Radical left organises anti-war demonstrations in Moscow
By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW, December 27 - "We can no longer have as President of Russia a person who bombs peaceful populations," Alexander Buzgalin, a leading member of the Committee for Democracy and Human Rights in Russia, declared to journalists at a picket on December 24. "Stop Yeltsin - Stop the War!" a placard behind him demanded. "One Road to Peace -Withdraw the Troops!" argued another. That picket, by about fifty human rights supporters and members of the local Chechen community, was typical of the almost-daily protest actions that have been mounted in Moscow since columns of Russian tanks rolled into the defiant Caucasus republic of Chechnya on December 11. In some of the coldest weather for years in the Russian capital, protesters have turned out again and again to demonstrate on Pushkin Square, the traditional site for protests by democratic campaigners during the waning days of Soviet power; to rally in front of the towering gates of Gorky Park; or to be arrested in front of the building of the Presidential Administration. After December 20, when Russian jets began terror bombing raids on residential districts of the Chechen capital, Grozny, the rhetoric of speakers at the protest actions took on an edge of desperation. "What is happening in Chechnya is a shameful stain on Russian history - a crime against humanity," retired General Oleg Kalugin declaimed to a 500-strong rally outside Gorky Park on December 25. A placard at the 500-strally was more succinct: "Stop the Kremlin Butchers!" An ironic note at several of the demonstrations was the presence on the same platform of people who had been on opposite political sides last time Russian Army artillery opened fire on civilians - during the storming of the parliament building in October 1993. "There used to be differences" within human rights groups about whether to support Yeltsin, former Gulag inmate Susanna Pechuro reportedly commented. "Now there are none." Democratic Russia, the liberal coalition that was instrumental in bringing Yeltsin to power at the beginning of the 1990s, and which fervently supported his assault on the constitution and the parliament in 1993, is now an important force within the anti-war movement. As images of the Chechnya carnage have filled the television screens, Russia's liberal intelligentsia has experienced a moment of agonising self-knowledge. Terrified of a "Communist revanche", the Russian "democrats" enthusiastically handed near-dictatorial powers to Boris Yeltsin - former boss of the Sverdlovsk Province Communist Party machine October 1993 was something that most of the "democrats" found they could stomach. But Chechnya has finally been too much -at least partly because in the case of Chechnya, Yeltsin has stopped pretending partlyto heed the opinions of the liberal Russian intelligentsia or to cultivate its support. On December 14 Sergei Yushenkov, chairperson of the parliament's Defence
Committee and for years a servile Yeltsin apologist, was reported to have lamented: "Yeltsin no longer listens to us. He does not need our advice, so it's time to move into opposition."
The Russian president, many of his former supporters now 20 International Viewpoint #263 February 1995 believe, has grown disillusioned with his posture as a democrat, and is seeking a new base among Russian nationalists. According to this interpretation, Yeltsin's invasion of Chechnya is both an attempt to do away with a compromising pointer to his regime's weakness, and a bid to win the allegiance of Zhirinovsky supporters by staging a brief, victorious war of reconquest. Can this strategy work? Among the many brutalised, declassed Russians, there is certainly a constituency to go after. In a recent survey (1), 30 per cent of respondents supported taking decisive measures to "establish order" in Chechnya; 36 per cent advocated measures searching for a peaceful solution; and 23 per cent called for removing Russian troops from Chechnya.
For Yeltsin, who was reported recently to enjoy the confidence of only 8 per cent of Russian citizens, the thought of winning the hearts of 30 per cent by pressing ahead with a ruthless assault on Chechnya must be alluring indeed. But the Russian president has picked the wrong nation and the wrong war. The yearning for independence in Chechnya is powerful, and has been immensely strengthened by the latest Russian atrocities. The
Caucasus is ideal guerrilla territory, and with support from other peoples of the region, the Chechens promise to be able to mount a punishing struggle for decades if necessary. Meanwhile the Russian army, in Kalugin's words, is "demoralised and falling apart". The ferocity of the attacks on civilians were a reflection of the difficulties of making progress against Chechen fighters. Among Russian officers with memories of Afghanistan, the idea of fighting a war in the Caucasus is intensely unpopular. So long as Moscow keeps troops in Chechnya and attempts to deny Chechen independence, there will be armed resistance. As the list of Russian dead and wounded lengthens, with no victory in sight, the limited popularity of the war among the Russian population will dissolve. For Yeltsin to abandon the invasion would be a humiliating climbdown from which his political authority would be unlikely to recover. He will not withdraw voluntarily; he will have to be forced. One way this could occur is through a wholesale military revolt, something which is far from inconceivable. Somewhat more likely is the rise of a broad and powerful anti-war movement which a weakened president can no longer resist. In many ways, the prospects for building such a movement are highly favourable. Big capital, both in Russia and abroad, is appalled by the thought of a war blowing the Russian budget apart. The major liberal newspapers are hostile to Yeltsin's exploit. The chastened intelligentsia is ready to polemicise and to some extent, to come out onto the streets But Yeltsin can only be defeated if the anti-war movement sinks deep roots among working people and the trade unions, and if its perspectives are not of token protests and parliamentary resolutions, but of mass mobilisation. The key builders of a movement of this type will not be liberals, but those left radicals who are not afraid of workers becoming active and politicised. The war in Chechnya thus imposes a huge historic task on the small forces of Russia's "new left". * Source: Izvestiya, reporting a survey of 1600 people in Moscow on December 16-19. Notes
Russian parties condemn military aggression participants from the former USSR, mainly Russian, but also from Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, & 20 guests from the capitalist world. A second conference is planned for December 8-10, 1995 in St. Petersburg. For more information contact
Mikhail Voeykov, Economics Institute, Krasikova 27, 117218, Moscow, fax 01170953107001
Marilyn Voyt-Downey, PO Box 1890, New York, NY 10009, U.S.A.
tel/fax (+1)718/636 5446, e-mail mvogt@igc.apc.org
International Viewpoint #263 February 1995
THE MAJORITY of Russian political organisations criticised the conflict almost as soon as it began. For Gaidar and his associates from the Russia's Choice party, until recently the president's best-known supporters, denouncing the war was no of distancing themselves from an obviously disastrous campaign by their hero of earlier times.
These right-wing liberal-Westernisers, exiled from power by a president who has turned increasingly to Russian nationalism and great-power chauvinism, decided to try to conduct an independent policy, gently kicking the president (but not too hard, in
The fell). Meanwhile moral considerations (why not call them to mind, when doing so poses no danger to one's prestige and capital?) played a certain role. As a result Gaidar and his colleagues, who had supported the use of tanks to pacify Muscovites in the autumn of 1993, spoke out against using tanks in Grozny in the winter of 1994-95.
The centrists (Yavlinsky and his colleagues) adopted a much firmer position, as did the majority of human rights organisations, including the Movement for Democracy and Human Rights in Russia, and Memorial. These forces consistently opposed both the war and the high-handedness of the president and his administration. Among the most active individuals is Sergei Kovalyov, the president's commissioner for human rights. Kovalyov spent several weeks in Grozny, and has done a great deal to tell the truth about Chechnya to the citizens of Russia and to the whole world.
Social democratic parties took a somewhat ambiguous stand on the conflict. On the one hand they called for the integrity of Russia to be maintained, and on the other they pleaded the necessity for the defence of human rights. By contrast, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation forgot its usual great-power rhetoric, bluntly condemning the war and the authorities who were responsible for the massive destruction and the large
Moscow, held on December 10 just before the first large-scale military actions, was organised by the democratic left.
The real point, of course, is not who was the first to move into action. Far more important is the fact that practically all of the country's major political forces, with the exception of the right- wing nationalpatriots, were lined up on one side of the barricades. On the other side was a bloc of
Yeltsin, Zhirinovsky and Barkashov. What programme for the peace movement?
The opponents of the war, however, were far from agreeing on a united set of demands for resolving the conflict. All the anti-war forces, thank goodness, were in favour of a halt to the bombing and to military actions, and supported the opening of negotiations. But beyond this point, disagreements began to appear. The Gaidarites were opposed in principle to calling for the president to resign, while many of the social democrats "forgot" this demand. Democratic leftists demanding that Russian forces be withdrawn from Chechnya, and that the Russian government respect the right of the peoples of Chechnya to decide independently and on a democratic basis whether they would remain in the Russian
Federation, and if so, with what degree of autonomy. However, this demand received only feeble support. Many rightists argued that a rapid and professional "police action" in Chechnya was desirable, condemning not so much the use of the "big stick" as the "unprofessionalism" of the army's actions.
This kind of discord within a context of positive positions is not surprising. In our country advocates of the "strong state" and supporters of "great power" concepts are winning increasing popularity for their ideas. In domestic policy, these people call for "free market" economic strategies together with moderate authoritarianism and strong police forces. In the broader they favour expansionist geopolitics backed by "patriotic" ideology. There is reason to fear that if the war in "professionally" — if the killing had been quick and silent, only the democratic left and a few human rights defenders would The struggle continues
The solidarity of people of good will in Russia and abroad is more and more important. It is necessary to overcome one's own indifference and to say "No!" to the war and to the authorities who have unleashed it. This must be done by military personnel, refusing to carry out illegal orders. It must be done by civilians participating in acts of protest in their neighbourhoods, their villages, their workplaces. It must be done by politicians, casting off their petty factionalism and uniting, at least temporarily, for the sake of peace.
If we can stop this slaughter, if we can learn to struggle together at least against such obvious crimes of the authorities - if this can be achieved, then at least to some degree the sufferings and sacrifices of this winter in Chechnya will not have been in vain. * AB/AK (via Peacenet)
number of casualties.
The relatively small democratic