"A market poses cruel conditions"
who committed suicide after the failed coup in which he played a central role. On April 1 Moscow's control over this force, which operated on Moldovan territory, was reaffirmed, and, despite a promise from Yeltsin on May 28 to withdraw it, it remained in place.
While Yeltsin has taken his distance from the extreme nationalist statements of his deputy, Rutskoi, in effect he has assisted in the pursuit of the same programme. Yeltsin likes to present forces such as the 14th army as having a "peace-keeping" role rather than pursuing Russian imperial goals, but he has been firm in his determination to ensure that Russia retains the backbone of the former Red Army and himself stated after the coup that he was prepared to consider border revisions. Thus his occasional "distance" from the army/nationalist camp does not stop the latter from doing what it wants.
What it wants was explained by one of Yeltsin's allies among the army brass, General Dmitri Volkogonov; out of the current army of four million a more streamlined force of 1.5 million will be created, its goal being to concentrate on defending Russia's borders and domestic order (International Herald Tribune, June 22, 1992), while a military leader of the DR, Vladimir Ryliakov, saw the aim of the current actions as being the "preservation of a single army and a single economic space across the territory of the Soviet
Pretext for intervention
Indeed a Moscow dominated enclave in Transdniester would provide succour for attempts to create "independent" areas based on the Russian population in neighbouring Ukraine, in their turn providing pretexts for direct intervention "to protect Russian lives" by Russian forces.
This has always been the plan of the Great Russian chauvinist currents, led by the likes of Viktor Alksnis or Aleksandr Nevzorov, who have been regular visitors to the DR. On one occasion a number of officers of the former USSR MVD Special Purpose Police Detachment (OMON), wanted for crimes by the Latvian government, arrived in the DR (two were captured by Moldovan police and handed over to Latvia, prompting protests by pro-imperial groups in Moscow and elsewhere).
The increasing assertiveness of Great Russian chauvinist forces both in the non-Russian republics and at the centre, where a pan-Russian mood seems almost universal amongst new and old political elites, sheds some retrospective light on the facility with which the "democrats" gained power after the August coup attempt. The continuing influence of a figure such as General Gromov says it all; the army brass
WE publish below the second part of our interview with Nikolai Belanovskii, vice president of the Union of Auto and Agricultural Machine Workers of Belarus (the first part appeared in /V 232 of July 6, 1992). The interview was given to David Mandel on May 23, 1992 in the course of a visit to Canada.
D ID the coalminers' strike
have anything to do with Byelorussian I don't really think so. Incidentally, our union supported the miners. We were the only large union to do so openly and to condemn Gorbachev's behaviour. But the miners' situation was more complicated than ours. All the media were reporting on the "excessive" demands of the miners, blaming them for stopping production at other factories and warning of a heating fuel shortage. This was a psychological campaign to get people to oppose the miners. At the plenary session of our union's central council, we evaluated what was happening as an attempt by the government to smash the labour movement. We didn't pass judgement on the miners' demands, but we put all the blame on the government for refusing to negotiate.
Our central council voted to give the striking miners 10,000 roubles, which we sent to Donetsk. But none of the major papers decided that, faced with actual and potential mass resistance to the coup, they must and could work with Yeltsin, Sobchak and the rest to pursue their plans - and the "democrats" acepted the deal.
This means that, while in August it looked as if the non-Russian republics had achieved independence with the support of the Russian leadership, in fact the latter have not accepted the existence of independent states; on the contrary, they reserve the right and are paving the way for intervention and are ready to use all forms of economic and military pressure to ensure continued dominance from Moscow. In
MOLDOVA / BELARUS or electronic media reported this, only our own union press and some republican papers. I personally gave the resolution to the Belorussian correspondent of Trud but they didn't publish it, which shows how far it can be considered a real union paper. The official union confederation, the VKP, simply betrayed the labour movement at that time; if the miners had been crushed no union would have been able to raise itself up after that. • What were you doing when the workers began to move on April 4?
I was at the other end of town when I got a call from a person I had worked with earlier in our factory: "Nikolai, the factory is moving, and we don't know what to do. There's no one here." When I arrived, they were within 500 metres of Government House. I talked with workers I knew and asked what their demands were. I asked them to ensure order and to watch out for provocations. There were special forces police waiting on the square. The government was in session.
We organized a group to stop the column when it reached the square. But instead of stopping, people began to move towards Government House. It was a very dangerous moment. I managed to climb up on a 1. An essentially economic strike by a part of the coalminers at the start of March became increasingly politicized as the strike expanded. It was not until May that all the miners returned to work. On the miners' and Byelorussian strikes, see chapter seven of David Mandel's Perestroika and the Soviet Union, Black Rose Press, Montreal 1991. 2. The central trade union paper, the largest circulation daily in the former Soviet Union, with upwards 3. The All-Union Confederation of Trade Unions, the central trade-union federation, the former All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. the Moldovan case this might involve a division of this republic between Ukraine and Romania — an idea already floated by Romanian leaders.
An especially worrying development has been the offer of land in the DR to Cossacks joined by all manner of adventurers and freebooters) in return for their involvement in fighting "to defend the Slavs" This suggests the possibility of an attempt to drive out the Moldovan population to make way for Slav settlers.
The shadow of Yugoslavia is spreading across the territory of the former Soviet 9 Union.* July 20, 1992 • # 233 International Viewpoint
International Viewpoint # 233 • July 20, 1992
BELARUS lamp post and shout for them to stop. I yelled that it was a provocation and that they would destroy the cause they had come for. Luckily there were some of our foundry workers that knew me, and they stopped, also halting the crowd behind them some 20 metres from Government House. The police would never have allowed its seizu-
There were about 5,000 people in all in the square. A spontaneous meeting began. Parliamentary deputies from the opposition People's Front came out. The workers' demands were purely economic, but these people, along with people from the Workers Union, wanted to exclude any leaders from the official unions, saying that they were phoney, and the like. They wanted to let only their own people get to the microphone. I was on the tribune all the time but I avoided a confrontation with them. I merely asked the workers to send up their own people. The speakers from the People's Front and the Union of Workers made the mistake of telling the workers that their demands were wrong, that they wouldn't achieve anything, that they had to change the political system. What they were saying might make sense, but you have to take into account where people are. And the crowd grew wary at once. They were being insulted, told that theirs were "sausage demands". It ended with the crowd electing delegates who went to hand the government the demands after which people went home. • How did the government react?
That evening, the negotiations between the government and unions, that had begun before the strike, resumed. Earlier that day, the authorities had convened all the directors in the city and all the union presidents and discussed and discussed, but nothing was decided. I asked to speak and demanded an immediate decision from the government. I warned that if they didn't inform the people of measures adopted on wages and social guarantees, they would come out to the square again. And that's what happened. When they finally published a decision, the strike wave had already spread to the smaller cities and isolated
When I spoke to the crowd on the fourth, I told the workers to take the strike seriously and avoid provocations. I told them they should entrust the leadership of the movement to their union committees, and if those committees refused or were unable to lead them, then to elect strike committees. I advised the workers to maintain order and guard their plants. The workers began to elect strike committees. It was all quite spontaneous, including the formation of the city strike committee. The lack of experience of struggle was quite evident.
And so on the fifth, the Minsk workers again came to the square, but in a rather more organized manner, groups of workers from different factories. Throughout the republic, the movement was quite peaceful, except for Orsha, where the workers blocked the railway line. The factory administrations adopted a neutral position, and there were no open persecutions, though, as usual, there were threats that people would lose pay for being absent.
The city strike committee included people from among the leaders of the People's Front, and I consider that they needlessly heated up the situation. For example, our Avtozavod struck on the first day, April 3, and then didn't come out any more. The administration there had raised wages and introduced compensation for the price rises in the canteens. Most workers were satisfied with that, which shows that their demands were really economic. But these Popular Front people drove up to the factory and shouted: "Strikebreakers!" and the like. They were demanding that the party committees be put out of the enterprises, that the government and parliament resign, that the parliament hold a special session. Many workers didn't accept this politicization at the level of the city strike
After that, there was a pause for negotiations, but they broke down. On the tenth, there was a big demonstration on the square with about 50,000 people. But really, how could the government resign? And since the enterprise administrations were meeting the economic demands, the strike committee was forced to suspend the strike. But it was resumed on the 24th when the strike committee announced that the government was dragging out the talks, that it would not agree to an early special session of the parliament not to evict the party committees from the factories. But only the Tractor Factory and one other plant came out that day. The rest sent only representatives to the square. And the meeting decided they would not come any more.
But on the morning of the 25th, people gathered in the yard of the Tractor Factory and a mass meeting took place; it was the anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. When I arrived the workers weren't listening to anyone, not to the administration nor to the union committees, insisting on going to the square again. When I spoke, I told them that they couldn't act like that, that they had to trust the people they had elected. But since the government had refused to make the day a day of mourning, it was decided to go to the square. I proposed that we go in an organized manner, to first return to the shops, organize the columns, prepare black armbands, slogans.
At the same time, Bukhovstov, our union's president, had gone to Gomel', where a mass meeting was organized on the union's initiative. In Minsk, more than
50,000 people marched. The columns included the unions, strike committees, factory administrations. The People's Front joined in with its banners. The demonstration had the colouring of a protest against the consequences of Chernobyl, and this time it was organized. The demonstrators were mainly from the Tractor Factory, the others sending only small groups. Avtozavod, our other large plant in Minsk, didn't go. The Tractor Factory is more militant. The divisions among the strike committees could already be felt. The city strike committee insisted on political demands, to which not all of the enterprise strike committees could agree and so decided to send only some groups of representatives to the demonstration. • How did the movement end?
On April 24 and 25 the workers in the town of Orsha shut down the railroad line. This movement was led by a certain Razumov from the Tool Factory. He was very radical and spoke about the need to change the government and political system. This winter their regional trade union council joined our Association of Industrial Unions and he is now saying we should not have strikes since they lead to instability and
How did it end? Well, the government refused to carry out the political demands: meanwhile economic demands were being met in the plants; people stopped coming out, though many unions and strike committees did express no confidence in their administrations. The only ones to kick out their party committee were the Motor Factory. The positions of the city strike committee didn't correspond to how the workers were thinking. That is the main reason why the strike committee failed to win majorities for its political demands, such as evicting the party committees. It's true that in the heat of the events many workers did vote for these demands, but afterwards this support disappeared.
I think that a fundamental error of the leaders in the strike committee, which may have been due to People's Front influence, was their desire to keep members of the union committees and Communists out of the strike committees. But these were precisely the people with experience in organization and collective working. Things might have been different if at that time the People's Front and Workers' Union hadn't put forward such radical political demands and especially if they hadn't tried to keep the unions away. In fact, they wanted to destroy the existing union structures. But one can't say that everything in those unions was bad and that they enjoyed no • Besides the economic gains, what would you say was the most positive
consequence of the strikes?
The experience pushed consciousness forward and allowed the emergence of new potential leaders. Many of the people in the strike committees were people with loud voices who came and went. But there were also sober people. I should also mention that the strike committees often also included representatives of the union committees and many strike committees, especially in the Minsk area, were in fact led by the presidents of factory committees.
At the Ball Bearing Factory, the members of the strike committees were elected as the new trade union committee. We're working closely with them, teaching them the ropes. It's a pleasure to work with these new people, since our views coincide. You see, after we created our new republican council, there was a gap between the republican structure and the plant committees. We wanted to pose things in a radical way and to speed up the changes but we had to deal with the existing plant committees, who often don't understand our approach and try to smooth over problems with the administration.
But things are changing. In several factories, there are already people who don't share the old outlook.
The workers have confidence in them and we can work with them
But it's a complex issue. For example, at the Tractor Factory, the plant committee got mad because the shop committee was inviting us directly and not going through them.
You see, on the one hand, our constitution affirmed the priority of the primary organizations, but, on the other, there is an urgent need to change things. We can't just walk into the plants and order the committees around. But we do say openly say this at all union conferences that it makes no sense for there to be both union and strike committees in the factories. In my view, the strike committees have only one task: to win the confidence of the majority of the work collective and to come to power in the union committees, to reform them. If there are two organs, they split and weaken the workers.
It happens at conferences that the strike committees express their lack of confidence in the union committee and administration and all sorts of fights break out. I say that the union committees should be in charge, and if the strike committees feel they are not up to the job, they should force new elections and run. But I can't work openly with a strike committee to help it overthrow an existing union committee.
However, we do invite their representatives to our plenums, something that makes the union committees angry. • Many of the union leaders who came here with you from the former Soviet Union seem to have nothing but scorn or even hatred for the new worker organizations that have appeared in the factories. They say they are power hungry, not serious and infringe on union jurisdictions.
My attitude to these organizations is positive. Their emergence is healthy and forces the union committees to be on their toes. Much of their criticism of the union committees is well-founded. But they often criticize in a way that fails to win worker support. For example, they say: The union committee doesn't defend you; management earns more than you; they are always going abroad.
So the director merely explains: Do you want us to be totally out of step with the market situation? And he justifies each trip. After the strike many factory committees adopted a position of criticism and rejection of everything that repelled workers. In many plants the committees have already
The same is true of the Workers' Union. They were politicized people, and at the time of the strikes, there might have been an opening to form a strong workers' party. But they too adopted a stance of criticizing everything, including the unions, which they merely wanted to destroy. Sure, many factory committees are conciliationist and bad, but words aren't enough.
BELARUS
• What about the Republican strike committee?
The Minsk committee doubles as the
Republican committee, but we've hardly heard anything from it in half a year and it is the same in other towns. In Minsk we tried to find a common language with the strike committee but then representatives of the International Committee of Free Trade
Unions came to Minsk. They met us and the strike committee. The strike committee was trying to establish new trade unions and they told the ICFTU not to trust us, that all our reforms had been merely cosmetic. They followed a two-faced, disloyal policy, especially after we had done a lot to help them. So we took our distance from them.
As I said, I support the existence of any worker organizations. But the
Republican strike committee hadn't yet even got on its feet, when it already called a press conference to announce the creation of free trade unions. This caused some of our members to leave them. It is really a crude power struggle by leaders of an organization that has not even got near power.
• What about the Workers'
Union?
It doesn't really exist any more. It has become the Confederation of
Labour, which is very fragile. It allows dual membership in the old and new unions, which, in my view, is not normal. They reject the idea of strikes and have taken up exclusively the idea of privatization, demanding that the workers get property in some form or other. That's their only activity. Naturally, the government likes their position on strikes. The Belorussian president spent two hours discussing with them, though they represent only 600 people, while we are several million. After the talks he pointed out that the Confederation had a different approach to the old unions. I know what he means; they don't give the government any trouble.
But there are also the small free trade unions promoted by the Minsk strike committee. They are closer to us and to the industrial workers. At Avtozavod, the factory committee refused to hold new elections, and the strike committee formed a free trade union with about 150 members.
• Does your union support the struggle of the so-called "budget"
medical personnel, employees, teachers and so on, who are striking for wages and increased state financing for their institutions?
nes, we fully support them. In March, 11
July 20, 1992
BELARUS we demanded that the government review the subsistence minimum for the entire population, though the minimum for our branch is well above that. The budget workers movement is led by the official trade unions, which have been undergoing a renewal. • What is the political weight of the People's Front?
It has a presence in the republic, but it isn't a mass movement. And that, in large part is due to its too radical positions -extremist positions on the national question, extreme attitudes towards the former Communists, whom they see as criminals, not distinguishing ordinary members from those in power. We have quite a large number of ethnic minorities in the Republic and the People's Front's attitude pushed them away from it. • Did Gorbachev's referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union really reflect public opinion?4
At the time, yes. The question asked was whether to preserve the union in renewed form. The People's Front called for a "no" vote. Even today, a majority feels that sovereignty is stupid. Those of us who are more politicized, who are closer to the political and economic processes in the republic and who saw more clearly the character of relations in the union, might not think so, but ordinary people see that they used to be able to travel, to take vacations without any problems anywhere in this vast land, and now things only get worse, while the television shows people killing one another. • But do you feel there should be some sort of political structure above
No, I don't. I don't see at present the kind of attitudes upon which it would be possible to set up a structure that would reflect the interests of all the republics. • Are you referring to the Russian leaders?
To a large degree they forced the process of sovereignty, since the representatives of the other republics couldn't obtain a just solution to their problems. They harmed themselves and others by trying to resolve things from positions of force. The result is that conflicts don't get resolved, there is squabbling over division of the army and so on. They put economic pressure on other republics by limiting exports to them, so the others reacted in kind. They exploit the fact that they possess the greater part of the raw materials. They took a lot of steps that undermined mutual confidence. They did everything without consulting others. Some 12 remember how Yeltsin behaved towards of this was intoxication with power. You International Viewpoint # 233
Gorbachev at the Russian congress after the coup? Gorbachev was speaking to the congress about the party's responsibility in the coup, its lack of vigilance and so on, when Yeltsin walks over to him and hands him a document ready for him to sign suspending the party. A lot of people didn't like that and I was one of them. • You mentioned that the new trade unions in the Confederation of Labour are concerned exclusively about the issue of property. But we've talked about your union without mentioning that question at all. Surely the way that is resolved is going to be decisive for you.
That's a very complex issue. Parliament has yet to adopt a law on privatization. There is a law now on private property of land, but the peasants aren't exactly rushing to make use of it. There are, however, collective farms that are transforming themselves into genuine cooperatives where each person has a share of the property, the land is worked in common and at the end of the year the profits are divided up. If a person decides to leave, he receives either his part of the land or monetary compensation.
In the factories, on the other hand, the administration is trying to force the process and to completely remove the enterprises from state control. For example, some have become leased enterprises. But, in practice, the old managerial structures remain intact; it's the director who unilaterally decides what to do with profits. In our general collective agreement with the government, as well as in the enterprise agreements, our union has insisted that all decisions on changing the form of property of the enterprise must have the agreement of the work collective. That's the most basic issue. And we have intervened to stop the machinations of the administration in this area.
Our second position is that, in face of the chaos that reigns in the area of privatization, the state must adopt laws to regulate it. One possibility is the allocation to each inhabitant of a share in the national property. In some enterprises the workers are saying: "It's all ours, you should give it to us". In reality it was the whole nation who built the factories. The part that was built from profits is a different question - that part, one could argue, does belong to the work collective. But what of the pensioners who put fifty years of work into the enter• In our discussions here, Canadian unionists tried to explain that the issue of property is a question of power, of control over investment, jobs and the rest. That's why it seems somewhat strange to me that you and your colleagues hardly raised the issue of property and when you did, didn't seem to have a clear position on it.
We're trying to understand this issue. There are many hidden shoals here. The tendency in the republic now is towards leasing arrangements and the creation of joint-stock companies from the state enterprises. We are trying to analyze the consequences of each variant. • In Canada a major reason the labour movement fought against the Free Trade Agreement with the United States was that it effectively deprived the state of power to conduct an economic policy. This is part of the general tendency to "de-regulate", to give business a completely free hand. Is there any understanding in your movement that the struggle for the enterprises" and for privatization can be a trap for workers?
We see the tendency for the government to pull out of the economy. They say: we've given you full autonomy, so your fate depends on what you yourselves can earn. But we want the government to resolve the problems of exchange between enterprises in the different republics, because that is threatening production.
As far as the free market is concerned, I'll tell you in all seriousness that in our union we understand that this race to the market that we see in the government as well as in other structures will only bring harm to the workers and to society. A market poses cruel conditions. We are aware of what has happened in East Germany and Poland. They are striking examples of what not to do. The Polish reform was a terrible mistake. They opened their borders and flooded their market with imports, thus, in practice, exporting jobs to other countries and depriving their own workers of the possibility to work and earn the money to buy those goods. Production there has declined by over 20%.
Reconstruction requires huge investments. Our enterprises are now nearing the edge. During the first half of this year, the government still supported them. But now there is a shortage of money - the workers can't even get paid. Before coming here, we sat down and analyzed the economic situation, the state of relations between the republics, the issue of conversion of military production — we now have many plants producing for the warehouse. In our view, 4. In March 1991, the Union government conducted a referendum asking the population if it supported maintaining the Union in renewed, democratic form. Four of the republics, with about 10 million inhabitants, refused to participate. Of the other 178 million eligible voters, about 59% participated and over three quarters of them voted for the union. New York Times, March 20, 1991.
the July-September period will be critical. • Should workers in your country demand direct power in managing the economy and their enterprises or should they aspire to be simple wage labourers, who try to influence things through their unions "from outside?" If they accept private ownership, then they will have no legal say in how their bosses use that property. You have got some idea here of how hard it is in those circumstances for Canadian workers to exercise any real influence on national economic policy or in the
I don't consider that our old system was as black as many people like to paint it today. There were also positive aspects. And I am opposed to rolling everything back, so that we find ourselves forced to fight all over again to recreate the good things we had. Such a danger does exist.
Our union is discussing the appropriate forms of worker influence in the economy. I think that this form has to be the struggle for political power. Nothing else, except the law, will force the entrepreneurs to invest where we want them to. The other option is open confrontation directly in the economic arena. But can we afford to constantly organize protests, strikes and occupations? Each protest is a great responsibility. If only one person is killed this is a great responsibility to bear. • What has your union done in the political arena?
the creation of a party. There are many small parties in the republic, but none of them suit us tioning. There's a Social Democratic Party whose deputies form part of the opposition in parliament. mainly intellectuals and highly skilled workers and it is quite small. But they are the closest to our views and we coopemote certain laws in parliament. We know, of course, that they have their own agenda and that they are mainly ting the enormous base the union movement can But we see that the political representation. They are an undefined political force today, and no one can say who they will follow tomorrow. We're seriously discussing forming a workers' party, one that workers would really support. In effect, it would be • One of the big problems in our system is how the base can control its political representatives once they are elected since there is always the tendency for them to forget their programmes and electoral promises.
In Belarus, our union took part in the collection of signatures for a referendum that will force new parliamentary elections. We slept through the last ones, and, as a result, directors and party bureaucrats got themselves elected. About 40% of the deputies are people with absolutely no principles, weathervanes who shift with the political winds. I've proposed for example to start work in the enterprises to draw up a list of candidates for the new elections, to do it methodically, take a good look at prospective candidates and give workers a chance to know who they are voting for, so there
But to be objective, I have to say that, although we are trying to force elections, the present government and parliament have moved ahead quite a bit over the months. They were pushed forward by the labour movement and by the more radical positions we have adopted. I'm not saying that things are good, but there has been some progress.
BELARUS
However, if the economic crisis continues to deepen and the plants shut, then all movement will come to a stop. And that can happen especially because of the economic conflicts between the republican • One of the things that emerged from our discussions here was that your unions generally have relations with management than, for example, the Canadian Auto Workers. Can you explain that?
In our country, we can't adopt a classic stance of unions against employers. In fact, we are pushing our directors to form a union of employers. They aren't yet prepared to unite, and it is very hard to deal with each of them separately.
One of the areas of cooperation is our efforts to get the government to change its tax policy, which places the entire burden on the state enterprises. But the most important problem is the supply of raw materials and parts of other republics. It's a frightening experience. we see production coming apart and we can't stop it. In the large factories, where the directors have been there for a long time and have access to all government offices, they work out their own solutions and try to deal directly with the government. But the majority of enterprises, especially those outside Minsk, are waiting for our proposals at least during this transitional period. We call the directors to meetings and they ask us to help them resolve the problems.
Our problem is that we can't let production collapse. Of course, if I were just an economist and not a trade unionist, I would have to say that we have plants that just aren't up to the mark and really aren't needed in our republic. But I know we have to find work for people in other places or else convert those plants to useful production. Unfortunately the crunch will surely come. The question is how to make the change in the interests of people. How to ensure that the losses are kept to a mini• How much have your workers lost in real earnings since the start of "shock therapy" in January?
Up until April, the average decline was about 23%. But we have some factories where workers lost nothing. Those in real misery are people on fixed incomes and "budget" workers. • Our newspapers have been writing that the expected "social explosion" in reaction to "shock therapy" hasn't occurred. How do you see things?
I say: Wait for the period July to September. That will be the test of stability of the existing structures. The situation is totally 1 3 undefined. * July 20, 1992 • # 233 International Viewpoint