The following interview with Vadim Damier, a co-founder of the Soviet Green Party, describes how the ecology movement in the Soviet Union has evolved as a response to this. The interview gives a historical account, while at the same time offering an insight into the ideas of the eco-socialist current on the Soviet left today. Vadim Damier is a specialist on the green and left movements in Western
Europe, and a leader of the eco-socialist "Green Alternative"
inside the Green Party. He has been active in attempts to unite the different left forces in Moscow, for example in connexion with the open letter on "People's Self-management"
published in /V 194. The interview was given to Poul Funder
Larsen in Moscow at the end of November.
W
OULD you describe the development of ecological movements in the
Soviet Union as wholly due to the advent of perestroika or were there any embryonic ecological groups before the mid-80s?
The ecology movement was one of the first informal movements in the Soviet
Union. It came into being in different forms even before perestroika. There were some official ecological organizations such as the All-Russian Society for the Protection
8 (VOOR), which had very close vinos winh
Environment the authorities and industry, and therefore could not participate actively in solving ecological problems. As a result of this a lot of grass-roots initiatives for environmental protection developed at the local level. In the pre-perestroika period, for example, there were the Groups for Environmental Protection (Druzhina Okhrana Priroda) dominated by students. These were often founded by local branches of the Komsomol [Communist Party youth], but still could be seen as initiatives from below. Also a number of illegal or semi-legal ecological organizations existed in connection forms of protest didn't succeed the inhabitants occupied the construction site and did not leave until the matter was settled.
This first phase of growth for the ecology movement was linked to the fact that at the beginning of perestroika the ecological struggle was almost the only legal outlet for protest. Therefore many people began as activists in the ecology movement. Later perhaps they broke off relations with it, as they politicized and joined different parties. The "Chernobylfactor" of course also played a role. • How did the differences between the political situation in Russia and the non-Russian republics influence the development of the ecology movement?
In the non-Russian republics these questions were of course closely intertwined with the national struggle. They opened up the first opportunity for some of the national demands to be put forward. One example was in Latvia, where a club for environmental protection, VAK, was formed as a "purely" ecological organization, but quickly developed into a national-ecological one, and later participated in the founding of the Peo-
The organizations which emerged in Russia were "non-political" coordinating unions on an inter-regional or all-union level. Now there are 25 or 30 of these organizations. Among the biggest are the Social-Ecological Union, Movement, the Ecological Union and the Association for the Demanding of Ecological Initiatives. Some of these, for example the Ecological Union, are only
January 21, 1991 • #198 International Viewpoint composed of experts, and generally there is a strong, and unpleasant, tendency towards the rule of experts in our ecology movement.
The strongest organizations, such as the Social-Ecological Union and the
Green Movement, are federations of the regional and local citizens initiatives.
They run candidates for the elections, and many members of these organizations are deputies on the local, regional or republic level. They also raise some social and political demands in their programmes.
But they are "non-political" in the sense that they don't pursue any alternative concept for society as a whole. They are only demanding partial improvements and calling for action from above.
One of their demands for example is that the State Committee for Environmental Protection (the Ministry of Ecology) should be transferred from the Council of Ministers to the Supreme
Soviet, as a Committee, in order to give it some legislative and supervisory powers.
The
"non-political"
outlook of these organizations means that they are drawing supporters from the most different political organizations and currents. For example during the second congress of the
Social-Ecological
Union in December 1989 representatives of the organization
Pamiat in
Novosibirsk were accepted, even though this is an organization.
eco-fascist
The majority argued that
"since this is an organiza-
PLANTE tion which works in the ecological field it should be accepted".
• What is the impact of the ecofascist current inside the ecology movement in general?
It is a rather strong tendency. I know that there are such tendencies in the ecology movement in the West as well, but I guess it is stronger here, particularly in the provinces. These organizations are indeed very active in the ecological field such as in Novosibirsk, where they orgafrom
Akademgorodok nize experts
["academic town"]. These are able to develop programmes on matters such as alternative energy, and they link this to nationalist slogans and nationalism as a system of values.
Several prominent Russian writers, who are oriented towards chauvinist and ecological positions, such as for example
Valentin Rasputin, who is also active in the struggle for the protection of Lake
Baikal, Valerii Belov and to an extent
Viktor Astafiev, are part of this nationalist trend. So these positions are not only being advanced by Pamiat — a purely eco-fascist organization — in Novosibirsk, but also elsewhere, in the Committee for the Rescue of the Baikal or in the
Committee for the Protection of the Vol-
Unfortunately these tendencies were also active in the formation of the Green Party. In Chelyabinsk [a main industrial center in the Urals] an organization called Fatherland set up a local branch of the Green Party, and they have been able to play a significant role on the "moderate" wing of our party. • How did the currents that formed the Green Party at the beginning of this year develop from the broad
At the first congress of the SocialEcological Union in December 1988 a group of radical greens proposed a resolution, which called for a stop to the building of nuclear power stations. This was rejected by the congress, and because of that representatives of the "radicals" from different cities united behind the scenes of the congress to form an orgacommittee of the Green Party. were representatives from the Green Union in Samara [Kuibyshev], Kazan, groups from the Ukraine and some other places — at this time groups from Moscow and Leningrad did not yet participate.
Then in the spring of 1989, during the first congress of the Green Movement this organizing committee called on all ecological groups to participate in the preparation of the new party. I was at this congress, as a representative of the Mos-
USSR cow Ecological Federation, and started working together with them.
From May 1989 onwards the organizing committee was called The movement for the formation of a Green Party.
But still it was more a network of groups than a real political organization. The editorial board of the journal Tretii Put
(Third Road) published in Samara, played a kind of coordinating role. We tried to establish contacts with other green and left groups, we had a first discussion on the programme and statutes of the new organization, but we also tried to organize campaigns. Together with other democratic forces we took the initiative for a blockade in the city of Chapayevsk on the
Volga, where a factory for the reworking of chemical weapons was being built.
This project was very damaging for the environment and as usual no one had consulted the local people.
The blockade had a symbolic significance and became an example for later ecological campaigns. We utilized different types of actions, maktent camps, blockades, maintaining close contacts with the local people, founding strike committees in the factories and so on.
After 35 days of struggle the build a factory in this spot, but only an exercise camp the first congress of the movement for a Green Party and proclaimed the formation of our party. It was an open congress in the sense that not only the groups which were on the organizing committee, but also groups from could participate. The 80-85 participants in the congress represented approximately 20 cities from four republics (Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and
The delegates from the
Ukraine however wanted to set up a
Green Party in their own republic.
congress carried a resolution against the socio-economic programme of the government, because already at that time the
"Interfax" was reporting plans of price hikes.
Another resolution was defeated by the majority, but accepted as a "resolution of the minority" due to the rules of basic democracy. It protested against the new presidency as a very undemocratic institution. So already during this first congress two main tendencies appeared inside the
• What are the political differences of these two currents concerning the development of society?
The tendencies could be termed "radi- 9
International Viewpoint #198 • January 21, 1991
USSR cals" and "moderates". The radicals are primarily the people who prepared the formation of the party. We have a clearer knowledge of the green movements in the West, alternatives in the sphere of social organization, the ideas of direct action, eco-socialism and so on. We do not see the Greens as a movement for environmental protection, but as a Green alternative for society as a whole. Our aim is a new society without repression, alienation, hierarchical structures, authorities and power. A linkage between ecoanarchist and eco-socialist ideas so to say. Our ideal is a federation of self-managing units, that is mainly self-reliant communi-
We see the parliament only as a stage from where you can propagate your ideas and criticize the rulers. extra-parliamentary actions. In the economic sphere we are against the market economy and support socialism, not in the way we had it here, but a just and nonauthoritarian socialism.
The moderate wing in the party is composed of two different, but somewhat amorphous, currents. There are people who want a kind of association for environmental protection. They do not see the difference between this and a Green Party. The other group of "moderates" want a party of the usual, parliamentary type in order to create changes from above. But we on the "radical" wing think that a new model of society can only be created from below, through the development of self- management in the factories and the local
At the congress in March the "radicals" were a minority, but the "moderates" knew they couldn't run the party without us, and consequently wanted to avoid a split. After the congress we began creating local branches of the Green Party. In May fifteen people founded the
Moscow branch, which has a deputy in
In early June 56 delegates from 25 cities, representing 800-1000 members, attended the first "real" congress of the
Green Party in Samara. The aim of the congress was to adopt the programme and statutes of the Green Party, but because of disagreements between the tendencies it did not decide anything. There were two absolutely different concepts of the party, its activities, its tasks and aims — in short "moderate" and "radical".
We wanted a federative party organized along the lines of basic democracy, but also with a leadership capable of reacting to political developments. The "moderates" on the other hand wanted a confederation with no central coordination whatsoever.
After the failure of this joint congress the two currents have developed separately. In June the opposition from Moscow, Samara, Nizhni Novgorod and the 10 the Volga, where we participated in a Ukraine met in the city of Balakova on blockade against a nuclear power station. Here we worked out the principles of a new political organization, the Green Alternative, based on the ideas of the left wing of the world ecology movement. • What are the relations between the activists of the Green Alternativ" and the other currents inside the socialist left-wing? What initiatives do you think could create unity among the many groups on the left?
Some of the groups connected to the Green Party participated in the conference of the bloc Democratic Russia, whereas the Moscow branch decided to boycott it, because this bloc supports the "500 days" market reform plan.
In Moscow we are trying to build a bloc of the left. This is complicated as there exist a multitude of left groups, including the Socialist Party, Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists, Union of Anarchists, the Democratic Platform and the Marxist Platform in the CPSU, Marxist Workers Party, the Green Party and the Communards, which is an alliance of people with different anarchist and Trotskyist views. During the summer we held some sessions of "a round table of the left" with the perspective of creating a united left front in Moscow. The character of this bloc is somewhat difficult to predict — it must be decided in practice.
It could be a more flexible bloc without a common programme and oriented towards campaigns — or perhaps with a common programme only on some pardifferences of opinion exchange of information, some wanted a bloc of far left forces and others a bloc of broader left forces. In the end a document involving representatives from a number of the left-currents was drawn up. This document rejects both the Ryzhkov and the Yeltsin plans for a market-reform.
After the failure of an attempt to establish a bloc of the far left forces I also participated in this initiative. I am against the isolation of the far left and therefore tried to get some of these forces to join, but this was impossible due to the resistance
Confederation of Anarchoof the
Syndicalists
So far there have been few common activities of the left forces, but for example during the demonstration on November 7 we formed a united left column inside the official demonstration. Here members of the Marxist Platform, the
Marxist Workers Party, the Communards and others demonstrated for the slogans of self-management and self-goverment.
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Self-management versus nomenklatura and the democratic movements in the CPSU. Two
USSR which I don't agree with. I am not sure how to resolve this.
Furthermore, it is difficult to be a member of an organization that bears the responsibility for the Stalinist repressions and the present crisis. I am rather hoping to be thrown out, which would resolve the problem. I have not accepted any of the privileges of membership of that body. • What are the positions and debates inside the Marxist Platform?
Interview with Alexander Buzgalin
ALEXANDER BUZGALIN Is a founding member of the Marxist Platform in the
CPSU, and was elected onto the Central
Committee of the CPSU at last year's 28th congress. He was interviewed in Paris by
Colin Meade and Cecilia Garmendia on
December 18, 1990.
AN you explain how you came to be on the Central
Committee of the Communist Party, and how you see your role on that body?
Before 1989 it would have been impossuch as myself to sible for a person become a member of the Central Committee. I became a member of the CPSU only in 1988, and I became a political figure only in the Spring of 1989. I was a political scientist who had written some articles on political problems, but I was not a political leader. But it became impossible for me to continue to stand outside political activity. It was "if not I, then who?"! It was a time of choice for everybody, to really be a communist or not - like Hamlet. So I decided to be and with ten of my friends decided to write a document containing some ideas on the future political and economic system as the programme of the CPSU. This document was the
Marxist Platform'.
It was published in Moskovskaya pravda, and we got a lot of calls from people throughout the Soviet Union who supported our ideas. In the middle of
April we organized a conference of supporters of the document, and that the beginning of my political career, because I became one of the was members of the Consultative Committee of the Marxist Platform.
I was only a guest at the 28th Congress of the CPSU, but I did some very interesting work in the corridors of the congress and tried to explain our ideas lists were proposed for the elections to the CC: one with official leaders from the regional party delegations and the second proposed by Gorbachev. During the election discussion many people, including me, made short speeches to propose additions to this list, of people without official positions. It was decided to make additions and I received the backing of the absolute such majority of the delegates for a place on the CC. I am not the only member of the Marxist Platform on the CC - there are two others. But I am a "white crow" in that company — in a minority of one on all questions. Obviously I have become well known because of this. It is not the most important thing for me to be a member of the CC or even of the CPSU. I want to be a real communist and a supporter of the democratic movement. Being on the CC puts me in a very contradictory position. On the one hand it is very positive because I can make a speech in a large auditorium at every meeting, I can write an article, and have contacts with different people on a high level and can take real practical steps in support of our ideas. But on the other hand, I am responsible for all the decisions of the CC, most of
There are perhaps three main ideas. First is that the way to socialism is through the full realization of all democratic relations in all spheres — social, political, economic and ideological. This also opens up the perspective of communism.
We believe that democracy is about more than elections and a multiparty system. There must also be basic democracy at the level of the enterprises, regions and towns. There is a need for democratic consumers' organizations - something that is very important in the Soviet Union at the moment - and in the sphere of distribution and social relations and so on. We are for a real self-management democracy
We are for social ownership of the economy in two forms: the first would be collective ownership and the second would be a variant of state ownership, with strong self-management at the enterprise and national level. We say yes to the market, but we see it as a way to go from the present crisis situation to a future socialist economy. This market must be under the control of mass democratic organizations in different spheres, rather than under the control of what we call the bandokratia, that is, a union between organized criminals and corrupt officials.
Now, in the Soviet Union, we have a sit-
1. Extracts from the Marxist Platform can be found in
2. Extracts from the Democratic Platform can be found /V 187, June 18, 1990 in /V 188, July 2, 1990.
of our movement.
and the purpose
Some people decided to support our attempt to have a speech at the conarguments it was
After some made possible. I had ten minutes - I gress.
'I am the ghost of glasnost past, or perestroika-yet-to-come; I'm not sure which.' was applauded four times.
After the speech hundreds of delemyself and my gates approached friends to discuss the Marxist Platform
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capitalism 11 January 21, 1991 • #198 International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint #198 • January 21, 1991
USSR uation where the old leaders are changing their political power over the economy into money and property. Bureaucratic leaders are becoming heads of joint enterprises with Western countries and private enterprises. There is the development of what we call "nomenklatura capitalism". Perhaps this would be accompanied by a political dictatorship on Pinochet's lines. We have said we are totally against such a variant of the market.
We accept some forms of private ownership in existing circumstances. It is necessary to legalize shadow forms of private ownership and exercise some control. We would envisage something like the NEP of Lenin's time.
In the ideological sphere we are Marxists, but we understand that Marxism is not just the small number of ideas and figures we had in the official Soviet primers.
There are also many others who were
Marxists and made contributions. Marxism must be self-critical and developed. Lenin was a critic of Marxism.
Marx wrote that capitalism was a society of free competition. Lenin emphasized the contradiction between free competition and monopoly in capitalism. This was a criticism and a development.
Something similar is needed now given the changes both in West and East. So we are for critical, developing Marxism and not the Stalinist version.
There are some difficulties in the Marxist Platform, which I want to explain. To do this it is necessary to look at the history of the democratic movements in the
CPSU. This arose in January 1990 with the formation of the Democratic Platform?. The absolute majority of this organization supports right social democratic ideas. A minority of the DP decided to support a socialist perspective and the ideas of real democracy. This was a component of the future Marxist Platform.
A week before and a week after the 28th
Congress of the CPSU there were two meetings of supporters of the DP. A split took place. A part has formed a Republi can Party with ideas like the American
Republicans — not even social democrats. Another part has remained inside the CPSU and has taken part in the formation of the Democratic Movement of
Communists (DMC). This includes not only the DP people, but also some horizontal structures existing in Leningrad,
Moscow and other cities. There are also some small groups of delegates to the 28th
Congress, for example a group called
Young Communists/Left Initiative from
Leningrad.
The DMC was organized at a conference on November 17/18, 1990. There are two wings in this movement. The right is left social democrat. They support the main ideas of the Second International, but its programmatic announcements rather than its actions. The leftwing is close to my position.
There are also differences inside the
Marxist Platform. About a half of its supporters are moving to a position very close to that of the United Front of Toilers (UFT). Prigorin, for example, said that the most important struggle in our country is the struggle against capitalist restoration. The most important task is that of defence of socialism. I asked: was there a socialism to defend? He answered maybe yes, maybe no, but it is necessary to save all socialist measures. Ir some cases he is right, but only in some. In fact the main problem for us is the same as before. We still have the bureaucratic dictatorship, but in a new form. Our capitalism is growing from our bureaucracy and will be a bureaucratic capitalism. Thus the way now to struggle to destroy a future bureaucratic capitalism in our country is to struggle against its precondition: bureaucratic control over society and the economy.
Then there are different positions on questions of tactics. We think that one of our most important tasks is work within the mass democratic movements. The majority of these movements say that they are anti-socialist, anti-Marxist and anti-
CPSU. But if you ask them if they would support real self-management for the workers they reply: yes. If you ask them:
do you support bureaucratic capitalism or social ownership, they will support social ownership. In my view our most important task is to work inside such movements. But for many in the MP it is impossible to work in a movement that says "no to socialism".
The third difference is over relations with other socialist parties and groups in the Soviet Union. We have good contacts with the Confederation of syndicalists (CAS), Kagarlitsky's Socialist Party, with left social democrats. On the whole social democrats in the USSR are rather like the Democratic Party in the
USA. A typical bourgeois party. But the left wing are real supporters of socialism and self-management, and play a very positive role in the mass democratic and labour movements. So we want to organize some kind of bloc of real socialist forces in the USSR.
However it is hard for the majority of the MP to support this idea. The Anarchosyndicalists say that the CPSU is an organization of criminals and the majority of the Marxist Platform say that this makes it impossible to work together. I try to explain that in some respects the CAS is right. Leaders of the CPSU have been real criminals, organizers of repressions, responsible for the deaths of millions of people. But the majority of the MP find this hard to take. They say, if the CAS think that the CPSU is full of criminals then they support the ideas of Pinochet.
• These differences in the MP suggest two very different ideas of what socialism is: If you say that to attack the CPSU equals anti-socialism then the underlying idea is that the dictatorship of the CPSU and socialism are the same thing. Thus these differences are actually very profound. For me, defence of socialism and criticism of the dictatorship of the CPSU are two sides of the same coin. If you are to have socialist relations, we must destroy the dictatorship of the so-called Communist Party. Our CPSU is not a real Communist construction. Its membership consists in Party. It is a bureaucratic its absolute majority of conformists, without ideas. They are in it for career reasons. It was impossible to be a scientist or an engineer if you were not a party member.