SPECIAL FEATURE • 36 PAGE ISSUE • OUT ON
JANUARY 23, 1989
ANTI-RACIST STRUGGLES IN
EUROPE
Silenty Constmas & a happy Rew Tear, raith good luck to Labour, hand, heart, &-brain
Stick fast fo your banner, stand solid, nor veer,
Gill the cause of the Workers renews cartgtin nternational
EDITORIAL
* Immigration laws and 1992
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Plus our regular international coverage
Don't miss this IV Special! period after the year-end holi- Rush orders for extra copies to: IV, 2 rue Richard Lenoir, days. Since an international 93108 Montreuil, France. magazine is subject to more hazards than local ones - rollercoaster exchange rates, among other things — we need special help from our supporters. We hope that the advantages of an international publication will motivate you.
The times are still difficult for an international revolutionary magazine. But we think there is room for substantial improvement in IV's circulation. The subscription and fund drive we ran two years ago showed that. But the effort was uneven and has flagged since then. It is essential to renew it and extend it.
We are planning some special issues on broadly international problems for the new year. The first is advertised next to this article. Another important theme is the effect of glasnost and perestroika on the Communist parties around the world. These illustrate the sort of thing that only an international magazine like IV can do. The index in this issue also shows the breadth and depth of the international coverage we offer.
The growing crisis of bureaucratic "socialism" and world capitalism points up the need for building an international revolutionary press now. *
HORO
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3
Gorbachev stabs the
Armenian people in
International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988
Karabakh Committee in Armenia.
On the other hand, ever since the start of the Azeri counter-demonstrations, there have been signs of official encouragement for the Azeri mobilizations not been seen in Armenia. In the Armenian case, support for the movement from the official representative bodies and sections of the bureaucracy has clearly come as a result of prior pressure from a genuine mass movement.
The nationalist slogans raised in the Azeri mass demonstrations certainly could not have been to the liking of the Kremlin
WITH THE HYPOCRISY and big-lie techniques typical of the
Stalinist bureaucracy, the Gorbachev regime is trying is take advantage of the earthquake disaster to crush the independent movement of the Armenian masses.
This onslaught comes in the context of a general counteroffensive against the mass independent movements that have developed around demands for national rights. In the Baltic, the centralist bureaucracy has not hesitated to create unionist movements claiming to defend the rights of
Russian-speakers against the local peoples. In the Caucasus, it has been trying to equate the Armenian independent movement with gangs of Azeris that have staged pogroms against Armenians.
Its manipulation and repression go hand in hand with big-lie propaganda that it is defending reason and order against nationalistic passions and "egoism."
GERRY FOLEY
HEN the earthquake left
100,000 victims buried in ruins, when the Armenians were plunged into sorrow, and hundreds left the capital to help their fellow citizens, the people were stabbed in the back," the Karabakh Committee declared in a December 11 communiqué.
"No other country, even the least democratic, would have dared to insult the mourning of our people, who were beaten and wounded by bullets two days after the earthquake. In view of Moscow's attitude, it is hard to convince the people that the only problem is a natural earthquake.
"This catastrophe has served to show that we were really deprived of sovereignty... Gorbachev sent his army to shut down the Karabakh Committee. Then he came to offer his condolences to our people. He arrested people, he shed blood, and he left. All those who do not condemn that, condemn themselves to slavery." (Libération, December 17)
Gorbachev's turn toward massive repression began in fact before the earthquake, with the declaration of a state of siege in Erevan on November 24. "So, on
4 November 25, Yerevan had tanks at every crossroads, 'interior' troops at strategic places with weapons and shields, a 10:00 pm curfew, a ban on meetings," Jean-Marie Karaguiullan wrote in Le Monde of December 17. "In short, an occupied city, At the same time, in Baku, rallies and [anti-Armenian] exactions continued."
In this period, not only anti-Armenian pogroms took place in Azerbaidzhan, but mass Azeri rallies opposing the Armenian demands and expressing hostility to Armenians. News about the character of these actions remains scanty.
Pan-Turkish and pan-
Islamic slogans
According to Briaçon, Moscow News in its December 4 issue was the first Soviet publication to report the raising of panTurkish and pan-Islamic slogans in the Azeri demonstrations. Demonstrators reportedly carried pictures of Khomeini, called for unity with Turkey and for opening the border dividing Soviet and Iranian Azerbaidzhan.
Despite vague references in the Soviet press to "extremist groups" among the Azeris, there is no evidence of any independent movement comparable to the rulers. However, when hundreds of thou sands of people are mobilized, even on a reactionary basis and for reactionary reasons, it is inevitable that all sorts of suppressed feelings of injustice will be expressed. The mass demonstrations led by the Serbian bureaucratic strongman Slobodan Milosevic, in which Serbian chauvinism was mingled with working-class and anti-bureaucratic slogans, are an example of this.
A cover for attacks on the mass movements
The Soviet bureaucracy, with no apparent distinction between the liberal and conservative wings, has shown itself quite capable of creating chauvinist organizations to counter the movements for national rights in the Baltic countries. This serves at once as a cover for attacks on these movements, a means of pressure against local officials tempted to make concessions to them and offers the central bureaucracy a pretext for putting the lid back on in order to keep the evil genie of "nationalism" bottled up.
The Armenian movement has been distinguished since its inception by its discipline and its opposition to anti-Azeri feeling. It has put the responsibility for the pogroms squarely on the central bureaucracy. In the context of these pogroms and the the Armenian movement's lack of means for ongoing communication with all of the Armenian people, it seems inevitable that there would be some individual reprisals against Azeris.
But despite the constant attempts of the Soviet press to place an equal blame on Azeri and Armenian "nationalists," every indication is that attacks on Azeris have been very minor by comparison with the assaults on Armenian communities in Azerbaidzhan.
The escalation of the Kremlin's attack on the Armenian movement had clearly nothing to do with maintaining "order,' and still less defending Azeris. It was a response to the Karabakh Committee's attempt to mobilize support for the victims of the earthquake, in the face of paralysis, incompetence and confusion of the bureaucratic institutions.
Supposedly, one of the principal objectives of perestroika is to promote rank-
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USSR the back
December 26, 1988 • #154 International Viewpoint and-file initiative. And who could doubt that an organization that had proved itself capable of organizing demonstrations of up to a third of the population of the Armenian SSR and national general strikes could effectively organize help for the earthquake victims?
Karabakh Committee leaders arrested
"While all the sirens were screaming and the ambulances continued to bring hundreds of wounded to the Yerevan surgical institute, on December 10 the military authorities dispersed a crowd that had come to offer contributions for the victims," a Le Monde correspondent reported
Four leaders of the eleven on the Karabakh Committee were arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison after they refused to call on the people to go home. The following day, Sunday, December 11, troops fired warning shoots to disperse a crowd gathered to protest the arrests. Reports of the number wounded vary from one to three, but there seems no doubt that blood was shed.
In an interview published in Pravda on Monday, December 12, after some very general and trite expressions of sympathy for the earthquake victims Gorbachev launched a violent attack on the Armeni-
"I have shared the sorrow of the people....And, all of a sudden, someone asked me if we were going to take up a dialogue with the informal organizations, and once again, this Karabakh question was raised. I said everything that I thought, perhaps a bit roughly.
"Above all, I said... 'Stop, look at the grief that has been created both for the Azeris and the Armenians, the road onto which they have been precipitated. Today, the entire country, the entire world is in mourning for what has happened in Arasked me this question must have been totally lacking in moral sense."
On Friday, December 16, Pravda opened up a major barrage against the Karabakh Committee, announcing that 22 of its members, including five leaders — A. Akopian, K. Bartanian, S. Gevorkian, V. Manukian and L. Ter-Petrosian - had been arrested on December 10 and sentenced to 30 days "administrative detention." It declared: people, demonstratively violating the established order, organized an illegal rally around the Writers' Union. They spoke to the people gathered there, whining about human rights." Nothing was said about the group's collecting aid for the earth-
Pravda continued: "The second act took place on December 22. On that day a crowd of people gathered near the memorial to the architect Tamanian. A member of the Karabakh Committee, A. Galstian, called for insubordination to the forces of order. A hundred kilometers from Yerevan, people of various nationalities were saving the lives of Armenians, and this Galstian was calling people to rallies. The people realized how shameful these appeals were and dispersed." There was no mention of the "internationalist" tion offered by by the bullets of the MVD troops.
The article went on to blame corrupt local bureaucrats for the movement: "Let's look behind the scenes of the present events. The Karabakh leaders are doing the work, the plums are being collected by various sorts of corrupt operators, the godfathers of the local mafia. They are quite comfortable hiding behind political demagogues. The local prosecutors and police can scarcely lay a hand on these scoundrels....Once you are with the Karabakh Committee, it means that you are a patriot. And nobody cares whether you are a bribe-taker or a plunderer of the people's property."
By a contradiction inherent in Gorbachev's glasnost strategy, these classical big-lie denunciations were issued at the same time that the official press (Pravda, December 12) admitted facts that showed that while the earthquake was a natural occurrence, the disaster caused by the economic mismanagement of the bureaucracy. "Everything that was built in the years of stagnation collapsed. How could it be otherwise, since seismologists warned the builders several times....Nonetheless, buildings of five, eight floors rose up stubbornly." The mortar used was said to contain "more
The attempt to blame shoddy construction on Brezhnev is not likely to convince the Armenian masses. This sort of construction is typical of the bureaucracy's economic management everywhere and at all times since the bureaucratic caste usurped political power and freed itself from democratic control.
"We were deprived of sovereignty"
The reaction of the Armenian people is probably reflected in the statement of the Karabakh Committee that the disaster "served to show that we were really deprived of sovereignty," which means democracy as well as national rights.
This is not the first time that rulers have looked to a natural disaster to crush a people that they could not. The English imperialists and landlords hoped that the great Irish famine would eliminate the problem of Irish restiveness. The Irish response was expressed in the proverb, "God sent the potato blight, the English brought the famine."
The famine also was the result of a sys-
USSR tem of social oppression - in the Irish case, colonialist landlordism. It gave impetus to the development of a revolutionary movement out of the moderate mass movement that preceded it.
The Armenian movement has likewise grown massive. It has been radicalizing. It has now been driven underground but seems to be maintaining
"Restricting their movements, careful about who they talk to...the leaders of these [Armenian] organizations are trying to regroup their forces. Everyone distributes the monthly journals of other movements. There is Hairinkh [Homeland], a journal of history and politics; and Anakhoutioun ['Independence'), a more ideological weekly."
The slogan of independence had been appearing more and more in the demonstrations, apparently reflecting the radicalof the movement, like the reference to "sovereignty" in the Karabakh Committee statement of December 11. While that is a natural response to disillusion with the Soviet CP reformers, there is no visible way the Armenian people can achieve sovereignty by their own strength alone. They need alliances with other forces prepared to fight the bureaucracy throughout the USSR. They have already sought alliances with the other peoples fighting for national rights.
Revival of independent mass activity
The Armenians have played the vanguard role in these struggles, and that is undoubtedly why the Kremlin is taking the gamble of trying to crush them now. The bureaucracy's crackdown in Armenia poses a life-or-death challenge to the movements of other oppressed peoples,
The movements for national rights are the first form of the revival of independent mass activity since the establishment of the bureaucratic dictatorship. They have been opening the road for democratic action for the Great Russian workers and workers themselves.
The democratic aspirations of all the Soviet masses explain why the bureaucracy could not crush the movements for national rights at their birth. Therefore, the attacks being made on them today, in particular on the Armenian movement, represent a turnabout by the Gorbachev leadership that threatens the entire movement for democratic and social rights of every kind in the USSR.
No socialist or democrat should be confused about the terms of this confrontation by the bureaucracy's claims about the dangers of "nationalism, " "communal conflict" or "local mafia." What is at stake is the right of the masses to solve their problems brough mobilization, open 5 debate and democracy. *
Benazir Bhutto inherits a poisoned legacy
ZULFIKAR ALI BHUTTO, the only elected prime minister in
Pakistan's history, was overthrown by General Zia ul-Haq in
July 1977. Eleven years later his daughter Benazir Bhutto, leader of the Pakistan People's Party, won the November 16
International Viewpoint #154 • December 26, 1988
PAKISTAN mocracy or dictatorship. That was the simple issue. And on that issue the people decided very clearly. General Zia's supporters were essentially wiped out. Eight federal cabinet ministers lost their seats. I think the population of the country was voting elections and has just formed a government (see /V 147).
After many years of exile following the execution of her father in 1979, Benazir Bhutto returned to Pakistan in April
1986, just after the March general strike, the first since the coup d'etat. She was met at the airport by nearly a million people. In the weeks that followed, she was surrounded by immense crowds, notably in Karachi, the industrial center of
Pakistan, where two million people gathered. But these popular mobilizations were not enough to topple the dictatorship.
Zia's sudden exit last August in a mysterious plane crash, while accompanied by half of his chiefs of staff and the
American ambassador, cleared the road to power for Benazir.
But she has inherited a poisoned legacy: economic disaster, a total dependence on the United States, ethnic and religious divisions, and, lest it be forgotten, the Afghan problem. As for the general public, they expect a lot from the new prime minister.