. I cannot say that they attend constantly. Some
get ill, while others leave the country.

I myself am a philologist by training. Previously, I taught Russian
language and literature in schools. I am Jewish.


When we opened, practically no one was working with migrant children. There
were no classes: it had occurred to no one that something needed to be done
with them. Naturally, when we opened, various media visited us to shoot
segments and write articles. When I read the comments to these articles, I
often felt uneasy: people wrote very harshly about migrants and their
children. But I could scarcely have foreseen what has happened now.

I posted an ad for volunteers in Facebook and VKontakte. We cannot take
just anyone: we need professional philologists, people able to work with
children. We cannot take the average person who just feels sorry for
migrants, and real teachers are few and far between. So I am constantly
posting ads in social networks: look at what wonderful children we have,
come and help us.

Not long ago I posted two more ads. A group on VKontakte calling itself
Morality reposted one. I had a look. Morality’s moderator, Mikhail Kuzmin,
put together an album containing 161 photos of me and published a post in
which he wrote that the kike-liberal public goes to protest rallies and
teaches Russian to “black” (chernye) children. This group is absolutely
fascistic and anti-Semitic. They are constantly writing that migrants
commit the majority of crimes in Russia. That “black” children attend our
schools and spoil our children, the migrant children are wild animals who
are uneducable. And those are the mildest things they write.

When this community was informed that a Jewish woman was teaching migrants,
they were faced with what they understood as pure evil. Three and a half
thousand people gladly lashed out at me. Kuzmin posted information about my
son and my husband, and published an additional post about my family. He
was outraged: how could it happen that kikes were teaching savages?! There
is no place for either group in our society. Down with the kike-liberal
opposition! Moreover, judging by his photographs, Kuzmin himself goes to
LGBT rallies and beats up gay activists. He has an athletic physique: he
practices boxing and fisticuffs at Sosnovka Park. In one photo, he is
wearing a police uniform and sporting a badge. I don’t know whether he is
really a policeman, but the photograph exists, just like snapshots where he
is giving the Hitler salute or standing next to Deputy [Vitaly] Milonov
[author of Petersburg’s infamous homophobic law].

The worst thing, of course, is that he not only haunts the social networks
but that he walks the streets. I complained to the administration of
VKontakte. They replied that if I didn’t like this group, I shouldn’t look
at their postings, and that they close only those groups that directly
threaten someone’s life.

I have said nothing to the migrant children. I am a good teacher; I know
how to work with children. Ultimately, my job is to help those who have it
worse than I do, not to make their lives even more unbearable. You see, in
the schools these children accumulate hatred: teachers don’t like them and
classmates fear them. These things give rise to reciprocal aggression.

It is hard to say whether the folks from Morality are threatening my life.
If they practice fisticuffs at Sosnovka Park, what prevents them from
visiting our Jewish center? Maybe one of their three and a half thousand
subscribers will decide to harm me directly. And you know, I am less afraid
to read t

[Marxism] JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN FOR ALEXANDER KOLCHENKO!

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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 JOIN THE INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN FOR ALEXANDER KOLCHENKO!

Alexander Kolchenko is a Crimean anarchist, social activist, and
antifascist who is being held by the Russian authorities. Along with other
Crimean activists, he was kidnapped by the Russian FSB (ex-KGB) and is now
detained as a political hostage in Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. He has been
charged with committing “acts of terrorism” and “belonging to a terrorist
community."

Why is Alexander Kolchenko in jail?

Alexander, who has proven his antifascist stance over many years, is facing
preposterous accusations of belonging to Right Sector, the radical
Ukrainian right-wing organization, whose real role in Ukrainian events has
been blown out of proportion by Russian official propaganda.

In modern Russia, any activist — left wing, anarchist or liberal — can be
slandered as a member or sympathizer of Right Sector. This situation is
comparable to the hunt for nonexistent Trotskyists under Stalin, or the
McCarthy witch hunt for communists in the US. Putin’s authoritarian and
nationalist regime, which uses everything from religious prejudices and
conspiracy theories to outright racism in its propaganda, shamelessly
steals antifascist rhetoric. And yet anyone who is considered bothersome is
called a fascist, even if he/she stands on the opposite side of the
political spectrum.

The case against antifascist Alexander Kolchenko and civil activist and
film director Oleg Sentsov (investigators enrolled them in the same
“terrorist” group) is political. It is meant to intimidate the inhabitants
of Crimea and prevent any resistance on the peninsula. The most
authoritarian of methods are now used in annexed Crimea to repress all
dissent. Many people have been forced to leave Crimea because their life
and freedom were threatened: lawyers, left-wing activists, student and
trade union activists, anarchists, antifascists, and Crimean Tatar
activists who have fallen victims of ethnic discrimination.

What does Alexander Kolchenko face?

Alexander Kolchenko is threatened with a terrible prison sentence of up to
20 years for a non-existent “terrorist attack” in which he was not
involved. Kolchenko and other Ukrainian political prisoners have been
detained only to demoralize the opposition through show trials. Their
freedom is directly linked to the stability of the Putin regime. If we can
shake Putin's confidence in his impunity, the prisoners will be set free.
There is no hope that Kolchenko, Sentsov, and others will be given fair
trials. Their arrests were unlawful, and the charges against them are
far-fetched. It was not a mistake: the regime knows what it is doing.

How can you help Alexander Kolchenko?

We are asking international left wing and libertarian forces for help. You
can organize and lead actions of protest and solidarity, write letters to
Kolchenko, and send donations to pay for lawyers, food parcels, and support
for his family. It is also important to spread information about his case.
Most of all, we need to dissociate ourselves from any forces that support
the aggressive expansion of Russian nationalism, even if they cover it up
with leftist and anti-imperialist rhetoric. Putin's regime is doing just
fine without your sympathy. You had better save it for those who are its
victims.

When should you start?

You can start right now by helping us spread this appeal, translating it
into other languages, and sending it to comrades. We also strongly
encourage you to organize demonstrations from April 1 to 7, 2015, in
support of Alexander Kolchenko and other political prisoners jailed in
Russia. Sentsov’s and Kolchenko’s current terms in pretrial police custody
end on April 11 and 16, respectively. In the first half of April, Lefortovo
District Court in Moscow will decide whether they should await trial in
jail, be placed under house arrest or be released on their own
recognizance, Only strong, massive pressure on the Putin regime and
protests around the world will make it possible to set our comrades free.
We demand their immediate release and the dropping of charges against them.

You can find more information below.

Interview with Alexander Kolchenko
http://noborders.org.ua/en/fields-of-work/other/aleksandr-kolchenko-i-am-not-a-terrorist-i-am-a-citizen-of-ukraine/


Repressions against Crimean activists: the political context
https://avtonom.org/en/news/repressions-against-crimean-activists-political-context


Multilingual Facebook group
https://www.facebook.com/groups/144468784296/

Contact us at freekolche...@gmail.com
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[Marxism] Tatlin Wails: The Demise of Stroyburo House and Vasily Maslov's 1930s Socialist Mural at the Former Bolshevo Commune

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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With all due respect to Mike Alewitz's wonderful work and the terrific
article he sent to the list the other day, here is a story about the
current fate of the socialist art legacy in Russia that would make Tatlin
wail. It also neatly (and brutally) characterizes the current regime:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/10/stroyburo-demolition-vasily-maslov-fresco-bolshevo-commune/
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[Marxism] More wisdom from "center-left" Ukrainian pro-Russian activist Pavel Gubarev

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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As posted on his Facebook page today:

https://www.facebook.com/pgubarev/posts/1071435022883242?fref=nf

"On the question of what to do next with Ukraine, I reply:
1. Complete the affair with a military victory in Kiev, but better yet in
Lvov.
2. Name the new country with an abbreviation: CNU -- the Country of New
Russia and Ukraine.
3. [Implement] velvet Russification and soft imposition of the Russian
political, cultural, and historical discourse. For at least fifty years.
4. Especially stubborn Nazis will have to be sent to the camps.
5. Incorporate CNU into Russia in 10-20 years."

Sounds pretty "center-left" to me!
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[Marxism] STOP the International Russian Conservative Forum!

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/stop-the-international-russian-conservative-forum/

The close ties between the Kremlin and many European far-right parties are
not a secret. The current Russian government’s warm friendship with Marine
le Pen has neither precluded official statements of “concern over the
growth of neo-nazism” in Ukraine or the Baltic States, nor prevented some
European leftists from voicing support, not only for Vladimir Putin’s
policies, but for his rhetoric as well. Just at the moment when politicians
from Die Linke or Jean-Luc Mélenchon express their disgust at the presence
in the Ukrainian government of some representatives of the far right, an
entire congress of European neo-fascist politicians will take place in
Saint Petersburg, with unofficial support from Dmitry Rogozin, Russian
Deputy of the Prime Minister.

On the 22nd of March, leaders and Members of the European Parliament from
the following parties will attend the “International Russian Conservative
Forum”:

Golden Dawn (Greece)

British National Party (UK)

Ataka (Bulgaria)

Forza Nuova (Italy)

Radical party (Serbia)

Party of Swedes (Sweden)

National Democratic Party (Germany)

…among other, similar parties. Some of the keynote speakers of the Congress
will include, Nick Griffin, former leader of the British National Party,
and Udo Voigt from the German NPD, who promised to present a
groundbreaking—and no doubt un-ironic—critique of ‘Ukrainian nationalism.’
On the Russian side, the primary organizer is the Rodina (“Motherland”)
Party, which enjoys unofficial connections with Deputy Prime Minister
Dmitry Rogozin. It seems that Kremlin officials have no problem endorsing
far-right parties who agree with their own policies, even while calling out
such extremists when they appear in the pro-Kiev camp.

The LeftEast editorial board calls for its local comrades and others to
express their protest against the decision of the Holiday Inn Hotel in St.
Petersburg and the Kremlin to allow this Congress to take place in the
Russian capital and in the premises of the hotel.

A way to express your indignation is to send an email to the international
and St Peterburg communication directors of the Holiday Inn Hotel, Genush
L. a...@hi-spb.com and Zoë Bird, InterContinental Hotels Group, Denham, UK,
zoe.b...@ihg.com along the following lines:

I am indignant that the Holiday Inn in St. Petersburg has decided to
provide a platform to this so-called “International Russian Conservative
Forum” (March 22th, 2015), which is in fact a forum of European Neo-Nazi
parties, no doubt chosen due to their support for Vladimir Putin’s external
and internal policy. The participation of such odious organizations as the
“Golden Dawn” (Greece), the National Democratic Party of Germany, the
Freedom Party (Austria), and the British National Party is an offense to
the feelings of St. Petersburg residents on the eve of the 70th anniversary
of Soviet victory over the Nazi invaders in the Great Patriotic War.

I demand an immediate cancellation of the lease contract provided to the
organizers of the forum!

—

For more information in Russian and English – please follow this link:
http://www.rusimperia.info/news/id22235.html
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Re: [Marxism] Scary conference in Russia

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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The funny thing about our man in Vancouver and analysts like him is that
they believe media coverage, especially in big outlets like the NYTimes,
has total primacy over events on the ground, and how they are perceived and
contested by the people who actually live there. I would be reluctant to
comment on politics in Vancouver, which I've only visited once, but Roger
is somehow confident that having his eyes glued to the "right" websites
(like Russia Insider?) is all the savvy Canadian anti-imperialist militant
requires when discussing life eleven time zones away.

Back in the real Russia, this is how the famous Soviet-Russian bard poet
Alexander Gorodnitsky, a child survivor of the Nazi Siege of Leningrad,
reacted to the shameful surrender of the city to European and American
neo-Nazis at the Holiday Inn on Sunday:

Those who rented Piter [Petersburg] out today
To a Nazi congress
Have wiped their feet on the fallen,
Whose bones lie at rest round here.
These days they hand out
Medals to us, the Siege survivors.
During the war we did not surrender the city,
But they surrender it and put it up for rent.
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/columns/67771.html

This "scary conference" has been a big deal here, not only because of the
relatively large and speedy mobilization of antifa, progressive leftists,
and liberals against it, resulting in several arrests and possible jail
terms for some of the protesters, and the heavy local and national media
coverage, but also because of the reactions of otherwise politically
quiescent or loyalist folk like Gorodnitsky and the Federation of Jewish
Communities of Russia, who sent out this communique yesterday:

http://www.feor.ru/news/index.php?newsid=12968
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia expresses its extreme
concern and bewilderment that the most ultranationalist forces in Europe
were allowed to gather at a large-scale forum in St. Petersburg, a city
that survived all the horrors of a Nazi siege.

The Congress, according to the official list of participants on the forum
site, was attended by members of various ultranationalist parties in
Europe, including such notorious ones as the Greek Golden Dawn, the
National Democratic Party of Germany (whose leader, Udo Voigt, who also
took part in the forum, earlier expressly stated that he believes his party
the successor to the Nazi party NSDAP), the Austrian Freedom Party, the
Swedes Party (formerly called The National Socialist Front), the British
National Party (whose former leader Nick Griffin, who also took part in the
forum, is an infamous Holocaust denier ), and the Italian Forza Nuova,
whose leader Roberto Fiore directly calls himself a "fascist."

Most of these parties, from the FJC's point of view, could be safely
included in the list of extremist movements, whose activities should be
banned in the Russian Federation.

The Russian Jewish community is also extremely astonished that a gathering
of nationalists was held in a city that was one of the hardest hit by the
Nazis in the Soviet Union during World War Two and which was the most
northerly of the places where Nazis executed Jews en masse.

This event creates a very negative impression and looks like a real "dance
on the bones" of National Socialism's victims.

The gathering looks especially cynical vis-a-vis the large-scale events
planned in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the victory over Nazism.

The Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia considers that hosting and
organizing events involving such a roster of participants in our country is
absolutely unacceptable and blasphemous to the memory of the victims of the
Great Patriotic War.

___

Another local context that Roger, of course, knows nothing about is the
rather serious wave of neo-Nazi attacks against immigrants, foreign
students, antifascists, and leftist activists in Petersburg (and all around
Russia) during 2004-2000. That wave abated somewhat when police finally
went after some of the gangs behind the attacks, but general attitudes
towards Central Asian migrants and people from the Caucasus have only
gotten worse in the meantime, if anything, partly egged on by the regime.

This is borne out by recent massive virtual neo-Nazi attacks against two
friends of mine, attacks that were also motivated by that old Russian
standby in times of trouble, anti-Semitism:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/antisemitism-petersburg-frenkel/

Given all these different contexts, it is no wonder that so many people
here reacted so strongly to the little neo-Nazi fest at the Holiday Inn on
Sunday. The NY Times didn't make up that reality. And the Lord Haw-Haws at
Russia Ins

[Marxism] “Anti-Extremist” Police Crack Down on Unionized Autoworkers in Kaluga (Russia)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/crackdown-unionists-kaluga-auto-industry/

Automotive Industry Checked for Extremism
Center “E” Officers Detain Independent Trade Union Activists in Kaluga
Anatoly Karavayev and Daniil Lomakin
March 23, 2015
Gazeta.Ru

Kaluga police conducted a raid against independent trade union activists
who had gathered to discuss layoffs at local car factories. Due to the
decline of the auto market, 750 people might be fired in the very near
future. After being detained on a technicality, the detainees talked to
officers from Center “E”, the Center for Extremism Prevention. The trade
union movement considers such actions a preventive measure by the
authorities.

A scandal has erupted in Kaluga over the detention of fifteen activists
from the Interregional Trade Union of Autoworkers (ITUA/MPRA). (Police
claim that twelve activists were detained.) At the weekend, workers from
local automotive factories had gathered at the offices of the ITUA’s Kaluga
local to discuss future personnel reductions in the region.

For example, there are plans to lay off 150 people at the local Volkswagen
plant in the near future.

In addition, the Peugeot-Citroen plant in Kaluga could dismiss as many as
40% of its workers, around 600 people, without compensation after March 31.
Unlike Volkswagen, the French automaker has not yet made an official
announcement.

As the ITUA local informed Gazeta.Ru, they are planning this week to
negotiate with plant management. If an agreement to save jobs is not
reached, the trade union intends to hold protest rallies and file a series
of lawsuits.

The local security forces also took notice of the Kaluga trade union’s
activism. Over the weekend, police conducted mass arrests of its members.
Moreover, officers from Center “E”, which specializes in combating various
forms of extremism, dealt with the activists.

As activists recounted, they had begun gathering for the meeting when
police suddenly entered the ITUA office in Kaluga and arrested everyone
present. Ultimately, 15 people were taken to the police station. ITUA local
chair Dmitry Trudovoi is certain the detention of the activists was
occasioned by the trade union’s increased activism.

“Layoffs are planned at Peugeot-Citroen and Volkswagen. All this has lead
the trade union to ratchet things up. Strikes and all that are possible.
Basically, this was an act of intimidation,” Trudovoi said of the incident.

“This was a ridiculous police provocation,” Dmitry Kozhnev, who was among
the detainees, told Gazeta.Ru.

“First, a beat cop entered the office. He asked about two people who had
committed a robbery nearby and had, allegedly, dashed into the building
where the ITUA meeting was taking place. Some time later, the ‘bigwigs’
arrived (around forty ranking officers), people in uniform and plainclothes
who systematically arrested us and took us to the station.”

“At first, they told us that the arrests were linked, allegedly, to the
robbery. But that doesn’t seem to be true, given that people were detained
for an hour. Center “E” officers conducted the interrogations. They were
trying to figure out what our organization was doing, what events were
planned. But none of the detained ITUA members answered their questions.”

According to Kozhnev, the ITUA regarded the arrests as an attempt to
intimidate members of the trade union.

“Center “E” officers told us we were agents of the West and wanted to
destabilize the situation in the country,” said Kozhnev.

“But ultimately they didn’t achieve their objective; they only discredited
themselves. On the contrary, the situation has united all ITUA workers even
more,” he added.

The Kaluga Region Interior Ministry office denied the arrests of the ITUA
members occurred during an investigation of their activity.

As Svetlana Somova, head of the press center at the regional Interior
Ministry office told Gazeta.Ru that a robbery had occurred near where the
trade unionists were meeting. Two unidentified men had attacked a third man
and stolen his belongings.

“According to the victim, [the robbers] escaped into the building where the
meeting was taking place,” explained Somova. “A group of people, some of
whom had no documents, was in the room. They were unable to explain
anything about the men who had entered the building. Therefore, they were
taken to Police Precinct No. 2. And there it transpired that an out-of-town
trade union movement leader was among them. Naturally, the desk sergeant
summoned Counter-Extremism Center officers to avoid provocations.”

As Somova explained, no more than ten officers had been dispatched to the
site where the ITUA member

[Marxism] Comment on Russian and Ukraine

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Roger Annis:

"PS Thomas says "our man in Vancouver" should desist from commenting on
Russia because he doesn't live there. Hmm, I am guessing from Thomas' name
that he is not Russian and cannot call Russia his homeland. Regardless, I
trust he is not arguing for some new listserve guideline that contributors
should only comment on matters concerning the country where they reside, or
some such arbitrary restriction. For Thomas' information, I have spent a
great deal of time and resources during the past year on travel precisely
so I may be better informed on the events in Ukraine and their
international ramifications."

Nowhere did I write that Roger Annis should "desist" from commenting on
Russia. What did I imply very strongly was that he should be better
informed about what is actually going on here.

I don't understand how my surname and Russia's not being my "homeland"
could possibly be a handicap in understanding events here. On the other
hand, being completely fluent in Russian (and able to understand Ukrainian
a bit when push comes to shove) and having lived in Russia on and off for
over twenty years, as well as extensive contact and work with grassroots
and leftist organizations should be something of an advantage, no?

As for what country is going extreme rightist in a big way and right off
the edge of the map, my money is on Putin's Russia: hence the illegal
occupation and the "invisible" invasion of East Ukraine, and the total
media and societal hysteria accompanying it. But more than that, and this
has been going almost since day one of Putin's deplorable reign, there has
been the extreme concentration of all financial and political power in the
hands of a very tiny elite, the terrorizing of civil society and
minorities, rampant clericalism, waves of xenophobia and homegrown, lethal
neo-Nazism on the streets (did you miss the part in my last message, Roger,
about hundreds of murders and beatings of foreign students, antifa
activists, and Central Asian migrants in Petersburg, Moscow and other parts
of the country over the last ten years by skinheads and neo-Nazis? Do the
names Stanislave Markelov, Nikolai Girenko, and Timur Kacharava mean
anything to you?), topdown attacks on Russian's fine traditions and
institutions of education and scholarly research, a bludgeoning of the
country's built heritage, especially in Moscow and Petersburg, a bloating
of the state security and bureaucratic apparatuses to well beyond their
Soviet levels, the official encouragement of the sense of being under
attack from the rest of the world. again to the point of hysteria, etc.

Occasionally, I repost items to this list from my blog. Here is what I
posted there earlier today and yesterday:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/25/crackdown-unionists-kaluga-auto-industry/
This is about trade union activists in Kaluga, which has become a cluster
for foreign auto manufacturing plants, being raided and taken downtown for
a little shake-up by the "anti-extremism" police. Anyone with any awareness
of how the independent labor movement has been shaping up under Putin's
reign would know that this kind of official intimidation is quite routine.
Now the "eshniki" (as the Center "E" officers are "affectionately" called)
have the added advantage of accusing trade union activists of beings
"agents of the West" and "fifth columnists." It's all part of the exciting
hysterical zeitgeist here now.

This is an even lovelier item, which will give you a good sense of the
Black Hundreds-style direction in which parts of the elite and the
"uncivil" part of civil society seem to be pushing the society. I'll quote
it in full:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/26/novosibirsk-tannhauser-novopashin/
Alexander Novopashin, prior of Novosibirsk’s Saint Alexander Nevsky
Cathedral, has been awarded an Extremism Prevention pin and a Service to
the Motherland medal, second degree, as reported on the cathedral’s site
and an official legal information website.

According to the text of the March 23 decree, signed by Russian President
Vladimir Putin, Novopashin received the Service to the Motherland medal,
second degree, for “successes achieved in his career, many years of
diligent work, and active involvement in public life.”

Earlier, on March 21, the archpriest was awarded the pin of the Main
Directorate for Extremism Prevention. As reported on the site of Saint
Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the priest has worked on the problem of
totalitarian sects for over twenty years. He argues that contemporary
sectarianism is one form of the extremist movement.

As the noted on the cathedral’s site, “The priest stresses tha

[Marxism] Vologda Machine Plant Workers Rally against Layoffs

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/vologda-machine-plant-workers-rally-against-layoffs/

In Vologda, Machine Plant Workers Stage Rally against New Layoffs
March 23, 2015
newsvo.ru

Today at 10 a.m., workers from the Vologda Machine Plant (VMP) staged a
rally on Revolution Square. The occasion was a new round of layoffs.

VMP workers on the march in Vologda. The first placard from the left reads,
“Is this what our grandfathers fought for?” The second placard from the
right reads, “The people’s interests outweigh the owner’s interests.” Photo
courtesy of By24.org

As protesters told a Radio Premier correspondent, lists of workers slated
for firing had recently been published. It is planned that at least fifty
more people will be fired. Given that the company now has about ninety
employees, a new round of layoffs might simply kill the plant, according to
protesters. In addition, workers claimed that management had stopped paying
them back wages.

The demonstration moved from Revolution Square to Drygin Square.
Originally, protesters had planned to block traffic. Ultimately, however,
they took the decision not to spoil the morning for commuters. They rallied
briefly on the porch of the regional legislative assembly building before
heading towards the “white house.”

VMP workers are now rallying outside the regional government house.

After a series of strikes in February, the plant was subjected to several
checks by law enforcement agencies. The regional government announced it
was monitoring the situation at the plant, and last week it promised to
monitor the payment of wage arrears. Criminal charges have been filed
against VMP management. According to the regional prosecutor’s officer,
money was “siphoned” from the company.

___

Workers Rebel in Vologda, Russia
March 23, 2015
by24.org

The huge cost of the undeclared war in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of
Ukraine, Western economic sanctions, the slump in oil prices, and the
concomitant economic crisis in Russia have had an immediate impact on the
country’s ordinary citizens. Today, March 23, workers from the local
machine plant in the city of Vologda came to the residence of the region’s
governor and almost stormed the building. Authorities had to urgently
summon police and Interior Ministry troops in full combat gear, reports
local publicationnewsvo.ru.***

The boiling point for workers at the Vologda Machine Plant, who as it was
had not been paid for eight months, was the company’s decision to undertake
mass layoffs. A list of fifty names of employees who would be fired was
posted at the plant entrance. Given that only ninety workers had remained
employed at the plant, such a layoff would be tantamount to the plant’s
death.

At first the indignant workers, bearing placards, went to the regional
legislative assembly. However, realizing that the local deputies were of
little use to them, they moved to the “white house,” the regional
administration building.

After numerous threats from police to file criminal charges against the
protesters for an unauthorized mass rally, the workers nevertheless
succeeded in meeting with Vologda Region Deputy Governor Alexei
Kozhevnikov. He sincerely sympathized with the VMP workforce. He assured
them the situation at the plant was being constantly monitored and promised
to solve all their problem—after, however, bankruptcy proceedings and a
change of ownership. A court hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 6.

According to the Vologda regional prosecutor’s office, corruption had
flourished at VMP in recent years, and money had simply been “siphoned”
from the company. The management at the plant, which handles defense
orders, had recently been completely replaced, and criminal charges filed
against the previous management. The company’s assets, including
manufacturing equipment, had been seized by court bailiffs in lieu of the
company’s debts, and heating had been turned off on the shop floors for
nonpayment. Even under these conditions, VMP workers, who had not seen a
paycheck for eight months, had continued to fill orders, most of them
defense-related.

*** Editor’s note. This detail does not seem borne out by the article
linked to, which I have translated, above, although the videos posted there
do show some kind of (mostly verbal) confrontation with police. But there
is definitely no mention of “Interior Ministry troops in full combat gear”
in the first article, as claimed by the authors of the second article.

Thanks to Comrade DR for help with finding source materials and the initial
heads-up.

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/27/vologda-machine-plant-wor

[Marxism] Moscow Doctors Go on Work-to-Rule Strike

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Work-to-Rule Strike: What Moscow Doctors Are Fighting
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/moscow-doctors-go-on-work-to-rule-strike/

Julia Dudkina
March 25, 2015
snob.ru

Moscow doctors have declared a work-to-rule strike. Disgruntled by
personnel cuts and the introduction of time limits for seeing patients,
they said they would now work strictly by the rules, without overtime. We
found out how the strike has been going in the capital’s clinics.

“Our working day is not set,” explains Dmitry Polyakov, a neighborhood
general practitioner at Diagnostic Center No. 5. “When forty-five people
pass before your eyes in a single day, you feel awful.  And there have been
staff cuts, many specialists have left, and their patients are referred to
us. People are unhappy, of course, and they take it out on us. By the end
of the day it is often difficult even to focus one’s eyes, let alone
concentrate. Salaries have fallen, incentives to work have decreased, but
the workloads have grown.”

In addition to seeing patients in clinic, a neighborhood GP has many other
duties, such as visiting ten to fifteen patients at home. Plus, there is
paperwork: outpatient charts, registration stubs, and discharge sheets.
Much of the paperwork has to be filled out during the doctor’s free time.
And yet salaries have been rapidly shrinking. Whereas before they had been
as much eighty and even one hundred thousand rubles per month, neighborhood
GPs are now paid around forty thousand rubles a month [approx. 640 euros at
current exchange rates].

“We have a very large flow of patients,” complains Yekaterina Chatskaya, an
obstetrician at City Clinic No. 180. “There is no one to see all the
patients; the workload is colossal. It happens that you work nine and ten
hours a day. I basically don’t see my husband and child, and I make only
forty thousand rubles a month. If we were at least provided with stationery
supplies. Yesterday, I was issued paper for my printer for the first time
in five years. Usually, though, I have to buy supplies out of my own money.
But the main disaster is the lack of time for examining patients properly.
The Health Ministry allots ten to twelve minutes for each patient, but it
is impossible to meet this standard.”

Elena Konte, a GP at the first branch of City Clinic No. 220, had hoped
that the start of the work-to-rule strike would simplify things. If she
didn’t have to work overtime, she would manage to go home on time, and fill
out outpatient charts that had piled up from last week. But a nurse who was
supposed to help with patients took ill; a conference was scheduled for the
middle of the day; and a mysterious “inspector,” a doctor from an
outpatient center, suddenly showed up as well.

“This never happened before. I am sure she came because of today’s strike,”
says Elena. “She didn’t say anything about the strike, but she asked about
how much we have to work and inquired about the UMIAS (Unified Medical
Information Analysis System). I think she was horrified by how much
unnecessary scribbling falls on us and how much running around the entire
clinic we do searching for patients’ test results: after all, they’re not
even recorded in the computer at our clinic. Of course, it’s uncomfortable
working when you’re being observed all day. But at least they paid
attention to us.”

Elena Konte managed to see all her patients that day, but she was unable to
complete all the outpatient charts. The first day of the work-to-rule
strike failed to solve the problems that have accrued over the past months
for staff at the first branch of City Clinic No. 220.

“At first, there were six doctors working eight neighborhoods in our second
general practice department,” says Elena. “Then, one of the neighborhood
GPs was sent to retrain as a family doctor, and there were five of us left.
In February, yet another doctor was transferred to a neighboring branch.
But this is winter, the peak time for upper respiratory infections. And the
workload is such that it is like we’re working two positions. The strain is
very hard, both physically and mentally. Yesterday, I got to the clinic at
8 a.m., and went home at nine in the evening. But I will continue to
participate in the strike. They have already promised to reduce
consultation hours from five to four hours, and have added another position
in reception.”

Downstairs, on the ground floor, two old women were vigorously discussing
the news from the world of medicine.

“They all got laid off. Who is there to do the work now?”

“Exactly! And in a couple months, they say, there will be further layoffs.
They have to go on strike.”

If the strike has gone unnoticed f

[Marxism] Russian trade union leader Vadim Kozhnev: Anyone who tries to defend their rights is branded a fifth columnist and agent of the State Department

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/vadim-kozhnev-ituwa-interview/

“Anyone who tries to defend their rights is a fifth columnist and agent of
the State Department”
A trade union leader talks about pressure from the security forces and
badgering from the National Liberation Movement
Darina Shevchenko
March 24, 2015
Yodnews.ru

The automotive industry has been laying off employees around the country.
Since the beginning of the year, the demand for cars has fallen 20-30%.
Management has forced workers to quit, shift to part-time work or agree to
significant pay cuts. The Interregional Trade Union Workers Association
(ITUWA) has countered with strikes and pickets. Center “E” (Center for
Extremism Prevention) has responded by taking measures against union
members. Last weekend, Center “E” officers detained members of the ITUWA
Kaluga local. They demanded that the activists confess to working for
western secret services and acting to destabilize the situation in Russia.
Dmitry Kozhnev, leader of the ITUWA Kaluga local, told Yod that the trade
union has long had a difficult relationship with the local security forces,
and more recently, members of the National Liberation Movement (NOD) have
targeted workers for persecution.

The ITUWA was founded in 2006 by members of trade union organizations from
the Ford plant in the Petersburg suburb of Vsevolozhsk and the AvtoVAZ
plant in Togliatti.*** The trade union unites workers from more than
fifteen companies. Its chair, Alexei Etmanov, was elected to the
legislative assembly of Leningrad Region in 2011. The ITUWA’s motto is
“Don’t cry, organize!”

On what grounds were trade union members taken in by Center “E” over the
weekend?

Under the pretext that a robber who had hit a passerby with a bottle and
stolen something had dashed into the room where we had gathered for a
routine meeting. About forty security forces officers arrived. They
detained fifteen of us, took us to a police station, and asked us about our
activities, what protests we were planning. They told us that, under the
guise of defending workers’ rights, we were spying for the US,
destabilizing the regime, and engaging in provocations. We hear this song
from Center “E” constantly. Apparently, law enforcement officers find it
difficult to believe that an organization can be independent and act on its
own.

Have Center “E” and the FSB showed interest in your activity before?

Our union emerged in 2008. During this time we have become stronger and our
actions have gotten results. In [2012], a strike at the Benteler Automotive
plant led to the workers signing a collective agreement that we drafted. We
got the bonus included in the salary and a ban on duties other than those
stipulated in the contract. At the Volkswagen plant we forced management to
increase salaries by almost four times, from seven to thirty thousand
rubles a month.

Vadim Kozhnev (left) on the picket line during the 2012 strike at Benteler
Automotive. Photo courtesy of Russian Reporter

In the summer of 2013, Volkswagen management was changing equipment. They
wanted to let the workers go for a week, and then have them work off the
missed days on weekends. By law, management has a right to do this, but
plant workers opposed it. They were furious at the prospect of working
weekends in the summer, when every day off is worth its weight in gold. We
told management they should pay the missed week as down time, while the
workers would go to work voluntarily and at double the pay. Management
stood their ground, and then we began to prepare for a strike. By the way,
according to Russian law, it is almost impossible to strike. Management
must be notified seven days in advance. During this time, management can
succeed in appealing the strike in court and then the strike cannot start
on time. So we start the strike and notify management simultaneously. That
is what we did back then at Volkswagen. We also picketed dealerships and
informed consumers that we could not vouch for the quality of the cars
assembled during the strike. We got what wanted.

Now our trade union has influence at different plants and can exercise
control over the situation. After the number of union members went over
four hundred at Volkswagen in 2009, and we began doing street protests,
Center “E” got on our case.

And as soon as relations between workers and management would heat up,
Center “E” would show up and put pressure on us, including arrests,
harassment, and surveillance. But pressure and persecution have only
strengthened the organization.

Give an example of persecution by Center “E”.

As soon as our work started to produce results, we bega

[Marxism] (Correction of previous article) Dmitry Kozhnev: Anyone who tries to defend their rights is branded a fifth columnist and agent of the State Department

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/03/29/kozhnev-ituwa-interview/

“Anyone who tries to defend their rights is a fifth columnist and agent of
the State Department”
A trade union leader talks about pressure from the security forces and
badgering from the National Liberation Movement
Darina Shevchenko
March 24, 2015
Yodnews.ru

The automotive industry has been laying off employees around the country.
Since the beginning of the year, the demand for cars has fallen 20-30%.
Management has forced workers to quit, shift to part-time work or agree to
significant pay cuts. The Interregional Trade Union Workers Association
(ITUWA) has countered with strikes and pickets. Center “E” (Center for
Extremism Prevention) has responded by taking measures against union
members. Last weekend, Center “E” officers detained members of the ITUWA
Kaluga local. They demanded that the activists confess to working for
western secret services and acting to destabilize the situation in Russia.
Dmitry Kozhnev, leader of the ITUWA Kaluga local, told Yod that the trade
union has long had a difficult relationship with the local security forces,
and more recently, members of the National Liberation Movement (NOD) have
targeted workers for persecution.

The ITUWA was founded in 2006 by members of trade union organizations from
the Ford plant in the Petersburg suburb of Vsevolozhsk and the AvtoVAZ
plant in Togliatti.*** The trade union unites workers from more than
fifteen companies. Its chair, Alexei Etmanov, was elected to the
legislative assembly of Leningrad Region in 2011. The ITUWA’s motto is
“Don’t cry, organize!”

On what grounds were trade union members taken in by Center “E” over the
weekend?

Under the pretext that a robber who had hit a passerby with a bottle and
stolen something had dashed into the room where we had gathered for a
routine meeting. About forty security forces officers arrived. They
detained fifteen of us, took us to a police station, and asked us about our
activities, what protests we were planning. They told us that, under the
guise of defending workers’ rights, we were spying for the US,
destabilizing the regime, and engaging in provocations. We hear this song
from Center “E” constantly. Apparently, law enforcement officers find it
difficult to believe that an organization can be independent and act on its
own.

Have Center “E” and the FSB showed interest in your activity before?

Our union emerged in 2008. During this time we have become stronger and our
actions have gotten results. In [2012], a strike at the Benteler Automotive
plant led to the workers signing a collective agreement that we drafted. We
got the bonus included in the salary and a ban on duties other than those
stipulated in the contract. At the Volkswagen plant we forced management to
increase salaries by almost four times, from seven to thirty thousand
rubles a month.

Dmitry Kozhnev (left) on the picket line during the 2012 strike at Benteler
Automotive. Photo courtesy of Russian Reporter

In the summer of 2013, Volkswagen management was changing equipment. They
wanted to let the workers go for a week, and then have them work off the
missed days on weekends. By law, management has a right to do this, but
plant workers opposed it. They were furious at the prospect of working
weekends in the summer, when every day off is worth its weight in gold. We
told management they should pay the missed week as down time, while the
workers would go to work voluntarily and at double the pay. Management
stood their ground, and then we began to prepare for a strike. By the way,
according to Russian law, it is almost impossible to strike. Management
must be notified seven days in advance. During this time, management can
succeed in appealing the strike in court and then the strike cannot start
on time. So we start the strike and notify management simultaneously. That
is what we did back then at Volkswagen. We also picketed dealerships and
informed consumers that we could not vouch for the quality of the cars
assembled during the strike. We got what wanted.

Now our trade union has influence at different plants and can exercise
control over the situation. After the number of union members went over
four hundred at Volkswagen in 2009, and we began doing street protests,
Center “E” got on our case.

And as soon as relations between workers and management would heat up,
Center “E” would show up and put pressure on us, including arrests,
harassment, and surveillance. But pressure and persecution have only
strengthened the organization.

Give an example of persecution by Center “E”.

As soon as our work started to produce results, we began get

[Marxism] Clerical fascism on the loose in Novosibirsk

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-new-russian-censors

Last week, Boris Mezdrich, the executive director of Novosibirsk State
Academy Opera and Ballet Theatre, the largest opera theatre in Russia, was
fired by the Ministry of Culture “for unwillingness to take social values
into account in his work, for disrespect for citizens’ opinions, and for
failure to fulfill the founder’s recommendations.” Mezdrich’s transgression
was his theatre’s production of Richard Wagner’s “Tannhauser,” conceived
and directed by Timofey Kuliabin, which appeared offensive to local
Orthodox Christian activists. The head of the Novosibirsk diocese, who had
not seen the opera, claimed in a letter to the local prosecutor’s office
that the production violated laws against offending the feelings of
religious believers and inciting religious discord, but a justice’s court
in Novosibirsk found nothing wrong with the production. Then the Ministry
of Culture stepped in and organized what they described as public hearings,
in which prominent clergy members, cultural figures, and ministry officials
condemned Kuliabin’s interpretation of the opera. None of the participants
 mentioned the orchestra, the performers, or the sets. The “hearings” were
fully focussed on the “insulting” quality of the production.

The Novosibirsk “Tannhauser” imagines Wagner’s hero, a minstrel who
vacillates between Venus and the Church, as a contemporary film director
who makes a movie about Jesus Christ. The production speaks directly to the
clash between art and the commerce of art festivals; there are clear
parallels to the director Lars von Trier and his controversial conduct. The
production’s opening-night performance, in December, was met by a full
house and a standing ovation. Some of the most prominent opera critics in
Russia praised the production; one predicted that Novosibirsk would become
a “site of pilgrimage” for the world’s opera lovers.

The production’s detractors were most outraged by a prop, a poster for the
hero’s film that showed the crucifixion of Jesus between the legs of a
naked woman. The poster appeared on stage for just a few seconds, and after
objections emerged, in March, it was covered with a gray cloth. This was
not enough for the Ministry of Culture, which demanded that “necessary
changes” be made to the production and that the director “convey public
apologies to all those whose religious feelings were offended.” Mezdrich
refused, and was fired. One of his most zealous persecutors, a fellow
theatre director named Vladimir Kekhman, had called the production
“blasphemous” and “a demonstration of inner ungodliness.” The Ministry of
Culture rewarded Kekhman by appointing him as Mezdrich’s replacement.

During Putin’s first decade in power, he focussed largely on consolidating
control of the legislature, political parties, national TV networks, and
other entities that could conceivably threaten his authority, but since his
return to the Presidency, in 2012, the Kremlin has cracked down on
individual civil liberties. More recently, artistic expression has become a
target of what the Russian theatre critic Marina Davydova has called a
“total conservative revolution.” The Orthodox Church has been an active
participant (and possibly an instigator) of several notable persecutions of
artists, including the Pussy Riot trial and the campaign against the film
“Leviathan.”

The day after Mezdrich’s dismissal, Magomedsalam Magomedov, the deputy head
of the Kremlin Administration, proposed that theatrical productions be
subject to “inspections” before they are presented to the public. Though
Magomedov did not use the word “censorship” (which is explicitly prohibited
by the Russian constitution), this would represent a return to the Soviet
system of preliminary censorship, in which no work of literature, theatre,
or film could appear without the approval of government censors. Writers
who would not adjust to the state’s ideological constraints were forced to
write v stol—“into the desk,” not for publication. Theatre and film
directors had to submit their work to repertkom (repertory commissions) and
khudsovet (artistic councils), and either make the cuts and changes these
censors demanded or see their work barred from distribution (the term for
that was “put on the shelf”).

In fact, the latest government guidelines for controlling the cultural
realm sound somewhat similar to those of the Soviet era. According to
“Foundations of the State Cultural Policy,” a document produced by the
Ministry of Culture and signed last year by Putin, the purpose of these
policies includes the “consolidation of the unity of Russian society,”
“

[Marxism] Russian Monarchist Pseudo-Craft Beer, or The Zeitgeist in Putinist Russia

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Today, some Russian comrades who know their way around the local beers
brought my attention to this liquid ideologiocal monstrosity, Afanasy
Vintage Light:

https://untappd.com/user/Darriuss/checkin/168491868

The label on the beer bottle (as pictured at the link, above) reads:

"From time immemorial, outlanders have encroached on the frontiers of the
Russian land. Only strong sovereigns have managed to fight back and bring
the state out of poverty. Peter the Great completely transformed the state
and the army. Under his leadership the country built a strong navy,
artisans worked in the shipyards, and merchants regularly replenished the
state coffers.

"Now, thanks to a strong leader, V.V. Putin, Russia has again become a
force to be reckoned with in the world, and Crimea has returned to its
historic Motherland. But Russia's greatness also depends on citizens
themselves.

"Afanasy Holding Company is making its contribution. Each bottle of our
product that is sold brings the state treasury 15.15 rubles, and we invest
5 rubles in a vigilante group that ensures the rule of law in our cities.

"We urge every Russian citizen to contribute to creating a strong State!"

By the way, this image is from a beer drinkers review site. This particular
reviewer writes that Afanasy Vintage Light is crap, and gives it a rating
of two of out five bottle caps.

Interestingly, the Afanasy Holding Company, which owns the Tver brewery
that produces Afanasy Vintage Light, is run by a local millionaire, Maxim
Larin, who is given to making statements like the following on his personal
website:

"Russia needs a monarchy. Democracy will destroy us completely. Democracy
is a good thing where most of the population is active in its actions
[sic]. In Europe, the middle class dominates the other groups. In Russia,
the common people are not able to think logically and are not
result-oriented, so a handful of people in Russia owns all the country's
assets. That is, our country has the largest number of billionaires, the
middle class is a minority, and a huge part of the population lives on the
brink of poverty."

http://www.maclarin.ru/eta-pamyat-nasha-sovest
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[Marxism] Priest says Russia needs system combining monarchy, socialism

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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This sounds a lot like national socialism to me, but as I was told by our
list's foremost expert on Russian affairs the other day, I apparently live
in some other world, at odds with real Russian reality, so I must be wrong.

Thomas



Priest says Russia needs system combining monarchy, socialism

Moscow, April 2, Interfax - The head of the Moscow Patriarchate's
Department for Church and Society Relations has advocated a political
system for Russia that would combine monarchy and socialism.

"The sovereignty of the state, justice and solidarity are the three values
on the basis of which we should build a system that would combine monarchy
with socialism," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told a roundtable in Moscow on
Thursday.

He expressed confidence that both socialist and monarchical values appeal
to the Russians.

"In this context we should defend our right to have a powerful central
authority and to have a social state geared not simply to the needs of the
ordinary individual but also to their opinion, their collective voice,
their collective reason," he said.

In Russia, the people and the state "have always felt part of a single
whole," the priest said. "Contrasting the people with the state is an idea
that has been forced on us and is extraneous to us. But this unity of the
people and the state is unimaginable without faith, and so faith has the
central value."

http://www.interfax-religion.com/print.php?act=news&id=11939
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[Marxism] Oleg Sentsov, political prisoner

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"Release Oleg Sentsov" (documentary film trailer)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mszNMVNzqGg

Wim Wenders defends Oleg Sentsov
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jizXBQ6Jqls

The "bright future" of Oleg Sentsov
https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/mike-downey/%E2%80%98bright-future%E2%80%99-of-oleg-sentsov
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[Marxism] Spiral of Silence (On "Public Opinion" Polling in Putin's Russia)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/spiral-of-silence-greg-yudin/

Greg Yudin
April 3, 2015

Let me tell you a story about opinion polls.

The so-called spiral of silence has often been recalled recently in Russia
in connection with public opinion polls. The idea behind the spiral of
silence is simple. As soon as an opinion is conveyed either in the media or
those selfsame surveys as having support from the majority, the minority,
out of fear, prefers either to keep silent or join the majority. The idea
has been used to explain where unanimous opinions, 86% ratings, total
approval, etc., come from. Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, the “godmother” of
public opinion polling in post-war Germany, coined the term “spiral of
silence” in 1980. And so in Russia, it is usually argued that the spiral of
silence is an inherent feature of public opinion, because it was discovered
in Germany, a proper bourgeois country.

We know that Noelle-Neumann was a Nazi. She did not join the party per se,
but she did head a branch of a party student organization, made a
considerable stir in the US by actively promoting Nazism, and later worked
for two years at Goebbels’s weekly newspaper Das Reich.

But that is not so important. Many people suffered from Nazi fever,
including social scientists. What is more interesting is that while many of
those people somehow reflected on their Nazi experiences, trying in
different ways to explain what had led them to do the things they did,
Noelle-Neumann went into total denial. All her life, she maintained that
she had done nothing extraordinary, that Hitler was a charming man, and
that she had just been forced to denounce Jews, and in fact she had
secretly opposed the regime. It is easy to see how she opposed it if you
take a gander at the articles she wrote for Das Reich. It is as if a
columnist for the current incarnation of Izvestia would say that he had
secretly been fighting for peace and harmony in Russia.

Subsequently, the spiral of silence theory was repeatedly tested, and it
turned out that it works poorly in multipolar societies. If it explains
anything at all, however, it explains the personal experience of
Noelle-Neumann herself. It is her own fear that she identifies with the
intimidated majority. She tries to justify this fear by arguing that the
spiral of silence is something ordinary and inevitable. But this is a bad
excuse, because in order to save her conscience, she justifies political
repression, not only past repression, but future repression. It is one
thing to recognize that no normal person is immune from becoming a beast,
and quite another thing to say it is a normal thing when people turn into
animals.

In fact, as far back as her 1940 dissertation (which simultaneously
functioned as a report to Goebbels’s office on American attitudes to
Germany), she writes directly about the difference between the US and the
Third Reich.

“In Germany, public opinion figures like the body of the people, which
receives orders from the head and ensures their implementation. […] In one
case, public opinion holds sway. In others, it is guided.”

All this came to mind after the stunning lecture last week by my colleague
Grigory Kertman from the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM). Kertman spoke
about the fear of respondents during interviews. It cannot be measured
directly. You cannot ask respondents, “Are you afraid of me right now?” But
Kertman cleverly got around this by collecting information from the
interviewers who conduct the polls. He discovered that they are used to the
fact that respondents are afraid: this is the most common cause of
insincere responses. A significant part of the interview takes place in
circumstances where the respondent’s fear is so strong that it is palpable
to the interviewers.

This silence of the lambs is abnormal, and it has nothing to do with the
“nature of public opinion.” The insatiable desire to pass human beings off
as naturally cowardly creatures and justify those who systematically bully
them always comes from those who themselves have been victims of violence.
Nothing good will come of it. We definitely do not want to go where this
spiral would lead us.

source: Facebook

Greg Yudin is a research fellow and lecturer at The Higher School of
Economics in Moscow.

See my previous posts on Russia’s pollocracy:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/tag/pollocracy/
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[Marxism] Ayder Muzhdabaev: To the Fourteen Percent

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/ayder-muzhdabaev-to-the-fourteen-percent/

To the Fourteen Percent
Ayder Muzhdabaev
April 4, 2015
echo.msk.ru
facebook.com

Governments, international organization,and concerned citizens in different
countries have been protesting against the increasing discrimination
against the Crimean Tatars. They have demanded an end to the crackdown.
Only in one country have no such protests been heard.

Guess what country?

For more than a year, its citizens have pretended not to notice that their
government has been behaving towards the Crimean Tatars on the lines of the
Third Reich, having cast this people in the role of collective outcast.
Moreover, it is not only officials and supporters of the regime who have
behaved this way, but its opponents as well.

“Opposition,” “intelligentsia”: it is no longer possible to write these
words in Russian without quotation marks. In this entire country of 140
million people you will hardly find ten people who have spoken out publicly
in defense of the Crimean Tatars. Almost all my Moscow “friends” have been
silent as well. When I appealed specifically to them here on Facebook,
telling them in detail about the plight of the Crimean Tatars in Crimea, I
got zero likes and zero reposts from those whom I had imagined as my
addressees.

It is worth pondering this situation and evaluating it on its merits.

In their country, an entire people have been made second-class citizens.
People have beendeprived of the chance to listen to the radio and watch TV
in their own language, and children cannot even watch cartoons in this
language! People are intimidated. Some of them have disappeared without a
trace, others are in prison. The rest simply sit at home crying from fear,
a sense of injustice, and despair. No one can be punished (at least not
yet) for expressing sympathy with the Crimean Tatars. So why has the cat
got your tongue, citizens?

It is just that no one really cares at all.

I think that even if the Crimean Tatars are shipped from Crimea in cattle
wagons, as they were in 1944, I will read two or three posts about it in
Russian on Facebook, amidst an account of sluts at a bar and snapshots of
beloved doggies.

It is because of this, and not for some other reason, that I do not believe
this country can essentially change for the better.

The damned eighty-six percent are to blame for everything? Is that right?

Look who is talking, fourteen percent.

Ayder Muzhdabaev is deputy chief editor of Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.
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[Marxism] Ilya Matveev: The New Putinist Stability?

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/ilya-matveev-the-new-putinist-stability/

Ilya Matveev: The New Putinist Stability?

Events are unfolding in plain sight, and strange as it might seem, the
flood of disinformation cannot prevent us from seeing a quite simple
picture.

The subway workers’ union had long warned of the danger, and there had
generally been a lot of reports in the press on the growing number of
accidents in the Moscow Metro, and now there has been a new fatal accident.

The last couple of weeks, Russian media had reported constantly about how
deftly the separatists had learned to use the Buk surface-to-air missile
system and how many Ukrainian airplanes had been shot down. Just before
news of the Malaysian airliner broke, reports had managed to surface—in
“Strelkov’s dispatches,” in the media, everywhere—that the militants had
shot down another Ukrainian transport plane. The plane turned out to be the
civilian jetliner.

Recent articles in *Vedomosti* newspaper and especially leaks at
b0ltai.wordpress.com make it easy to piece together the fiscal and economic
situation in Russia. The country is in an “autonomous” recession, meaning
one caused by internal factors. The resources for growth have been
exhausted, and there is no money for Crimea or for executing Putin’s May
2012 presidential decrees. The government is preparing to respond with
austerity measures: the abolition of free medical care for nonworking
citizens, tax increases, and another raid on retirement savings. For now
the situation is rough but not catastrophic. At the same time the overall
trajectory is clear: there will be less and less money, and it will be
ordinary people who pay the bills.

However, there is no one to protest: all the country’s internal
contradictions, which were somehow politically articulated in 2011-2013,
have been crushed by the Crimean steamroller, and the opposition is divided
and marginalized. The population has closed ranks around the new Putin
“geopolitics,” becoming an aggressively frightened mass. Any possibility of
electoral protest has been completely blocked off: with stunning cynicism,
the field has been purged in the run-up to municipal elections in Moscow
and Petersburg.

We can see that the new system is closed upon itself: the geopolitical
adventures are needed, ultimately, only to strengthen Putin’s personal
power, to maintain his sky-high rating. The exact same role is performed by
mega-events like the Olympics and the 2018 World Cup. Yet the economic cost
of the geopolitics and mega-events will be huge, and people themselves will
foot the bill (for sanctions, for Crimea, for kickbacks). However, the
imperialist ideology surrounding the events for which they are paying out
of their pockets will prevent them from articulating their protest
politically. It is a paradox, but a paradox that has already been observed
in history. Recall, for one, Marx’s remark that Louis Bonaparte ruled in
the name of the peasant masses (who supported him at elections) but against
the interests of these masses.

This new period of stability might last as long as the previous one. No, it
is no longer the apolitical period of stability of the noughties, but it
might prove no less stable.

*Ilya Matveev is an editor of OpenLeft.Ru, a member of the PS Lab research
group, a lecturer in political theory at the North-West Institute of
Management (Petersburg), a PhD student at the European University
(Petersburg), and a member of the central council of the University
Solidarity trade union.*

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[Marxism] MH17 conspiracy theories summarized

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Russian humorist and occasional liberal opposition activist Viktor
Shenderovich sums up the topsy turvy "explanations" of the MH17 crash now
being fed to the Russian public via mainstream media outlets and social
networks:

*So. On Washington's instructions, to discredit the Donetsk Republic, a
plane filled ahead of time with corpses was specially sent through an area
occupied by militants and, as witnessed by a Spanish man, was shot down by
two Ukrainian fighter planes, who took it for the Russian president's
plane. Have I forgotten anything?*

Source (in Russian):

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=705482296187183&id=11762579664&fref=nf

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[Marxism] The Shipping Forecast

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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While Manifesta 10′s “public” program sets all that is left of progressive
humanity (i.e., the contemporary art world) on fire with its overly
provocative metallic Xmas trees, actual public and political life
stubbornly and unattractively creaks on in the city that progress and
progressive humanity have forgotten, Saint Petersburg, former capital of
All the Russias.


Read the rest here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/22/the-shipping-forecast/

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[Marxism] Russian Folk Art

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Here is an amazing bit of “folk art” I just captured on Facebook. What’s
amazing about it is that it turns all the impossible contortions that
Russian state and mainstream media, and segments of Russian social media
have been going through, over the past week, to befuddle the Russian public
as to who might have shot down Flight MH17 (as described here, for example,
by the indispensable Peter Pomerantsev) on their head, attributing them
instead to US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki. In the past couple
months, Psaki has been elevated by the “pro-Russian” crowd (meaning the
same state/”grassroots” media synergy behind the contortionist act) into a
Great Satan figure, emblematic of American stupidity and ignorance.

Read the rest here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/russian-folk-art/

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[Marxism] Ilya Budraitskis on the sentencing of Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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“Trial”
Ilya Budraitskis
July 24, 2014
OpenLeft.Ru

Udaltsov: four and a half years in prison. Razvozzhayev: four and a half
years in prison.

“You were paid to come here, right?” the girl in uniform at the entrance to
Moscow City Court asked out of habit. Then came the long hours of standing
with sympathizers, acquaintances, and strangers listening as the sentence
in the trial of Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev was read out. The
Bolotnaya Square case is only two years old, but it seems a whole lifetime
has passed.

Slurring the words, Judge Alexander Zamashnyuk and his henchmen took turns
reading out the full version of the idiotic detective story, a puzzle whose
pieces have finally fallen into place: long-cherished dreams of violent
revolution, the heady atmosphere of the Movement for Fair Elections, the
connection with Georgian intelligence and clandestine seminars on how
Maidan was organized (then it was still the previous Maidan), the columns
of “anarchists and nationalists” on May 6, 2012, in Moscow, the “riots,”
with all their participants and “hallmarks.”

The absurd picture of a conspiracy, which just recently provoked laughter,
now finds support and understanding in the eyes of the frightened and
brutalized “new Putin majority,” who seemingly think it is nice everything
ended on May 6, 2012, and that the prison sentences and frame-ups are the
price that must be paid for perpetual Russian stability.

Like the other Bolotnaya Square prisoners, Sergei Udaltsov is no longer a
symbol of a movement that served its purpose but something much more than
that. He is a reminder that resisting, dissenting, and undermining the
false unity of the people and the state continue to be historical
possibilities.

Free Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razvozzhayev!

Published at:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/07/25/ilya-budraitskis-trial/

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[Marxism] The Closing of the Russian Mind: Four Snapshots

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Here are four reasons why, despite my affection for Kirill Medvedev's work,
I found his recent appeal to the "intelligentsia," "youth," and "all people
of good will" a little odd. He should be honest enough to know he is
appealing to what is, increasingly, thin air. Fifteen years of Putinism has
decimated "public discourse" and intellectual life in Russia, and now it
seems that the regime wants to finish the once-mighty Russian mind off once
and for all.

Which is not to say that the pro-Putin "euphoria" described in the first
two items is not a stage-managed affair to a huge degree, as obliquely
suggested by the fourth item.

1)

According to a survey published this week by the respected independent
pollster Levada Centre, 82% of Russians believe MH17 was brought down by
either a Ukrainian army fighter plane or missile. Just 3% thought the
insurgents were to blame. Given these kind of figures, the prospect of
Putin facing a backlash of public anger over suspected weapons supplies to
separatist gunmen is virtually zero. Ironically, Putin probably faces more
danger from Russians disappointed by his failure to provide more assistance
to the rebels. “Many people feel cheated by his refusal to use military
force [in east Ukraine],” Alexander Dugin, an ultranationalist thinker
whose ideas are reported to have influenced recent Kremlin policy, told me
recently.

Western officials may be hoping economic sanctions will force Russians to
rethink their support for Putin, but in reality such measures will achieve
little more than an entrenchment of a growing fortress mentality. State
media’s routine and increasingly vitriolic attacks on the west’s “decadent”
morals mean Russians are likely to accept any economic and social hardships
brought about by US and European sanctions. Tellingly, in another Levada
Centre poll this week, 61% of Russians said they were unconcerned by the
threat of sanctions, while 58% were similarly unfazed by the looming
possibility of political isolation over the Kremlin’s stance on Ukraine.

These head-in-the-sand attitudes are bolstered by what the director of
Levada Centre, Lev Gudkov, calls a “patriotic and chauvinistic
euphoria”rooted in the almost bloodless annexation of Crimea in March,
which was popular among Russians across the political spectrum. It’s
alsoworth noting that many “ordinary” Russians are uninterested in politics
and have only scant knowledge of the issues at hand.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/31/vladimir-putin-western-sanctions-russia-flight-mh17-state-propaganda%20

2)

MOSCOW, July 31 (RIA Novosti) - Life satisfaction and social optimism
indices in Russia skyrocketed, reaching all-time highs despite political
challenges according to polls conducted by the Russian Public Opinion
Research Center (VCIOM).

“Within the last three months, indices of social well-being have shown
unprecedented growth, stabilizing at extremely high levels. In June the
satisfaction index reached its all-time high of 79 points and the indices
of financial self-assessment and social optimism, now at 76 and 77 points
respectively, have also risen and stabilized at new highs,” says the poll.

The economic sanctions imposed by the US and EU over the crisis in Ukraine
seem to have little effect on Russians. According to the polls, Russians
are now far less concerned with the future of their country than they were
last year.

The number of Russians who have not ruled out the possibility of a war with
neighboring countries is now 23 percent of the population, up from just 10
percent last year. However, the number of those concerned about a Western
military threat has held steady at 13 percent for the past eight years.

The VCIOM opinion poll was conducted in 2014, interviewing 1,600
respondents in 130 communities in 42 regions of Russia. Data are weighted
by gender, age, education, working status and type of settlement. The polls
have margins of error of no more than 3.4%.

http://en.ria.ru/russia/20140731/191534494/Life-Satisfaction-in-Russia-Reaches-All-Time-High.html


3)

It’s bad news for Russian bloggers, then, that starting today, anyone who
attracts more than 3,000 daily readers to his blog is considered a de facto
journalist and must register. (In a largely symbolic gesture, LiveJournal
has already stopped reporting blog subscribers beyond the 2,500 mark.)
Registration entails turning over your personal details to the
government—including, of course, your name, meaning anonymous blogging is
now illegal for many. (By the way, the law applies to any blog written in
Russian for Russians; a post you write from a Brooklyn cafe could face
censorship from Moscow.) Bloggers will also be held liable for any alleged
misinformation they publish, even in comments written 

[Marxism] Kirill Kalugin: "My freedom defends yours"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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On August 2, 2013, Russian Paratroopers Day, Kirill Kalugin, a Petersburg
university student, took to the city’s Palace Square alone to protest the
country’s new anti-gay laws. He was immediately set upon by reveling
paratroopers (or as he himself suggested, by national activists
masquerading as paratroopers), an incident captured on video by Petersburg
news web site Paper Paper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8B20cige_Fo#t=54

Kalugin returned to Palace Square this year on August 2 to protest Russia’s
increasing militarism and imperialist misadventures in Ukraine. He was
roughly detained by police some fifteen seconds after attempting to unfurl
a rainbow flag emblazoned with the slogan, “My freedom defends yours.”
Despite the fact that Kalugin held his anniversary protest right next to
Manifesta 10’s provocative metallic Xmas tree, his protest has so far gone
unremarked by progressive humanity (i.e., the international contemporary
arts community) and the foreign press.

The interview below was published last August on the local Petersburg news
web site Rosbalt three weeks after Kalugin’s first protest on Palace
Square. Unfortunately, it hasn't lost any of its timeliness, especially
given the almost total absence of an anti-war movement in Russia.

__

Saint Petersburg State University student Kirill Kalugin is half the age of
his eminent opponent, Petersburg Legislative Assembly member Vitaly
Milonov, although he is also a redhead. But hair color is not the only
thing the outspoken homophobe and outspoken gay have in common. Both claim
they love their motherland Russia and will never leave it.

Rosbalt’s Yevgeny Zubarev met with Kalugin in the city center, on Arts
Square. It’s a safe place because it is always chockablock with police.
There were also lots of police on Palace Square on August 2, [2013], when
Kalugin came there alone and unfurled a rainbow flag, but even a platoon of
riot police was not immediately able to wrest him away from an agitated
crowd dressed in sailor’s shirts for Russian Paratroopers Day.

 — Why did you do it, Kirill? Weren’t you frightened?

— I was frightened. Actually, there were supposed to be four of us out
there, but then I ended up going out alone. If there had been several
people, the police could have charged us with holding an unauthorized
rally, but this way it was a solo picket, which doesn’t require
authorization. As soon as I unfurled the rainbow flag, men in sailor’s
shirts grabbed me. But I don’t think they were paratroopers: I had seen
many of the assailants earlier at anti-LGBT protests. I think they were
nationalist activists masquerading as paratroopers. The police pulled me
from the crowd and put me in a car, but we couldn’t leave right away: the
crowd blocked the car, demanding that the police give me up. The riot
police intervened and cleared a path, and I was taken to the 78th police
precinct.

— What did police charge you with? How were you punished?

— I don’t understand it myself. At first they wouldn’t let make a phone
call. The sergeants behaved rudely, and I couldn’t figure out what my
status was, whether I was detained, arrested or considered a suspect. Right
there at the police station one of the detained paratroopers rushed me: he
wanted to beat me up, but the police held him back. Then the brass arrived
and everything immediately changed: the police started talking with me
politely. It turned out I wasn’t being accused of anything. They even let
me file an assault complaint. But how that story turned out, I don’t know:
it has been twenty days, but I have had no news from the police.

— After this incident, Russian Orthodox patriots wrote several petitions to
Saint Petersburg State University demanding your expulsion.

— I’m a student in the physics department, specializing in medical physics
and bioengineering. It’s a tough department, and there is a lot of studying
to do. What matters to the deans is that students take all their exams and
tests on time, but they are unconcerned about their private lives.
Generally, it is not kosher in the scientific community to tell people how
they should behave in their intimate lives. So I’m confident all these
petitions are pointless.

— Your family must have seen how you were beaten on Palace Square on the
Web or on TV. What was their reaction?

— I was born to an ordinary Russian family in the town of Krasnoturyinsk in
the Urals. My father is an officer in the Russian armed forces, my mother,
a philologist. After the 2008 crisis, life in our town got really bad and
we moved to Petersburg, where I finished high school, got into university,
and began to live separately from my family. It was only then that I told
my parents I was gay. My parents were upset, especially my father, but they

[Marxism] Alexei Gaskarov: Closing Statement at the Bolotnaya Square Trial

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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 The verdicts in the second wave of the Bolotnaya Square Case will be
announced in Zamoskvoretsky Court in Moscow on August 18. The prosecutor
asked the court to sentence Alexander Margolin and Alexei Gaskarov to four
years in prison; Ilya Gushchin, to three years and three months in prison;
and Elena Kokhtareva, to three years and three months suspended, with four
years of probation. All four defendants have been accused under Article 212
Part 2 (involvement in riots) and Article 318 Part 1 (use of
non-threatening violence against a public official) of the Russian Federal
Criminal Code.

On August 4, Alexei Gaskarov made his closing statement in court. This is
the complete text of his speech.

___

The so-called Bolotnaya Square Case has been symbolic in the sense that
through it the public sees how the authorities interact with the
opposition, with those people whose viewpoint differs from the general line.

The first thing I wanted to talk about is something that was not addressed
in the trial, but which I think is important: why on May 6, [2012,] despite
everything, so many people decided to be involved in certain events, rather
than simply stand another two or three hours in queues, and ultimately did
not permit themselves to be beaten with impunity.

The May 6 demonstration was the seventh major event staged by the
opposition [during the 2011–2012 fair elections protest movement]. Whereas
earlier, before December 2011, a few thousand people attended protest
rallies I had witnessed, when you-know-who said the idea of rotating
governments was not the best thing for Russia, the core group of protesters
increased significantly. And these people did not go organize riots, but
went to observe elections in order to understand and record the way the
political processes that occur in our country are legitimated.

Everything fell into place on December 4[, 2011]. Despite the fact that the
institution of elections had been destroyed much earlier, the large group
of people who went to the polls as observers saw how the legitimacy of the
current government was shaped. I myself was an observer at those elections,
and what we saw was quite straightforward. Indeed, it is a strange
situation when you are trying to find at least one person among your
acquaintances who would say they voted for United Russia. In fact, such
people did not exist: there was no mass support for the government. When
they tried to counter the Bolotnaya Square protests with an event on
Poklonnaya Hill in support of the current government, they could not gather
more than a thousand people.

This subject itself was extremely important, but unfortunately it was not
sufficiently popular with the authorities. Fair elections are still the
only legal way of changing the political system, and once it has been
changed, you can solve social and economic problems. A huge number of
people took to the streets. There was almost no reaction on the part of the
authorities. The protests were peaceful, the protesters were numerous, and
it was obvious the demands they made and the problems they talked about
were real, but instead we saw only a reluctance to engage in dialogue and,
at some point, flagrant mockery.

A lot of people now do not like what thuggish characters in Ukraine are
calling people from Southeast Ukraine. But here in Russia the same thing
happened: when people came out on Bolotnaya Square, the country’s president
called them Bandar-log and made many other unflattering comparisons. We
were told we amounted to only one percent, that only one hundred thousand
people in a city of ten million came out to protest, that it meant nothing
at all. But later, when they actually allowed a fair poll, as happened
during the [September 2013] mayoral election in Moscow, it turned out it
was not one percent, but forty percent, a significant segment of society.
And I would like to say that we should be glad on the whole that the events
on Bolotnaya Square happened as they did.

In all developed democratic countries, protest rallies, the opportunity to
express points of view that differ from that of the authorities, generate
political competition, which enables countries to find the best way of
developing. By the way, certain problems in the Russian economy began
precisely in the third quarter of 2012, because it is impossible to build a
stable economic and social system when you completely demotivate and
exclude such an essential part of society. And it was obvious that this
part of society was essential.

The first signal that comes from our case: does the right to protest, which
exists in all developed countries, exist at all in Russia? As we see now,
Russia has been deprived of this right.

And the second signal, which it is impossible to ignor

[Marxism] Russian artist Artyom Loskutov and "federalization"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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It's ironic that the Kremlin and its supporters are so keen to
"federalize" Ukraine when the same approach, or even just talking
about it, is practically forbidden in Russia itself.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/blocked-bbc-interview-highlights-authorities-insecurities/504637.html

Blocked BBC Interview Highlights Authorities' Insecurities
By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber
Aug. 05 2014

In a move that showcased Russia's strained rapport with press freedom
and its fear of any challenge to the country's current composition,
the state media watchdog briefly blocked access to a BBC
Russian-language service interview about an upcoming piece of
unsanctioned performance art that was set to encourage greater
autonomy for Siberia. The next step may be to shut the website down
entirely, according to local media reports.

The Interview

The BBC's Russian-language service published an interview last week
with Novosibirsk activist Artyom Loskutov.

During the interview, Loskutov spoke of plans for an Aug. 17 street
performance, which he referred to as "a march for the federalization
of Siberia."

The farcical performance's handful of organizers planned to call for
the creation of a Siberian republic, or alternatively for its regions
to acquire the same rights as a republic. According to Luskatov, the
planned performance aimed primarily at provoking a public discourse
about perceived inequalities between Russia's regions.

But to the Russian authorities, the performance has been no laughing matter.

Of the Russian news websites that reported the upcoming performance,
14 pulled down their articles following demands from state media
watchdog Roskomnadzor, Izvestia reported Tuesday. On Friday,
Roskomnadzor blocked a page announcing the march on Vkontakte,
Russia's largest social network.

Roskomnadzor asked the BBC's Russian-language service to remove the
interview from its site, owing to the prohibition on inciting "mass
disorder, extremist activities or participation in  public activities
violating the legal order," Izvestia reported.

Acting head of the BBC's Russian-language service, Artyom Liss, wrote
on his blog Sunday that Roskomnadzor announced it had restricted
access to the webpage featuring the interview in accordance with
Russia's anti-extremism legislation.

To appease the agency's concerns, Liss announced that background
information on Loskutov — who is known for his controversial
performance-art activism — had been added as an introduction to the
interview, along with a note on the not-entirely-serious nature of the
event.

Izvestia quoted an unidentified source close to Roskomnadzor as saying
that the agency was contemplating blocking the BBC Russian-language
service's website in the country altogether. The website — and the
interview with Loskutov —  are both accessible in Russia as of the
time of publication.

Russia's restriction on Internet content seen as subversive is not
unprecedented. In March, the Prosecutor General's Office ordered
restrictions on access to such opposition-friendly websites  as
Grani.ru, Kasparov.ru, and the blog of opposition leader Alexei
Navalny, saying they called  for "illegal activity and participation
in mass events held in violation of the established order."

Constitutional Issue

What has offended Russian authorities about the initiative — beyond
the proliferation of information about an unsanctioned public event —
is the unconstitutional nature of the idea of creating a Siberian
republic or changing the status of its regions, according to Dmitry
Zhuravlyov, director of the Moscow-based Institute for Regional
Problems.

"I can understand the position of these people [organizers of the
march] on a psychological level," Zhuravlyov said. "They want to have
more control over the riches of Siberia, and that is understandable.
But what is unacceptable to Russia is that this whole idea goes
against the Constitution. You cannot change the status of your region
just like that."

Lately, Russian authorities have been particularly wary of talk of
separatism and of modifications to the country's federal structure.
President Vladimir Putin signed legislation last month introducing
prison sentences for violations of Russia's territorial integrity.

But Loskutov's initiative, at least as it was described in the BBC
interview, was not meant to advocate for Siberia's separation from
Russia. Rather, Siberia's standing within the Russian Federation is
what lies at the heart of the matter for Loskutov and a small number
of Siberians.

"Historically, Siberia is everything that lies beyond the Ural
Mountains," Loskutov told The Moscow Times on Tuesday. "But it is not
important which Siberia we are talking about — the historical
territory or the smaller federal district. Wh

[Marxism] If I were Brazilian, South African, Indian or Chinese, these are the sort of folks I'd want leading my "anti-imperialist" bloc

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/barack-obamas-53rd-birthday-marked-with-racist-laser-projection-and-banner-in-moscow-9654519.html

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[Marxism] Hanna Perekhoda: Freedom and Social Identity in the Donbas

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"Today, the line between absurdity and reality has seamlessly disappeared
for a long time to come, obviously, and one spends all one’s mental energy
only on understanding the causes of what has happened. For example, why did
the separatist movement turn from a marginal idea in the east of the
country into the cause of a political and military conflict that has
riveted the world’s attention for several months? Why does the line of fire
run along the borders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions? What exactly does
this line separate? Russia and Ukraine? Asia and Europe? The Soviet Union
and the capitalist West? The best minds (and not only the best minds) in
different countries have been strenuously and almost fruitlessly reflecting
on these questions day after day, especially in Ukraine, for which the
situation proved indecently unexpected. I won’t hidе the fact it was a
surprise for me as well, and for all the people in Donetsk I know."

A not entirely unproblematic but nevertheless rich reflection on social
identity, written by a young woman from Donetsk and originally published,
in Russian, on OpenLeft.ru.

Read the full translation here:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/08/16/hanna-perekhoda-freedom-and-social-identity-in-the-donbas/

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[Marxism] What happens to you, in Russia, if you take the "Minsk Declaration" seriously

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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without, obviously, as in Russian rock star Andrei Makarevich's case, ever
having read it:

http://www.rferl.org/content/russia-marakevich-ukraine-concert-criticism/26536356.html

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[Marxism] Why Is There No Anti-War Movement in Russia, or, What Craft Beer Would You Like with Your Kansas City Burger?

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"Why Is There No Anti-War Movement in Russia, or, What Craft Beer Would You
Like with Your Kansas City Burger?"
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/08/25/no-anti-war-movement-in-russia/

Ilya Budraitskis, "Hope in a Hopeless Situation"
http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/hope-in-a-hopeless-situation/

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[Marxism] What Happens to You If You Wonder Aloud Where Russian Troops Are Being Deployed and "Mysteriously" Killed: The Case of Lev Shlosberg

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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One correction: Lev Shlosberg is a member of the Pskov Oblast Legislative
Assembly, not the Russian parliament, as implied by this article. But
anyone who knows anything about Pskov politics, also knows he's a real
mensch, absolutely fearless about speaking truth to power, which in this
case includes the Pskov governor, a thinly disguised mafia thug who has
been implicated in the savage assault on famous opposition journalist Oleg
Kashin, a few years ago in Moscow. The previous Pskov governor, from
Zhirinovsky's party, has been reincarnated as a "minister" in the DPR
"government."

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/08/31/mp-probing-russian-troop-deaths-attacked
31 AUG 2014 - 6:54AM

MP probing Russian troop deaths 'attacked'
Russian MP Lev Shlosberg, who has been investigating Russian soldiers'
presence in Ukraine, says he has been assaulted by unidentified assailants.


A Russian opposition lawmaker who attended the secret funeral of a soldier
apparently killed in Ukraine is in hospital after what he says was a
politically motivated attack.

Speaking from his hospital bed, Lev Shlosberg, who had been investigating
Russian soldiers' presence in Ukraine, linked the assault late on Friday to
his probe.

He said about 100 paratroopers based in his northwestern town of Pskov had
been killed in combat in Ukraine.

"An entire company was killed," the 51-year-old leader of a regional branch
of the opposition party Yabloko said by telephone, citing figures given to
him by the soldiers' families.

Russia denies claims it has deployed regular troops to Ukraine.

Earlier this week, Shlosberg, who is also a journalist for a local
newspaper, attended the burial of a soldier near Pskov.

On Friday evening he was assaulted by three unidentified assailants in an
attack that left him hospitalised with head and eye injuries and a
concussion, his aide Alexander Zakharov said.

Shlosberg said he and colleagues from Yabloko knew that at least three
soldiers apparently killed in Ukraine had been buried near Pskov this month.

The lawmaker suggested that the slain soldiers were being buried across
Russia in secret.

After a handful of media reported on the Pskov funerals, the name tags were
removed from the men's graves, said independent TV channel Dozhd.

Russian military commanders had imposed a virtual blackout on any
information about the deployment of servicemen, Shlosberg and Zakharov said.

Relatives of the soldiers had been threatened not to speak to media, saying
otherwise the men may not come back alive, Shlosberg said.

Outside a military base in the central Russian town of Kostroma on
Thursday, Agence France-Presse reporters witnessed a similar situation,
with army wives being discouraged from speaking to media.

Valeria Sokolova, the only soldier's wife who agreed to be interviewed in
Kostroma, said about 350 soldiers from the town had been sent this month to
the border with Ukraine and had gone incommunicado.

Commanders have refused to specify their whereabouts, only saying the
soldiers are "not in Russia", said Sokolova, adding that several body bags
had come back this week.

She has not answered her phone since Friday.

The commander of Russia's paratroopers, Vladimir Shamanov, has told
reporters that "everyone is alive and well".

Shlosberg does not remember the details of the assault.

"The memory of that has completely disappeared," he said.

"They attacked me from behind, the people who did this are professionals."

His party also linked the attack to his investigation.

"I believe that attack on Lev Shlosberg is connected to his investigation
of the deployment of Pskov paratroopers to Ukraine," Yabloko leader Grigory
Yavlinsky said on Twitter.

Shlosberg pointed the finger at Putin. "It's his war," he said.

A criminal probe has been opened, prosecutors said.

The Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe also called for a
full investigation, noting that there have been several recent attacks on
journalists in the region.

Kiev says regular Russian troops are on the ground in Ukraine fighting
alongside separatists, who this week staged a lightning counter-offensive
that has turned the tide in the nearly five-month conflict.

Russia is conducting military drills near the border with Ukraine, but
officials have repeatedly denied that its troops have been deployed to its
ex-Soviet neighbour.

Rights groups and opposition leaders called on Putin to stop what they
dubbed an "undeclared war".

"We demand that Russian aggression against Ukraine be immediately halted,"
the country's oldest rights group, Memorial, said in a statement.

Writing in local newspaper Pskovskaya Gubernia this week, Shlosberg said
Russia was in the grips of a "genuine fratricidal war".

"How many people with Ukr

[Marxism] What gets you labeled a "foreign agent" in Russia these days

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=100&story_id=40657

Local NGO Latest to Be Listed as ‘Foreign Agent’
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Ella Polyakova, the chairwoman of the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg
and a member of the Russian Presidential Council on Human Rights, believes
that the recent listing of her organization as a “foreign agent” may be
connected to her report about the alleged arrival of a large number of
Russian troops injured in Ukraine to St. Petersburg, she told The St.
Petersburg Times this week.

On Aug. 29, the Ministry of Justice included the non-governmental
organization, which defends the rights of soldiers, recruits and their
families, in its register of foreign agents, i.e. NGOs allegedly involved
in political activities and receiving foreign funding. Introduced as a law
in 2012, the term “foreign agent” for many is reminiscent of Soviet-era spy
mania.

The organization was listed soon after Polyakova reported that a flight
with about 100 Russian troops injured in Ukraine had arrived in St.
Petersburg. On Aug. 26, Polyakova told the Moscow-based liberal television
channel Dozhd that the injured troops were reportedly taken to the Kirov
Military Medical Academy in the city. In an interview later that day with
RBK, she said that she had received this information from journalists and
was re-checking it with them.

Speaking to The St. Petersburg Times earlier this week, Polyakova said that
only circumstantial evidence about the presence of the injured troops in
St. Petersburg has since become available. She referred to a story by the
Fontanka.ru news service, which reported that about seven military
ambulances with flashing lights and accompanied by military traffic police
vehicles were seen in the city on Aug. 28. She also mentioned Aug. 29 media
reports about a Russian paratrooper who was detained in Ukraine and, after
being passed to the Russian side, was transported to a burn center in St.
Petersburg.

The Ministry of Justice said on its website that it based its decision to
label the organization as a foreign agent on a report from the St.
Petersburg Prosecutor’s Office. However, this decision was made despite a
lawsuit by the NGO against the prosecutor’s office for conducting a number
of illegal raids on the organization that is still being heard in court in
St. Petersburg.

According to Polyakova, what the prosecutor’s office interpreted as
“political activities” were simply anti-war statements made by the
Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg, as well as reporting on human rights
abuses in the army.

“We said, ‘No to war in Crimea’ — we had posted the statement on our
website. They have also made a very vague accusation of ‘influencing the
public opinion,’” Polyakova said.

“We made two reports about the violations of human rights in the army and
handed them in to [Defense Minister Sergei] Shoigu, among others. This was
seen as us allegedly influencing state policies. But our stance on this is
the following; our state policy is not to wage war but to defend human
life; the state policy is not to fight against neighbors but solve
conflicts peacefully by the means of diplomacy. That’s what we think state
policies are and not a violation of Russian laws. We have no law which
would say the opposite.”

Polyakova also denied any foreign funding, saying that the organization was
funded by two grants from the Russian government. “We have one grant from
the National Welfare Fund and the other is a presidential Civic Dignity
grant,” she said.

After the NGO was branded as a foreign agent, Polyakova said that the
organization will have to put the term on its documents and be subject to
closer attention from authorities.

“For instance, take when a soldier is being beaten in a certain military
unit,” Polyakova said.

“In such cases, we write letters to the Investigation Committee, to the
Military Prosecutor’s Office, to the commanders and ask them to ensure his
safety. And now there should be a notice saying [the NGO] ‘performs the
functions of a foreign agent,’ which essentially means that it’s written by
spies. It also implies additional checks, increased attention, audits twice
a year…there’s a lot there.”

According to Polyakova, her NGO is planning to file an inquiry with the
Prosecutor’s Office to find out the exact grounds of its inclusion in the
foreign agents register and file a complaint with the court on the
decision. She said the Soldiers’ Mothers of St. Petersburg would also
support the initiative by Russian Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin, who proposed to
amend the foreign agent law.

“For the time being, we have to abide by the law; what else we can do if
the law is like this?” Polyakova asked.

The Soldiers’ Mothers of St.

[Marxism] Crimea: The Opera

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://calvertjournal.com/comment/show/3055/crimea-opera-socialist-realism-alexandrov


The London-based Calvert Journal was launched a couple years ago as a VTB
Bank-sponsored, avowedly "soft power" tool for winning over hipsters and
quasi-leftist art-world types to the (depoliticized) notion that Russia
under late-period Putinism 2.0 was awash with "creativity." It and the
related Calvert Foundation were publicly supported by, among others,
ex-Putinist finance minister Alexei Kudrin. The idea seemed dicey at the
time, especially since Putinism 3.0 was already kicking off. Now,
apparently, the full horror of what is going in Russia has finally dawned
on the Shoreditch hipsters, as evidenced by this review of the "opera-demo"
"Crimea."

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[Marxism] Two Russian Socialist Activists on Putin's Near Perfect Welfare State (per Mike Whitney)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/10/13/ilya-matveev-the-welfare-state-doesnt-get-any-better-than-this/

http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/ovsyannikov-russias-welfare-chainsaw-massacre/

And there is tons more stuff where that come from, especially if you can
read Russian and have lived there for some time.

I really wonder what the payoff is for Counterpunch to publish only
Putinists like Whitney, Paul Craig Roberts, and Israel Shamir when it comes
to Russia.

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[Marxism] “I Will Find You and Kill You”: How Petersburg Celebrated “Democracy Day”

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Published at:
http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/democracy-day/

“Whatever anybody says, especially our foes from abroad, both you and I
know that we live in the most democratic country, in Russia.”
— Georgy Poltavchenko

This past Sunday, September 14, was declared “Democracy Day” in Petersburg,
Europe’s fourth largest city. What this meant on paper was that the city’s
Kremlin-appointed governor, Georgy Poltavchenko, swept to an overwhelming
victory in his first “real” gubernatorial race, while ruling United Party
crushed the opposition in elections to the city’s neighborhood councils.
Then the victors celebrated “democracy” with a pop concert on Palace Square.

What this meant in practice was that Poltavchenko’s only real challenger
had been peremptorily “filtered” from the race two months ago, and the
melancholic KGB nonentity was left to face a quartet of stick-figure
opponents almost no one had heard of before; the United Russia machine
pulled out all the stops doing what it loves best—brazenly rigging
elections and just as flagrantly cracking down on anyone who challenges its
right to do that; and a band of foreign fascists, ultra-right-wingers, and
Stalinist clowns, masquerading as “international monitors,” showed up to
rubber stamp this bloody farce. No wonder Robert Mugabe backs Russia.

I received the following letter from a friend whose son celebrated
“Democracy Day” by serving as a member of the electoral commission at a
polling station in central Petersburg. I have translated the letter and
published it here with her permission, but I have changed the names of
people and places to protect “Dmitry,” “Lyuba,” and the author from further
persecution and harassment.

**

I don’t know whether you are aware of yesterday’s elections in Petersburg.
They were completely hellish.

[Our son] Dmitry was a voting member of the electoral commission at Polling
Station No. 86, on Austerlitz Street. His girlfriend Lyuba had the same
status at Polling Station No. 85, which was in the same building. A bunch
of Dmitry’s friends worked in the same capacity at various other polling
stations.

The chairs of the commissions hid from them all the time. On Saturday, the
day before the elections, Dmitry went to his polling station, where he
immediately faced aggression and intimidation: “We’ll have you removed from
the polling station,” “Don’t you dare photograph anything,” “We’ll settle
your hash later,” and so on. Dmitry demanded to be shown the certificate
for receipt of the envelopes containing the absentee ballots. The
chairwoman started screaming that this was a provocation. Saturday ended
with the chairwoman turning Dmitry over to the police for allegedly
photographing the voter lists.

David was taken to the eighty-third police precinct on the Old Barge
Channel, where he was immediately released because the arrest had been
illegal. I went to the precinct to get him.

Then came Sunday [election day]. Right away in the morning, Dmitry wrote to
us that there had been a bunch of violations; he was again being
threatened, and so forth. He was sent out with a mobile ballot box to make
the rounds of the old women [pensioners confined to their homes], and while
he was out, the chairwoman sent someone with two unregistered ballot boxes
to a hospital. At the end of the day, the ballot boxes came back with
twenty additional votes that had appeared out of nowhere, as if people had
been admitted to the hospital the day before and were immediately
registered as voters at this polling station. It was like this with the
ballot boxes at nearly every polling station: two hundred votes apiece,
cast by completely unknown people, ended up in them.

In the afternoon, I brought Dmitry coffee, because he was afraid to leave
the polling station. Lyuba went out to have tea, and while she was out, two
ballot boxes were carried away from her polling station: she was informed
of this after the fact.

When I arrived at the polling station, they also made as if they were going
to arrest me: “Who the hell are you? His mama?” and so on. I snapped at
them and told them they were shameless. Dmitry and I went out onto the
porch. Some security guards—not cops—came out after us, as if they were
keeping track of us. They smoked and swore. We remarked to them that both
smoking and swearing were administrative violations. They cussed us out.
When Dmitry started filming them with his telephone, they began pushing us
down the stairs, trying to snatch the telephone from Dmitry. They got the
telephone from him, and Dmitry hurt his hand. (Also, one of the guards got
doused with coffee, meaning that Dmitry was left without coffee.) We called
the police. When they heard us doing that, the guard cooled their heels and
gave back

[Marxism] Sami threat to Russian sovereignty?

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://barentsobserver.com/en/politics/2014/09/sami-leader-harassed-police-her-way-un-conferance-22-09
Sami leader harassed by police on her way to UN conferance
Thomas Nilsen
September 22, 2014

First, all her driver’s car tires were cut up, so they had to get another
car before starting from Lovozero, the main Sami settlement in the Murmansk
region. Sovkina was supposed to catch a plane in Kirkenes on the Norwegian
side of the border.

Her flight destination was New York were she, along with others, should
represent the Russian Indigenous peoples at the United Nations first World
Conference on Indigenous Peoples, an event that kicks off on Monday as part
of the General Assembly’s annual general debate.

Finally on the road, they were stopped between Lovozero and Olenogorsk by
DPS, Russia’s traffic police, claiming the car was speeding. One police was
uniformed, the other was in civilian, Sovkina tells the Murmansk based 7x7
Journal. The police claimed the car could have been stolen and wanted to
check for guns since it could be related to the situation in Ukraine.

They were first allowed to continue after suggesting leaving the car and
calling a taxi.

After a while on the road they were stopped once more, this time the police
wanted to check under the hood of the car. A while later, near the town of
Zapolyarny, they were stopped once again. The policeman asked to see her
passport, a request Valentina Sovkina turned down. She didn’t want to give
her passport away; afraid the police officer would keep it.

Suddenly, a civilian dressed man turn up from nowhere, trying to grab her
bag. Valentina and the man ended up in a fight; he knocked her down, but
she managed to avoid him from running off with the bag. All this happened
as the policeman was watching. First when the man ran away, the policeman
started the hunt.

Sovkina has posted photos on her Facebook profile of the events that
hindered them from catching the plane. First at 2 am by night, the
situation was solved. Then the plane had long before taken off from
Kirkenes airport and the border was closed for the night.

On Sunday, Valentina Sovkina said to Yle Sapmi that she tried the get new
tickets to get New York where the first world conference on indigenous
peoples starts on Monday.

“I’m trying to arrange new tickets and travel again to New York.
Participation of indigenous peoples of the world conference is very
important to us,” Sovkina says.

Valentina Sovkina is the elected head of the Council of Authorized
Representatives of the Sami in the Murmansk Oblast.

Sovkina was not the only Russian attempted by officials not to leave the
country for theUN conference. In Moscow, Rodion Sulyandziga got his
passport sized by FSB at the Sheremetevo airport. Sulyandziga is director
of the Centre for Support of Indigenous Peoples of the North and a member
of the committee for preparation of theUN conferance.

On his Facebook profil, Rodion Sulyandziga writes: ” After this incident, I
chose to take a break and to keep silent for considerations of personal
safety, despite the fact that I have been actively involved in the
preparation of this important meeting over the last two years in my
capacity as a member of the Global Coordinating Group and lobby team of the
indigenous peoples.”

On Saturday, a third representative of Russian indigenous peoples was
stopped at Sheremetevo airport in the same way, reports Vedomosti. Anna
Naikanchina’s passport was also confiscated. She is also among those listed
in the official programme as a featured speaker on rights of indigenous
peoples at the national and local level.

Rodion asks on his Facebook profil: ”What is this? What are the authorities
afraid of? This is a policy of intimidation and repression carried out
against a backdrop of mass psychosis… We must not remain sitting in the
foxhole, and it would make no sense to do so… Anna and me will defend our
constitutional rights by all available legal and informational means.”

According to Vedomosti, also the Director of the International Foundation
for Research and Support of Indigenous Peoples of Crimea, Nadir Bekir, got
his passport stolen before his supposed flight to New York.

His taxi was blocked by a minibus from where people in balaclava
confiscated his passport and fled.

Asked by Vedomosti about all the attempts around Russia to hinder
indigenous peoples to travel to New York, FSB’s border service said they
could not comment on the situation.

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[Marxism] International extreme right-wingers "monitored" last week's gubernatorial and municipal elections in the Cradle of Three Revolutions

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=100&story_id=40830
Election Monitors Linked to Extreme Right
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
September 24, 2014

A group of international monitors, who hailed the elections of the St.
Petersburg governor and municipal deputies on Sept. 14 as fair and
transparent, were mostly European right-wing politicians who have been
involved in several disputed elections before the one in St. Petersburg,
according to a U.K.-based political scientist.

Acting governor Georgy Poltavchenko, put forward by the pro-Kremlin party
United Russia, officially received a record-breaking 79.3 percent of votes,
although the turnout was reported to be only 39.36 percent. Opposition and
independent Russian monitors said both results were far from reality.

Controversially, Poltavchenko’s strongest opponent, A Just Russia’s Oksana
Dmitriyeva, was prevented from taking part in the elections. An
overwhelming number of violations were also reported by independent
monitors during the municipal elections held in the city simultaneously
with the gubernatorial election. Dmitriyeva condemned the election as a
“crime.”

Described by the Novaya Gazeta daily as a “traveling circus,” many in the
group of foreign monitors took part in the disputed Crimea status
referendum on Mar. 16, where 95.5 percent of voters allegedly backed
joining Russia. The referendum, which was part of Russia’s annexation of
Crimea, was not recognized internationally.

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution declaring the
Crimean referendum illegal and affirmed Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
The monitors assigned by Russia, however, did not find any violations.

Both in Crimea and St. Petersburg, Mateusz Piskorski, a 37-year-old Polish
right-wing politician and former MP, who now heads the European Center for
Geopolitical Analysis, a think tank focusing on international relations and
geopolitics that Piskorski co-founded in 2007, led the group of monitors.

“Mateusz Piskorski is a former member of the neo-Nazi movement Niklot that
existed in the 1990s and was later a member of the political party
Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland,” said U.K.-based political
scientist Anton Shekhovtsov, who specializes in European right-wing
organizations, in an interview with The St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 18.

“In 2007, he formed the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, which is
involved in election monitoring, among other things. Mostly, it is such
‘strange,’ controversial, disputed elections that happen in places like
[pro-Moscow breakaway territories] South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Transnistria
or in Crimea. This organization is unambiguously pro-Russian. In my
opinion, I believe, Piskorski receives commissions from Moscow to
legitimize such elections, and their presence at any elections indicates
from the very start that they would say that the election was normal, fair
and transparent.”

Apart from Piskorski, other members included Fabrizio Bertot, a member of
the Silvio Berlusconi’s right-wing party Forza Italia, Frank Creyelman and
Jan Penris of Belgium’s extreme right party Vlaams Belang, Ludovic de Danne
of the French right-wing populist National Front, Johann Gudenus of the
radical right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria and Marton Gyongyosi
of Hungary’s extreme right-wing party Jobbik, which has been criticized for
being anti-Semitic and anti-Roma. In total, 22 foreign monitors were
invited by the City Election Commission, Fontanka.ru reported.

“Moscow needs western, European monitors to show that it all is legitimate,
but because not everybody in the West is prepared to participate in such
monitoring missions, Piskorski selected such people who are known for
either pro-Russian or anti-American views and are ready to sign documents
legitimizing elections, however corrupt, non-transparent and illegitimate
they may be,” Shekhovtsov said.

Several monitors in the group were from left-wing parties. Piotr Luczak is
from Germany’s left-wing party Die Linke, while Panikos Stavrianos belongs
to the Progressive Party of Working People, a Communist party in Cyprus,
described by Shekhovtsov as rather neo-Stalinist, but the overwhelming
majority of monitors belonged to the far right-wing parties.

“On one hand, there’s an ideological element, because right-wing parties in
Europe support the Kremlin’s policies, but on the other hand, the pragmatic
element is that they are all are acquaintances of Piskorski,” Shekhovtsov
said.

“He came out from this field, and even though he does not take part in
political parties and organizations now, they are all his acquaintances. So
he invites his acquaintances.”

According to Shekhovtsov, most of the parties that the monitors were from
face widespread

[Marxism] Queer art threat averted in Petersburg by Die Linke's new allies

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=100&story_id=40834
Queerfest Opening Quashed by Attackers
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
September 24, 2014

Queerfest — an annual LGBT rights socio-cultural festival that opened in
St. Petersburg on Sept. 18 — was forced to cancel most of its events
following attacks, pressure from authorities, bomb threats and last-minute
cancellations. A group led by anti-gay lawmaker Vitaly Milonov tried to get
into the venue where the invitation-only opening event was held. After not
being let in, the anti-gay protesters blocked the entrances and attacked
the audience with an unknown gas and green dye, with the police not
immediately intervening.

The festival’s opening event was moved to Ziferburg cafe on Nevsky Prospekt
after the Kazanskaya 7 business center — where Queerfest’s scheduled main
venue, the art space Freedom, is located — canceled the opening 90 minutes
before its announced time. A representative of the owner annulled the rent
agreement due to a “suspicion of damage to the integrity of the arch above
the main staircase of the building,” which did not prevent other events
from being held in there, Queerfest organizers said in a statement on Sept.
19.

The event started with a nearly one-hour delay at Ziferburg cafe after the
Queerfest exhibition of photographs was hastily moved and assembled there.
About 200 people, including foreign diplomats, were gathered when Milonov
and between 15 to 20 anti-gay attackers tried to stop the opening.

Milonov, the Legislative Assembly’s United Russia deputy and chairman of
the committee on legislation responsible for the city’s 2012 law forbidding
the “promotion of sodomy, lesbianism, bi-sexuality and transgenderness
amongst minors,” led an anti-gay group to the cafe, located on the third
floor of the Passage shopping center.

Showing his deputy identification, Milonov tried to get in but was stopped
by security guards. He ended up instead standing near the door, swearing
and throwing insults while telling the guards that ethnic Russians should
not protect LGBT people. He described the audience as “pedophiles who rape
children,” among other things. Attacks started minutes after Milonov left
the building.

Having thrown vials containing unknown gas that smelled of rotting fish
under the door, anti-gay attackers prevented visitors from entering and
leaving, spraying green dye from syringes on them. At one point, both
entrances to the cafe were blocked. One was locked from outside by
attackers and the other was held by security and volunteers to prevent them
from entering and attacking people inside.

“Milonov left just a couple of minutes ahead of the attacks,” organizer
Anna Anisimova told The St. Petersburg Times on Sept. 21. “They met in the
stairwell, or he passed the baton to them, but I can’t say for sure because
the fact was that thugs came just after Milonov had left. They were not
together at one time.”

A number of people felt sick because of the gas and one or two were
eventually taken away by ambulance. According Anisimova, some 20 to 30
members of the public had their clothes spoiled by green dye, including two
representatives of the St. Petersburg ombudsman Alexander Shishlov. She
said that foreign diplomats did not suffer. About 20 formal complaints
regarding criminal assaults were filed with the police.

The police that were stationed in large numbers outside the building did
not intervene until Shishlov arrived and urged the officers to protect the
festival’s audience, while Alexei Smyatsky, the chief of the city’s public
safety police, was seen speaking with Milonov in front of the building at
the time when the attacks apparently began.

As attacks went on outside the café, the opening event was briefly held
with foreign diplomats expressing their support for the festival and the
LGBT community in St. Petersburg.

Attendees included Norway’s Consul General Heidi Olufsen, Sweden’s Deputy
Consul General Björn Kavalkov-Halvarsson, the Netherlands’ Deputy Consul
General Hugo Brouwer, Acting U.S. Consul General Courtney Nemroff and U.K.
Deputy Consul General Robert Kempsell.

On Sept. 19, Ombudsman Shishlov appealed to city council chairman
Vyacheslav Makarov asking him to take measures against Milonov, Zaks.ru
reported. “The human rights of citizens were severely violated as the
result of violent actions,” Shishlov wrote.

“I suppose that the active participation of a Legislative Assembly deputy
in such actions discredits the city council and harms the reputation of St
Petersburg. I request that you assess the actions of the deputy related to
human rights abuses, as well as take measures for the code of ethics to be
observed by Legislative Assembly deputies.”

Shishlov also urged St. Petersbu

[Marxism] Sunday's anti-war march in Petersburg, as reported by someone who was actually there

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Thousands Unite Against War in Ukraine
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
September 24, 2014
http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=100&story_id=40812

Thousands protested against Russia’s involvement in Ukraine at the
unauthorized Peace March in St. Petersburg on Sunday. By the estimates of
organizers, between 1,500 and 2,000 protesters were present at one given
time, but a total of 5,000 overall made it to the rally, which lasted for
nearly four hours.

City Hall refused to grant a permit for either the march or stationary
rally that were initially planned as part of the all-Russian Peace March
held throughout the country on Sunday, including in Moscow, where the
authorized event drew between 25,000 and 50,000 by different estimates. In
St. Petersburg, the organizers were the parties and groups belonging to the
Democratic St. Petersburg Coalition, including Yabloko and Solidarity, as
well as RPR-Parnas, the December 5th Party and the Progress Party.

The St. Petersburg authorities, however, told the organizers to move the
rally to the remote Polyustrovo Park in the northeast of the city, an
option they turned down, calling on people to come instead to the march’s
original starting point near Gorkovskaya Metro.

Hundreds started to gather near Gorkovskaya Metro by 2 p.m., many wearing
Ukraine’s national colors of yellow and blue. Some brought yellow and blue
flowers or balloons. Although the rally was not officially permitted, the
police were few and did not intervene.

People refrained from bringing posters or chanting but one man briefly
raised a placard saying “Putin, get your dirty hands off Ukraine” before
quickly walking away. However, several people had slogans on their clothes
or wore anti-war badges. Small groups of pro-Kremlin supporters were
spotted but they stood aside and did not try to obstruct the rally.

Between 1,500 and 2,000 people walked about three kilometers to Kazan
Cathedral with no incident, although opponents left a truck painted with
pro-Kremlin slogans and picture of a Russian bear growling at a bald eagle.
“Our country – our rules,” the inscription said.

By the time of the arrival of marchers, there were already many people near
Kazan Cathedral. More placards were seen there, some reading “This war is
our fault. Drop your weapons,” “Forgive us, Ukraine,” “Don’t trust Putin,”
“No to war against Ukraine,” “Shame on the lying and corrupt media. No to
war against a brotherly people,” “War in Ukraine is a crime of Putin’s
regime” and “Stop the aggressor.” Some held small Ukrainian flags or wore
yellow-and-blue ribbons.

Pro-Kremlin activists wearing the St. George ribbons — which has been
adopted as a symbol of the Russia-backed military insurgency in eastern
Ukraine – came to Kazan Cathedral, occasionally raising flags of the
self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic as well as anti-American and
pro-Kremlin posters while arguing with the Peace March protesters. A few
were dressed in Putin T-shirts.

Pro-Kremlin anti-gay lawmaker Vitaly Milonov — who also wore a St. George
ribbon — repeatedly entered the crowd with a bodyguard and an aide,
attempting to provoke the protesters by such statements as “Homosexuals
kill Russian children in Ukraine,” with the crowd reacting by chanting
“Pozor” (Shame) to his appearances.

Due to the overwhelming majority of anti-war protesters, violent acts were
few. Pro-Kremlin men threw mayonnaise into the face of one anti-war
protester and tore up the placard of another, with the police failing to
react. There was an attempt to throw eggs at the demonstrators as well. The
police detained several people from both camps mostly for failing to follow
their orders, but refrained from mass arrests.

“The main benefit of this march to me is that people overcome their
solitude,” said musician Mikhail Borzykin of the rock band Televizor, who
took part in the St. Petersburg rally.

“Having come to such events, people realize at least that they haven’t gone
insane – or gone insane alongside some 3,000 other people – and it lightens
the soul of each of them, because we are being persuaded [by the
pro-Kremlin media] that we don’t exist at all. This television myth is
dispelled momentarily when you take to the street and talk to people who
think the same.

“It was important that people were not scared to take part in the march
despite the lack of permission, and we know that you can easily land in
prison for several years for such things. But despite this, several
thousand people were present, and this was very pleasant. On the whole,
everything is not as bad as television tells us about ourselves.”

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[Marxism] Support Unilever Workers in Omsk!

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/support-unilever-workers-in-omsk/

It has been more than two years since NOVOPROF union members at Unilever’s
Inmarko ice cream factory in Omsk, Russia, have been fighting for good
faith negotiations of their wages, which are embarrassingly low for a
leading ice cream producer (20% of the Russian market) and one of the
largest food multinationals on the planet.

Management keeps refusing any attempt by the union to hold serious talks,
yet it repeats again and again that it is “open to social dialogue.”
Unfortunately, it is open to dialogue only in name.

Two years ago, hundreds of ice cream packers (all of them women, all of
them former Unilever employees who had been outsourced to an agency
supplying laborers exclusively to Unilever) struck for three days,
demanding a return to direct employment, recognition of their union, and
decent pay and conditions, including a real wage increase. Their slogan at
the time was “one grand per shift,” i.e., 1,000 rubles or 23 euros for a
twelve-hour workday. The strike resulted in the establishment of the
NOVOPROF union and the return to direct employment of its members, but
wages remain 18 euros per shift, which is far below the regional industrial
standard.

It is very difficult to stand strong in such a long fight. And when you are
involved in a dispute like this, you need to know you are not alone, that
the world is watching and other people support you.

IUF’s Moscow office is therefore running a campaign to show Unilever Omsk
workers that we personally support them. We ask people to make a photo of
themselves and their friends, family or coworkers holding a small banner
reading, “I support Unilever Inmarko workers in Omsk” or a similar message.
You can post your photos on Vkontakte (
https://vk.com/album-76721566_201695104) and Facebook (
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.276340955895775.1073741835.255324821330722)
or email them to masha.kurz...@gmail.com. All photos will be printed in a
special issue of the union newspaper, five hundred copies of which will be
distributed at Unilever Omsk, meaning every worker will get one.

Thank you for your solidarity!

You can learn more about the campaign and the workers’ demands here:

http://www.iuf.org/w/?q=node/3107


http://www.iuf.org/w/?q=node/3537


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[Marxism] David Graeber, "Why is the world ignoring the revolutionary Kurds in Syria?"

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/08/why-world-ignoring-revolutionary-kurds-syria-isis

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[Marxism] Zorking: The Road (Back) to Serfdom?

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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My reflections on Russian Supreme Court chief justice Valery Zorkin's
recent controversial in the official Rossiiskaya Gazeta, in which he
allegedly called for a return to serfdom. In reality, things are simpler
(and more complicated) than that:

http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/10/11/zorkin-serfdom/

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[Marxism] On the misadventures of Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States" in Putinist Russia

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/10/12/howard-zinn-leftist-intellectual-jewish-descent/

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[Marxism] In Petersburg, Cannibal Corpse Fans Confront the Russian Orthodox Police State

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Fans Confronted by Riot Police at Canceled Concert
By Sergey Chernov
The St. Petersburg Times
Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Eighteen music fans were detained Sunday as hundreds protested against the
last-minute cancellation of a Cannibal Corpse show outside the Kosmonavt
music club in St. Petersburg. The organizer, the Moscow-based agency Motley
Concerts, claimed the cancellation was caused by unspecified “technical
reasons,” but the fans believed it was done under pressure from the
authorities.

The American death metal band’s St. Petersburg concert was set to be the
last in their eight-date Russian tour in support of their 13th studio
album, “A Skeletal Domain.”

Although the band’s five previous Russian tours went ahead without any
problems, this year’s tour was marred by controversy caused by a massive
campaign of formal complaints from Orthodox activists about alleged
“Satanism” and “extremism” in Cannibal Corpse’s lyrics. Out of the eight
planned concerts, the band managed to play only four.

On Oct. 11, the band’s concert in Moscow was canceled when people were
already in the venue. Before that, a concert in Ufa scheduled for Oct. 5
was canceled when the venue abruptly closed “for technical reasons.” On
Oct. 10, Cannibal Corpse’s concert in Nizhny Novgorod was shut down by
armed masked police officers 30 minutes after it had started. A number of
fans were detained and taken for compulsory drug tests. In a petition to
the head of administration of Nizhny Novgorod, fans wrote that the true
reason for the anti-drug operation was to stop the concert, which they
believe was an act of censorship, which is prohibited by the Russian
constitution.

Neither the organizer nor the venues in the four cities admitted any
pressure from authorities and the band did not make any statement about the
cancellations.

On Sunday, fans were not let into the venue even though it was supposed to
open at least an hour before the concert’s scheduled 8 p.m. start. When
asked, the guard at the doors said both the public and guests would be
allowed to enter “later.”

When several hundred stood around Kosmonavt 25 minutes before the scheduled
start, a young man brought a notice from the organizers and read it aloud.
It said the concert had been canceled for technical reasons but ticket
holders were welcome to a signing session with the band and to spend an
evening in the venue.

The notice then went from one person to another until a fan set it on fire
to cheers from the crowd.

Despite the invitation, the doors were still closed, leading disappointed
fans to crowd around near the entrance. Soon they were chanting the band’s
name as well as profane insults toward Moscow Orthodox activist Dmitry
Tsorionov, also known as Enteo, and Legislative Assembly deputy Vitaly
Milonov, whom they saw as responsible for the cancellation. The fans
criticized the Kremlin’s current policies of isolation from the West and
promotion of traditionalism.

One fan shouted an offensive anti-President Vladimir Putin slogan while
another commented sarcastically about the official line of Russia “rising
from its knees.”

“I would not love the Russian Orthodox Church more for this,” one fan said.

People discussed how they had been waiting for months for the concert and
bought expensive tickets, while others had come from other cities and had
to take days off from their jobs and find a place to stay in St. Petersburg.

Although there had only been one police vehicle parked near the venue
initially, OMON riot police started to arrive at the site at 8:15 p.m.
Bottles flew at the officers while people expressed their disappointment
and outrage at the treatment. Cannibal Corpse’s music played loudly from
one of the cars parked near the venue.

The OMON police retreated into their truck to put on helmets and take
batons but did not immediately intervene, instead maneuvering in the street
near the venue, blocking and unblocking it, as bottles kept coming and
various fans protested in different ways. People flooded the street and
passing cars had their tires pierced by broken glass.

The first arrests occurred at around 8:30 p.m., when a dozen officers
rushed at two fans standing at a distance from Kosmonavt, beat them with
batons and dragged them to the police vehicle. A video posted by a fan
showed them apparently being beaten with a baton inside the vehicle as
well. An hour later there were much fewer people in the street, with some
heading home and others lining up for the signing session in the venue,
which eventually started to let people enter, although very slowly after
multiple checks.

According to the police, the 18 detained fans were charged either with
“disorderly conduct” or with “being drunk in public,” offenses that are
punishable by fines

[Marxism] [SUSPICIOUS MESSAGE] Entire Staff of Moscow Film Museum Resigns in Protest at New Director

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Since one of our moderators is a film critic, I thought he and other people
on the list would be interested in what has been happening at the Film
Museum in Moscow. The entire staff, including the renowned and beloved Naum
Kleiman, has just resigned after life under their new director became
completely intolerable. The new director was appointed by Culture Minister
Vladimir Medinsky, whose brief seems to be to destroy Russian culture once
and for all, judging by this and other of his actions.

The Film Museum has been warding off the cinematic and bureaucratic wolves
for years now. The bitter irony is that its new director is none other than
Larisa Solonitsyna, daughter of Anatoly Solonitsyn, Andrei Tarkovsky's
favorite actor.



http://secure-web.cisco.com/1KjJgoECA9KeEwm1cBttH3ALyihT9Esyyz2pn7lSx4Gx85DVEuX_YsCIZjLM7djM9l_sdg_KTTCk7Fi_QQaboiGafM1Yssq9aZhWpHzUPaQeIXRFWhE0HrYum34A4axzvyYSeT8Y02Wiy60I0wVtes0I3iRzZdSScJh2NKUz90_kCVj_eYaIkR15-vQHmcNW_khYeeUcEFMtEmJjbCbbUhA/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.themoscowtimes.com%2Farticle%2F510148.html
Entire Staff of Moscow Film Museum Resigns in Protest at New Director
By Allison Quinn
Oct. 27 2014

The employees of the State Central Museum of Cinema quit their jobs en
masse over what they describe as their new director's "incompetence" in
every aspect of the institution's work.

An open letter to Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky announcing that the
decision has been posted on the museum's website, signed by all 19 members
of its professional staff.

Larisa Solonitsyna was appointed director of the museum by the Culture
Ministry on July 1, replacing Naum Kleiman, who had served as director
since 1992. Kleiman became the museum's president after Solonitsyna took
the helm in July, but he was among the staff members who resigned on Monday.

"The team's distrust of the new leadership has grown as she has
demonstrated her incompetence more and more, in terms of both the museum
and cinematography aspects of our business. As the authoritarian style of
her leadership has bled through, the non-transparency of her decisions has
come accompanied with a stubborn unwillingness to listen to the opinions of
her employees," the letter said, adding that Solonitsyna had no experience
working in a museum.

"As a result of the 'activities' of the new leadership, it has not only
become impossible to work productively — it's become unbearable to be
located in such an atmosphere of animosity, offensive suspicion and
disrespect toward people," the letter said.

The museum's staff has previously been vocal about its dissatisfaction with
the new director. In October, 13 staff members filed a petition demanding
Solonitsyna's resignation, in part because of her decision to fire Maxim
Pavlov, the museum's longtime deputy director of scientific outreach
activities.

At that time, several employees resigned in protest of Pavlov's dismissal,
though Solonitsyna shrugged off criticism of her leadership, saying the
dismissal was in line with optimization measures, news site Lenta.ru
reported.

The museum, established in 1989, is renowned for its film collection, with
over 150,000 titles in its electronic catalogue.
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[Marxism] Thousands Protest Hospital Closures and Medical Staff Layoffs in Moscow

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2014/11/04/muscovites-protest-hospital-closures/
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[Marxism] Follow-up on Moscow Health Care Protests (attn: Andrew Pollack)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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It was only this morning that I came across this excellent, long article in
the Moscow Times, published a few days before Sunday's rally, about the
proposed health care "reforms" in Moscow and the public uproar over them.
It explains all the issues much better than I could:

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/moscow-s-deputy-mayor-attempts-to-allay-panic-over-health-care-reforms/510297.html

I have no contact with the folks who organized the rally, Together for
Decent [or Dignified] Medicine, but our comrades from the Russian Socialist
Movement were, apparently, at the rally

http://anticapitalist.ru/dejstvie/moskva/rsd_podderzhalo_krupnejshij_za_poslednie_godyi_protest_rabotnikov_zdravooxraneniya.html

so if you're serious about reaching out to the Muscovites, you might be
able contact them via the email for RSM's OpenLeft wing:

openleft [at] openleft.ru 
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[Marxism] truckers' strikes

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Andrew Pollack:

In the last month there have been nationwide truckers' strikes in Brazil,
China, Iran and Argentina.
Have I missed any?

Yes, you missed the truckers' strikes in Russia, which took place a bit
earlier.

The truckers even formed their own union as a result, and in no time at all
it has become one of the most militant, progressive groups in the country,
ready to make common cause with almost any group fighting the Putin regime.

https://therussianreader.com/tag/association-of-russian-carriers-opr/

There is a whole chapter about the truckers in Victoria Lomasko's book
Other Russias, published by n+1 in the Us, and translated by yours truly.

It's a huge story that the western media missed almost entirely.
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[Marxism] Full list of Members of the European Parliament who voted against the resolution on political prisoners in Russia (Anton Shekhovtsov)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.tango-noir.com/2018/06/16/full-list-of-members-of-the-european-parliament-who-voted-against-the-resolution-on-political-prisoners-in-russia/
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[Marxism] ​Solidarity with Jailed Anarchists/Antifascists in Russia

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Solidarity with Jailed Anarchists/Antifascists in Russia
Workers Solidarity Movement (Ireland)
https://www.facebook.com/WorkersSolidarityMovement/videos/2499083346784130/

The Workers Solidarity Movement held a small demonstration on June 20th in
solidarity with political prisoners in the Russian state, outside the
embassy of Russia in Dublin.

On June the 14th the FIFA World Cup commenced in Russia while it
interrogated and tortured framed political dissidents in its dungeons. We
in Ireland cannot halt this injustice but we can show that the wider world
is watching, that the brutality of the Russian state and the hypocrisy of
FIFA has been noted.

We can ask 'if I was falsely imprisoned and tortured, what would I want?'.
That a group of people over 3000 kilometres away would take time to
demonstrate their concern is what makes the human species great what makes
our freedom possible. The movement for freedom is global and our bonds of
solidarity cannot be severed by national borders.

Soon after assembling, we were visited by an unmarked Garda car, presumably
the Garda Special Branch, the political or secret police in the 26
counties, obviously at the behest of the embassy. The officer was 'just
curious', including curious about where we ourselves were from, which we
declined to answer as there was no legal requirement. You would only be
legally required to answer such a question if reasonably suspected of
commiting an offense, and it is best to say as little as possible to police
wherever you are.

We were also graced by a snazzy black BMW driven by a Russian embassy
official, who stopped beside us and took photographs in a rather piteous
attempt at intimidation. As one attendee noted, this seemed to be a person
used to throwing their weight around as an agent of the Russian state, but
we were in Ireland, not in Russia where such an act of surveillance might
likely be the preamble to further harrassment and indefinite detention, and
the fact that we had this relatively greater political space in Ireland is
all the more reason to use it to help those who don't.

The point of listing those encounters is not to make a mountain of a
molehill but to record the quite ludicrous response to a small group of
people gathering outside the Russian embassy to hold signs and take some
pictures.

As shown in the video, the following statement was read aloud:

'My voice is with those who came today to say NO to political persecution,
torture and the falsification of crimes! Right now there are young people
jailed in St. Petersburg and Penza, despite committing no crimes! For being
a perfect “terrorists” for the most terroristic regime, for being
antifascists and anarchists.

There is Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov who was sentenced without
clear proof for 20 years in prison for committing no crime. There is Yuri
Dmitriev from Karelian Memorial accused of producing pornography and Oiub
Titiev from Chechen Memorial accused of being a drug dealer. The most
dangerous organization and the real terrorist is the FSB itself, the
extinct KGB, the organization which is torturing, killing, and jailing
people. The state can do whatever it likes unless we stop it ourselves. The
only possibility of saying NO to the state crimes is solidarity of those
who don’t believe in the good intention of the state bureaucracy.

The Russian administration now is celebrating the FIFA World Cup. There was
no boycott of Russia because the capitalist system doesn’t care about
people. But we do care about this alarming union of capital and the state,
the state having the exclusive right to violence which was supposedly given
by the people for the sake of our own protection, not for us to be punished
and tortured without any proof.

No to political prisoners of Russian regime! Free antifascists from St.
Petersburg and Penza: Yuliy Boyarshynov, Andrei Chernov, Vasily Kuksov,
Arman Sagynbayev, Ilya Shakursky, Dmitry Pchelintsev, Viktor Filinkov, Igor
Shishkin, Egor Zorin. Free Oleg Sentsov and Alexander Kolchenko. Free Yuri
Dmitriev and Oiub Titiev!'

BACKGROUND

Starting in the autumn of last year FSB (formerly KGB, Russian secret
police) have been arresting antifascists and anarchists organising boycotts
of the presidential elections and upcoming World Cup to be held in Russia.
They invented an anarchist terrorist group call 'the Network' and used the
all the creativity of the state to make this fiction appear true. The FSB
have planted evidence, kidnapped people and systematically used beatings
and torture with electric shocks to produce confessions.

This is part of a wider and intensifying campaign of repression against
anybody t

[Marxism] Antifa Activists Are Freaking Out About a Proposed 'Unmasking' Law - VICE

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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On 7/11/18 10:19 PM, Saman Sepehri via Marxism wrote:
> Louis, seriously... this is what you are focusing on? Rather than this is
a right wing attack, comparing anti-fascists to the KKK?
> S.

Louis: Okay. let me spell things out. The black bloc is a counter-productive

tactic no matter the intentions of those that carry it out. When you
wear masks and go on window-breaking rampages, it allows the state to
discredit the entire movement. It also leads to terrible victimization.
A number of people who had nothing to do with the window-breaking idiocy
on Inauguration Day were swept up by the cops and now face lengthy
prison terms.

Actually, all the charges against the Inauguration Day detainees have been
dropped by prosecutors. Of the 21 people who admitted their guilt, only one
person did four months in jail; the rest were not sentenced at all. No one
is facing a lengthy prison term.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-prosecutors-abruptly-dismiss-all-remaining-inauguration-day-rioting-cases/2018/07/06/d7055ffe-7ee8-11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html
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[Marxism] On the Verdict in the Kolchenko-Sentsov Show Trial in Rostov-on-Don

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Published here:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/08/27/kolchenko-sentsov-hostages/

On Kolchenko and Sentsov’s Sentences
August 26, 2015
www.shiitman.ninja

Alexander Kolchenko and Oleg Sentsov

It is important to realize that the sentences that Kolchenko and Sentsov
received are a fiction.

No one actually takes the charges against them seriously.

Even the most loyal Putinists do not take the charges seriously. What
terrorism? What does the Right Sector have to do with any of this?

Kolchenko and Sentsov are hostages. Their being held in a Russian prison is
an act of intimidation directed at the Crimeans who stayed home but could
have fought back. Their being held in prison is an act of intimidation
directed against all the people of Ukraine and those Russian citizens who
could have supported them.

The trial was a fiction. The verdict is a fiction. That is why I reacted
without emotion to the sentences, although I understand the shock felt by
many comrades, among whom there are close friends of both Kolchenko and
Sentsov. Twenty years and ten years in prison? The Russian judges could
have give them sentences of forty years and twenty-five years. Or given
both of them life sentences. Or given them each six months in prison, then
retried the case. Or they could have not announced the verdict at all, but
just laughed and made faces. Or mannequins dressed in judicial robes could
have replaced the judges. Nobody would have noticed the difference.

Kolchenko and Sentsov are in prison as long as the Russian Federation is
ruled by Putin’s repressive, aggressive authoritarian regime. They cannot
be freed using lawyer’s tricks. They cannot be freed via “diplomatic
channels.” They can be freed only by defeating Putinist Russia. Or if it
“defeats” itself by choking on its own rage and madness.

And when that happens, it will not matter a whit what numbers have been
written in Kolchenko and Sentsov’s sentences. It doesn’t matter what the
judges whip up in Savchenko’s sentence. The release of the hostages does
not depend on the actions of lawyers. It depends on politicans and military
men. And, in part, on the price of petroleum.

As soon as the “Russian bear,” who has turned out to be a rabid rat,
finally kicks the bucket, all the regime’s hostages will be freed.

Translated by The Russian Reader. As is nearly always the case, my opinions
might not coincide entirely with those expressed by the authors whose texts
I translate and post here. But it has been strange to read the angry
reactions of leftist progressive Russian comrades to this particular text
given the almost total lack of any visible, public solidarity with Sentsov
and Kolchenko on their part.

I won’t even go into the haziness they and many other “ordinary”
“apolitical” Russian citizens experience when figuring out who to blame for
the whole mess in Ukraine. But this is the privilege all imperialist,
metropolitan peoples enjoy: pretending not to know or understand what is
being done in their name somewhere else in the world.

_

Russia’s Sentsov–Kolchenko case “an absolutely Stalinist trial”
Halya Coynash
August 21, 2015
khpg.org

The prosecutor has demanded 23 years for Ukrainian film director Oleg
Sentsov, and 12 years for civic activist Oleksandr Kolchenko in a case with
no crime and where all evidence was obtained through torture. Russian human
rights activist Zoya Svetova likens this to Stalinist repression, not a
court trial.

Svetova has seen a huge number of trials over the last 15 years, but
nothing like the “absolutely insane hearing” on Aug 19. She can’t remember
a case where, with no elements of a crime, or criminal (terrorist) acts,
the prosecutor should be seriously demanding 23-year and 12-year sentences.
This, the fact that everybody expects the court on August 25 to convict two
innocent men, and much more, she says, is reminiscent of Stalinist
repressions where people were arrested for nothing.

Sentsov is charged with leading a ‘terrorist organization,’ Kolchenko of
taking part in it and involvement in one specific firebomb attack on a
pro-Russian organization active in helping Russia seize control of Crimea
in 2014.  There is no evidence that an organization even existed, and the
only specific charge against Kolchenko is one that has not previously been
classified by any Russian court as ‘terrorism.’

“The prosecutor is demanding 23 and 12 years for people accused of crimes
they didn’t commit. Today Sentsov and Kolchenko’s lawyers clearly
demonstrated that there are no elements of a crime in this case, nor any
criminal act. On August 19, 2015, I saw a totally Stalinist trial. Three
judges were sitting

[Marxism] Other (non-racist) Russian views of the refugee crisis

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/09/05/refugee-crisis-eu-latvia-russia/
Raimond Krumgold, "The Refugees and the 'Death of Europe'"

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/skoibeda-germany-islamophobia/
Greg Yudin, "Germany Going Down the Tubes, or, Lies Come in All Sizes"

Here is what I wrote about Yevgeny Grishkovets's infamous blog post on
Facebook:

Watching a whole country go off its rockers might, theoretically, be
interesting, were it not for the fact that the country in question is the
biggest in the world and armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons.

Russian thespian and opinion leader Yevgeny Grishkovets, writing on the
"refugee crisis":

Нам всегда нравилась европейская улыбка. Мы знали, что эта улыбка не более
чем форма повседневной вежливости. Мы знали, что европеец улыбается
постоянно. Но нам это нравилось. Потому что мы не улыбчивы. Но сейчас
европейская улыбка выглядит только и исключительно фальшиво, да к тому же
глупо и бессмысленно. Чему улыбаться-то?

"We always liked the European smile. We knew that smile was no more than a
form of everyday courtesy. We knew that Europeans were constantly smiling.
But we loved it. Because we are not smiley. But now the European smile only
looks false, and stupid and pointless to boot. What is there to smile
about?"

This is, perhaps, the most innocent passage in Grishkovets's racist,
anti-immigrant, anti-European and essentially deranged screed, published on
the website of Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the official newspaper of the Russian
Federation.

http://www.rg.ru/2015/09/08/grishkovets.html

If you think Grishkovets is a lone wolf on this matter, think again. The
hysteria he exhibits is practically the official Russian position on the
"crisis," and the grassroots are being encouraged and encouraging
themselves to adopt it as well.
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[Marxism] Putin’s Propaganda TV Lies About Its Popularity

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/09/17/putin-s-propaganda-tv-lies-about-ratings.html
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[Marxism] Addendum to report about upcoming international separatist congress in Moscow

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/vladimir-zavarkin-karelian-separatist/

Separatism Charges Filed against Municipal Deputy in Karelia
July 31, 2015
Grani.ru

Criminal charges have been filed against Vladimir Zavarkin, a municipal
deputy in the Karelian town of Suojärvi, as reported by Guberniya Daily on
Thursday. Under Article 280.1, Part 1 of the Russian Federal Criminal Code,
the deputy faces up to four years in prison.

Guberniya Daily notes that Zavarkin has already given testimony in the case
on four occasions. According to the article, he is being defended by a
court-appointed lawyer.

At the same time, it is reported that the deputy has filed a complaint with
the Russian Investigative Committee in connection with the criminal charges
and is preparing an appeal to the Security Council.

Charges were filed against Zavarkin after his speech at a rally on May 20
in Petrozavodsk calling for the resignation of Alexander Hudilainen, Head
of theRepublic of Karelia. Over two thousand people attended the rally.

Zavarkin described the difficult social and economic situation in Suojärvi
and harshly criticized Hudilainen.

He concluded his short speech with the words, “If the Russian Federation
does not hear us, we will hold a referendum, I think. [If] Russia does not
need Karelia, let’s separate.”

A day earlier, Zavarkin had posted a film about the situation in the
Suojärvi District on the Vkontakte community page ”Hudilainen Resign!” The
annotation to the film quotes Zavarkin’s statement in the film: “I appeal
to the people of Finland and the Baltic countries: help us by sending
humanitarian aid. You also have relatives in Karelia. Otherwise, we will
all die out!”

Zavarkin sits on the Suojärvi Municipal Council’s committee for social
issues, public order, and housing and public utilities.



See the full post, including video of Zavarkin's speech and important links
at:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/vladimir-zavarkin-karelian-separatist/
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[Marxism] Russian Economy's Addiction to Oil and Gas (and Climate Change)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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"RBC’s rating of the 500 largest Russian companies shows the real value of
the oil and gas industry to the domestic economy. The contribution of all
other companies to total gains—46 billion rubles in 2014—amounted to less
than two percent..."

Read the rest here:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/09/25/russia-oil-gas-dependence/
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[Marxism] ...and Protector of All the Syrias...

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Here are four very different but complementary reflections by thoughtful,
politically engaged, and knowledgeable Russians on the dangers of Putin’s
new Syrian adventure:

https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/syrias/
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[Marxism] Yanis Varoufakis joins the axis of resistance -- in Moscow!

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/10/04/varoufakis-moscow-biennale-anti-anti-putinist/
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[Marxism] New from the Russian Reader: The Pitfalls of "Import Substitution" and The Empty Unity of Russian National Unity Day

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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One Solution: Import Substitution!
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/russia-import-substitution-food-deficit-inflation/

Ivan Ovsyannikov: Unity in a Vacuum
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/04/ovsyannikov-national-unity-day/
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[Marxism] The News from Stabilistan (Recent Posts from The Russian Reader)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Three groups of recent stories that characterize "Putinist stability" from
the inside even as the Putinist "sub-imperialist" war machine expands its
ambitions outside the country.

1. Russian Truckers Go on Strike against "Plato"

Striking Petersburg Truckers: “If the politicians think we are disorganized
louts, they are wrong”
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/russian-truckers-strike-interview/

“Rotenberg Is Worse than ISIS!”: Russian Truckers on Strike in Dagestan and
Elsewhere
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/22/russian-truckers-strike-dagestan/

Petersburg Truckers Say No to Plato
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/petersburg-truckers-say-no-to-plato/

2. No One Is Guilty in Death of 5-Year-Old Tajik Infant in Petersburg
(Because There Was No Investigation)

Why Such Hatred? (The Death of Umarali Nazarov)
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/10/23/death-umar-nazarov-tajiks-petersburg/

Do Tajik Lives Matter in Petersburg?
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/11/umarali-nazarov-death-investigation-petersburg/

Deported Mother Returns to Tajikistan with Body of Dead Baby Son
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/17/deported-zarina-yunusova-dead-son-tajikistan/

Zarina Yunusova: "I will never forgive what was done to me"
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/28/zarina-yunusova-i-will-never-forgive-what-was-done-to-me/

3. The Lives of the People

Arseny's Childhood
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/27/arsenys-childhood/

Yelena Osipova: "Russia is a bird, not a bear"
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/23/yelena-osipova-petersburg-artist-interview-protest-posters/

Better than Poke in the Eye with a Sharp Stick
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2015/11/24/popular-discontent-leningrad-region/
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[Marxism] Kirill Mikhailov: Sins of the Fathers (Chechnya)

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Published at:
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/kirill-mikhailov-sins-of-the-fathers-chechnya/

Kirill Mikhailov
Facebook
January 15, 2016

I have noticed that in the controversy that has ensued around Chechen
leader Ramzan Kadyrov everyone from Konstantin Senchenko to his opposition
sympathizers have proudly mentioned their fathers who fought in Chechnya.

The Chechen operation was a series of bloody war crimes by the federal
forces (and by the insurgents, but what can we demand of them now, when
some of them are gone, and the rest are in Aleppo?) When you take pride in
the Chechen War, you are proud of the abductions and torture. You are proud
of the Tochka-U missile that fell in the middle of the Grozny market. You
are proud of the tens of thousands (only according to official statistics)
of civilians killed.

You are proud of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya for telling the truth
about the war. You are proud of the occupation regime established there on
the bayonets of your fathers and funded by your taxes. You are proud of the
“pacification” of Chechnya at the cost of Kadyrov’s terrorist dictatorship,
which is quite similar to the most odious Middle East regimes, like that of
good old Bashar Assad.

As long as the terrorist regime concerned only the Chechen themselves, you
were barely indignant. You only squeamishly wondered that such a wild
region bore the name of Russia. You did not ponder the fact the police
chief’s teenage bride, Luiza Goilabiyeva, was actually a Russian citizen,
and that your fathers had fought for her right to have a Russian passport.
You did not think that Adam Dikayev, forced to humiliate himself by walking
on a treadmill in his underpants, was just as much a citizen of Russia as
was, for example, Vlad Kolesnikov, who was driven to suicide.

But now it suddenly transpires that Kadyrov’s terrorist dictatorship has
been terrorizing not only the Chechen people but all of Russia. I hope now
the time has come to realize what pride in the bloodiest war in recent
Russian history has come to. It has come to the fact the proud son of a
great father mutters something into a camera held by one of Kadyrov’s
gunman, trying not to stray from the prepared text.

So this does not happen again, we have to realize, among other things, that
Konstantin Senchenko and Adam Dikayev are in the same boat, and the Chechen
War is not our pride but our greatest shame.

Translated by the Russian Reader

__

Critic of Chechen leader Kadyrov ‘apologises profoundly’
BBC News
January 16, 2016

A Russian politician who criticised Ramzan Kadyrov, the Russian-backed
Chechen leader, has made a “profound” apology.

Konstantin Senchenko, a local politician in Siberia, had posted criticism
of Mr Kadyrov on Facebook.

However, Mr Senchenko then posted a grovelling apology, leading to
widespread speculation that he had been forced to do so.

Mr Kadyrov also uploaded a video of Mr Senchenko apologising on to
Instagram.

In it Mr Senchenko is seen to say: “I apologise profoundly.”

“I was wrong—I let my emotions get the better of me,” he adds.

‘Disgrace’

The row began on Tuesday when Mr Kadyrov, an ally of Russian President
Vladimir Putin, branded some members of the opposition “enemies of the
people and traitors” and called for them to be put on trial.

Mr Senchenko then wrote a Facebook post critical of Mr Kadyrov, calling him
a “disgrace to Russia” and saying he should “get lost.”

He also implied that Mr Kadyrov was corrupt and ill-educated.

Beneath the Instagram video of Mr Senchenko’s subsequent apology, Mr
Kadyrov wrote “I accept,” and added five smilies.

His own incendiary statement on Russia’s opposition is still displayed on
his official website, unaltered, the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford reports from
Moscow.

Mr Kadyrov took charge of Chechnya with Kremlin support in 2007, and
continued a long fight against Islamist rebels.

In exchange for loyalty to Russia, the authoritarian Chechen leader has
been allowed to maintain his own security force and has largely had a free
hand to run the southern Russian republic as he sees fit.

Human rights groups accuse Mr Kadyrov’s security forces of abuses,
including torture and extrajudicial killings.
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[Marxism] Ukrainian anti-fascists defy attack by neo-Nazis

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/ukrainian-anti-fascists-defy-attack-by-neo-nazis/
Ukrainian anti-fascists defy attack by neo-Nazis

Anti-fascists in Kyiv yesterday marked the anniversary of the assassination
of two Russian activists – and faced intimidation by a neo-Nazi gang as the
police stood by.

Russian and Ukrainian activists take to the streets every year to
commemorate journalist Anastasia Baburova and lawyer Stanislav Markelov,
who were shot dead by fascists in broad daylight on 19 January 2009 in
central Moscow.

In previous years, demonstrators in Russia have been harassed by police,
while those in Kyiv have had relatively few problems. But not this time.
Fascist groups in Kyiv issued threats against the demonstration in advance,
and the police told organisers they could not guarantee their safety.

“Today’s demonstration by the [Kyiv] 19 January committee did not go ahead
in the planned format”, the organisers said in a statement issued
afterwards. “About 50 neo-Nazis gathered at the October cinema and
prevented it going ahead. Another ten attacked one participant, near the
Taras Shevchenko metro station.”

In the end, about 15 anti-fascists demonstrated at Podol, while a
similarly-sized group argued with the right wingers as journalists looked
on.

The fascists “didn’t disguise their disrespect for the murdered human
rights lawyer Markelov – who had secured the punishment of [colonel Yuri]
Budanov, who committed war crimes in Chechnya. [In 2000, Budanov raped,
beat and strangled to death an 18-year-old Chechen woman, Elza Kungaeva,
during the Russian military action there. The Russian right embraced him as
a war hero and fought a long and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to have
the charges dropped.]

“[In Kyiv yesterday] representatives of the Russian section of the Azov
battalion [of volunteers fighting on the Ukrainian government side in
eastern Ukraine] said they see Budanov as a hero.

“On one side these events seemed to confirm the Kremlin’s propaganda myths
about the rise of fascist movements [in Ukraine] – but on the other, a
significant part of the ultra-right wingers present came from Russia. It’s
shameful that Ukraine has become a refuge for fascists from other
countries.”

One of the anti-fascist demonstrators, D., commented afterwards on social
media on the Russian fascists’ intervention. “A group of Russian neo-Nazis
– by all accounts, people who had been fighting with the Azov battalion,
and led by Zukhel (Roman Zheleznov [a prominent Russian fascist, whose
arrival in Ukraine was reported by Russian anti-fascistshere]) came up to
our comrades who were holding placards of Stas [Markelov] and Nastya
[Baburova] and, pointing at Markelov, said that ‘that so-called lawyer
defended Chechen terrorists’. [In fact he had represented the interests of
the family of Kungaeva, who had been beaten and murdered.]

“They then began to heap praise on the brilliant Russian army that had
destroyed the ‘Chechen scum’, and on colonel Budanov personally. The
apotheosis: the claim by one of the Zukhel-ites that ‘you’re against
Russian people, you just love those churki’ [an extremely derogatory term
for people from the Caucasus]. At this very moment, their Ukrainian
brothers-in-arms from the battalion continued to curse the anti-fascists as
‘pro-Moscow separatists’.

“It’s no chance that Zukhel turned up at this demonstration. He was closely
linked to the BORN group [of Russian fascists] that killed Stas and at
least a dozen other people, and that constantly approved such murders.
Having come to break up today’s action, he [Zheleznov] declared that ‘for
views that don’t line up with those of the nation’, people not only may be,
but should be, killed.”

D. also recorded that the fascist assailants included Sergei Filimonov, who
is active in a fascist group that works among Dinamo football supporters,
and was responsible for the attack on black English fans who attended
Chelsea’s recent away fixture with Dinamo. And there was a group of
neo-Nazi teenagers shouting “Sieg heil” and “SS”.

Another Kyiv activist noted on social media that Russian fascists connected
with the murder of Markelov and Baburova are fighting on both sides in the
eastern Ukraine conflict. While Zheleznov is with the Azov battalion on the
Ukrainian side, Dmitry Steshin – who helped protect Nikita Tikhonov, now
serving a jail sentence for killing Markelov and Baburova, prior to his
arrest – is “one of the foremost ‘gunmen’ of the Kremlin propaganda
campaign in support of the war [by separatists] in Donbass.”

There were anti-fascist demonstrations in most of the largest cities of
Russia and Ukraine yes

[Marxism] Ivan Ovsyannikov: Putin as the Mirror of the Russian Counterrevolution

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Ivan Ovsyannikov
Putin as the Mirror of the Russian Counterrevolution
Facebook
January 22, 2016

I spoke recently with a radio journalist from Cologne. A pleasant woman,
she was one of those western leftists who try and “understand” Russia. She
just could not believe that the Putin regime’s ideology was anti-communist
and was based on condemnation of all revolutions, whether the October
Revolution or the French Revolution.

“How can that be? We are walking here on Insurrection Square. Monuments to
Lenin are not demolished in Russia as they are in Ukraine. And you tell me
the regime is anti-communist?” she said.

I hope that after Putin’s remarks that Lenin planted an atomic bomb under
Russia and was responsible for the Soviet Union’s collapse, my companion
will see the light. I no longer have such hopes for Russian liberals who
believe that under Putin we are living through a new edition of the Soviet
Union.

In fact, Putin has been very consistent albeit historically ignorant. The
1917 Revolution is as hateful to him as the collapse of the Soviet Union,
as hateful as any other subversion of Power with a capital p, which in the
eyes of the people should remain sacred if only because it is Power, and
all power comes from God. From the viewpoint of legitimists like Putin, the
destruction of monuments to Lenin or the renaming of streets is a break
with the mystical continuity of Power and thus almost a revolutionary
gesture.

In Putin’s eyes, Lenin and the Bolsheviks really were devils incarnate, for
they radically asserted the right of the masses to revolt and abolished
continuity with the past, thus demolishing the mystique around the notion
of the state.

During the Stalinist period, however, the Bolshevik Revolution itself was
incorporated into the national myth. It is in this bronzed, mythologized
form that attempts have been made to adapt all things Soviet to the needs
of the new oligarchy, who have imagined themselves the successors of the
Rurikids, the Romanovs, Stalin, Yeltsin, and all manner of saviors of the
Fatherland and guardians of stability. Fortunately, this stunt does not
work with Lenin and never will.

__

Ivan Ovsyannikov is an activist with the Interregional Trade Union Workers
Association (ITUWA/MPRA) and the Russian Socialist Movement (RSD).
Translated by the Russian Reader. See my previous post on this topic,
“Crumbling Down`"(
https://therussianreader.wordpress.com/2016/01/22/putin-lenin-mellencamp-abashin-collapse/
).
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[Marxism] Kadyrov Is Not Chechnya

[Thomas Campbell via Marxism]

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Kadyrov Is Not Chechnya
Grigory Tumanov
Snob.ru
January 26, 2015

Kommersant newspaper correspondent Grigory Tumanov has returned from a trip
to Grozny and reports everything you hear about modern Chechnya and its
bloodlust is a myth invented by Ramzan Kadyrov

If you said the pro-Ramzan Kadyrov rally, held last Friday in Grozny, was a
kind of vote for Kadyrov, you would have to admit it was a failure. It has
long been argued the event was meant to hide some of the Chechen leader’s
deeper problems, and he had begun to haggle with Moscow not by offering
stability in exchange for a free hand, but by offering the explosive
situation in the region. But on the ground it turned out all the stories
about how, as soon as Kadyrov resigns and loosens his grip, the entire
republic would secede from Russia, immediately impose sharia law, and
establish a free Ichkeria are a myth.

I remember January 19, 2015, in Grozny: the rally for the Prophet, which
had also been organized not without the involvement of the local
authorities, to put it mildly. The vast majority of the people at the rally
had, of course, never seen any Charlie Hebdo cartoons on the web, the
cartoons that sparked the brutal murders of the magazine’s journalists.
Despite this, however, from early morning there was a huge traffic jam even
on Chechnya’s border with the neighboring republics of Ingushetia and
Dagestan. Yes, there were state employees. Yes, ralliers were bussed into
Grozny. Yes, there were quotas and roll calls, and prototype placards
imposed by the higher-ups, and campaigning in dean’s offices. It is odd, of
course, to try and assess the degree to which those people went
involuntarily to the Heart of Chechnya Mosque that day, but it should be
said they stayed on the square both at twelve o’clock to perform the midday
prayer and afterwards.

Several days later, every other car was still sporting a “We Support the
Prophet!” placard. It made sense. How, in a Muslim region, would you say no
to the question, “Are you going to the rally for the Prophet?” You wouldn’t
say it, of course.

“I have not seen the cartoons, but I am a Muslim, so I have no choice but
to come out. Rally or no rally, how could I not come out? For some reason
you all say we should not be offended by cartoons about something that
matters to us. But why should you decide for us? You don’t believe in it!”
one rally attendee told me.

It was a conclusive victory for Kadyrov. People really did come out for the
rally, driven not only by official lobbying but also by their own
indignation. So it was a great way for Kadyrov to announce his candidacy
for the post of chief defender of Muslims in Russia.

Contrary to the official Instagrams posted by Chechen officials and Kadyrov
himself, it turned out that the personal pull exerted by the head of the
republic was still not comparable to that of Muhammad. The Chechen Interior
Ministry reported that over a million people gathered on the squares of
Grozny last Friday. This is not true. I stood on the roof of the judicial
department of the republic’s Supreme Court and saw with my own eyes that
there were hardly 100,000 people in attendance. And as soon as the
officials moderating the rally announced it was over, all those one hundred
thousand people literally evaporated from the square. It was impressive. I
was especially touched by the way that people who were not employed in the
state sector proudly said they would not be going to the rally.

“Oh no, I am going to stock up on potato chips and sunflower seeds and plop
down on the sofa. If it is a day off, then let it be a day off. No one is
going to force me to come out for the tsar,” a private entrepreneur in
Grozny told me.

“Maybe we will not be allowed to work on this day, but we are not going
anywhere, so if you suddenly feel like some tea, stop by,” the proprietors
of a kebab place near the hotel where I stayed told me on the eve of the
rally.

While it was true there was no smoke coming from their grills the next
morning, all the place’s employees were in fact at work, watching with
curiosity as state-sector workers carrying placards shuffled by them on
their way to the Heart of Chechnya Mosque.

Yes, everyone with whom I spoke in the crowd on the square spouted off rote
phrases about how Kadyrov had raised the republic from ruins, and that he
needed support, since Ilya Yashin had launched a real vilification campaign
against him.  But it was no less impressive to see how people squinted and
smiled ironically as they said this, to see placards embossed with slogans
about Kadyro