Fourth annual Russian Conference on Trotsky
Several dozen Russians workers and intellectuals gathered in Moscow on October 10-12 for a conference on "Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution: 1917-1997". The event was sponsored by the international Committee for the Study of Leon Trotsky's Legacy.
Foreign guests included speakers from more than ten countries. Among the Russian speakers were Valery Bronstein, the grandson of Trotsky's brother; Yuri Kirshin, Vice President of the Academy of Military Sciences, who is writing a major work on Trotsky's role as commander of the Red Army during the Civil War 19191921; Vadim Rogovin, who has written four volumes of a projected seven-volume history of the Opposition to Stalin in the
Conferences
1920s and 1930s; and Zorya Serebryakova. daughter of prominent Bolshevik leader Leonid Serebryakov. A supporter of the Left Opposition in 1923-1927, Serebryakov was shot after giving a forced false confession at the second Moscow show trial in 1937.
Zorya, who knew Trotsky personally, documented Stalin's falsifications of documents about the October revolution. She cited startling examples of false historical accounts that have recently been written by scholars who are relying on these tampered documents. The round discussed "The Theory Permanent Revolution: historical and contemporary aspects," "The Crisis of Capitalism as a Prerequisite Revolution: Theory and Reality," and "When and How Was the Russian Revolution Defeated?" with panellists including Russians and foreign guests-both supporters and opponents of Trotsky's ideas and analyses as well as those in between.
The panel which drew the largest audience and generated the most controversy discussed "Was Trotskyism an Alternative?" to Stalinism. The range of views presented spanned the spectrum from Vadim Rogovin who explained with examat every stage of the unfolding historic process in the USSR; to Hillel Ticktin of the University of Glasgow who argued that Trotsky's ideas were an alternative which had they been implemented would have changed the course of history of this century in favour of the working class; to Mikhail Voyeikov, professor of Economics at the Russian Academy of Sciences, who argued that the topic of the discussion was ill conceived and that Trotsky knew well that his ideas could not be implemented during the political downturn in the 1920s, much less in the 1930s after the defeats and retreats caused by Stalinist policies; to Alexei Gusev, a graduate student of Soviet history, who maintained that Trotsky's policies were not really substantially different from Stalin's and, therefore, could offer no alternative.
coming soon People's action against "free" trade
From the 23 to the 25 of February 1998, 600 representatives of peoples movements will meet in Geneva to establish a platform for worldwide action against trade liberalisation: the Peoples Global Action against "Free" Trade and the WTO (PGA).
The first big-scale action in the calendar of the PGA will be a wave of decentralised mobilisations and protests all over the world parallel to the Second Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which shall take place on 18-20 May 1998.
The meeting in February will be the founding conference of the PGA, since it will lay down the basis of the alliance in the form of a manifesto. It is being convened by a committee formed by some of the most representative peoples' movements of all continents, including peasant movements (like the Brazilian Movimento Sem Terra, the Indian KRRS and the Peasant Movement of the Philippines), indigenous peoples (like the Mexican Zapatistas, the Nigerian Move. ment for the Survival of the Ogoni People, the Indigenous Women's Network of North America and the Pacific and FIA, a Maori organisation from Aotearoa), unions (like the Central Sandinista de Trabajadores from Nicaragua) and women's organisations (like Mama 86, an organisation of Ukranian women affected by the Chernobyl disaster.
Other events will take place around the first PGA conference. From the 18 to the 21 of February, there will be several 34 International Viewpoint #296 information and discussion roundtables on topics such as gender, food production, culture, economics, etc., prepared by organisations participating in the conference. On February 22 there will be a one-day intensive seminar on the WTO, the MAI and trade liberalisation. On February 26 there will be a number of coordination and planning sessions in small groups, divided according to the topics treated in the roundtables. Finally, on February 27 there will be a European meeting to launch a Europe-wide movement of civil disobedience against Contact: Play Fair Europe! e.V., Turmstr. 3, 52072 Aachen, Germany Tel: (+49-241) 803792 Fax: 8888394 email: playfair@asta.rwth-aachen.de http://www.agp.or Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference Sydney, Australia, April 1998
Organised by the Asia Pacific Institute for Democratisation and Development. September 1997 issue of this magazine.
The Institute also welcomes applications to present papers at the conference, and suggest specific themes for discussion under the general framework of supporting democratisation, self-determination and social justice and opposing the neo-liberal austerity offenContact: Dr Helen Jarvis, School of Information, Library and Archive Studies, (SILAS) University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052 Australia. Or Email to: apiaustralia@peg.apc.org. Or fax to: 02-96901381
The Present Crises and Future Plans
This is the fourth annual conference on Trotsky in Russia. The first was held in November 1994 at the Economics Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences where the Committee was formed. A telling indicator of the destructive consequences of the capitalist restorationist policies and the consequent social deterioration is the current state of Economics Institute itself: Such a conference could no longer be held in the Institute's auditorium today: that handsome area has been converted into a storage room for a commercial firm (the Institute, no longer receiving the necessary government funding, rents out rooms to survive); the old faculty lounge now houses an industrial vacuum dealership; Russian "Avon Ladies" peddle cosmetics on a counter just inside the Institute's main entrance. The coat check area is in shambles—the staff no longer received any pay and left.
The ideals of the Russian revolution are not dead in Russia. A recent poll suggested that 70% of Russians oppose the sale of state property and 54% feel that "the country is moving in the wrong direction." The economic, industrial, health, cultural, and educational system of the country has virtually collapsed. According to the New York Times on October 20th, health problems in Russia "rival those of the poorest African countries... only one child in five is born healthy...and the death rate has risen by 20 percent, without modern precedent.
Professor Voyeikov, co-ordinator of
the Committee's work in Russia, emphasised the importance of the its work with his observation that "there can be no way out of the present problems without understanding what caused them. This means returning to the history of the Russian revolution and learning the causes of its degeneration. Trotsky's writings are indispensable to this task.
The next conference will be in Moscow in 1999, 120 years after Trotsky's birth. In the meantime, the Committee has launched a campaign to raise $5,000 to publish 1,000 copies of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution which is still virtually unavailable in Russia. [MVD] * Contact:Marilyn Vogt-Downey, US Coordinator, PO Box 1890. New York. NY 10009; e-mail: mvogt@igc.apc.org booknotes
Mexico's democratic left
The July 1997 victory of Cuauhtemoc Cardenas in the Mexico City mayoral elections marked the growing success of the Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Dan La Botz reviews recent publications on the party and its charismatic leader.
In Taking on Goliath, Kathleen Bruhn maps out how Cardenas and the PRD finally began to break the power of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party
Bruhn is an assistant professor of polltical science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and this book, the first English-language study of the PRD began as her doctoral dissertation. Relatively free from jargon, it tells the story of the rise of the Democratic Current inside the PRI, its departure, and transformation
That period is also covered by Luis Javier Garrido, previously known for his history of Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). La Ruptura is a well written, serious history based on newspaper accounts, documents, and inter-
Kathleen Bruhn also covers the creation of the National Democratic Front (FND) and Cuauhtemoc Cardenas's 1988
She then turns to the organizational and political failures of the PRD through 1994. While this is a useful overview, Bruhn fails to relate the growth of the PRD to the economic and social struggles taking place in the country, concentrating too narrowly on party building and electoral contests.
Spanish readers will also appreciate Adolfo Gilly's fascinating selection of letters sent to Cardenas during his 1988 presidential campaign. Gilly, an Argentinean-born Mexican historian, has collected and edited letters from workers, peasants, teachers, students, and middle class supporters, providing a fascinating picture of Cardenas's backers in that cam-
More dissapointing, perhaps, is Paco Talbo Ils interview/biography of Cardenas, written to support the PRD leader's presidential Cardenas de cerca provides some basic information about the man, it fails to ask any hard questions. Taibo, famous as a historian, biographer and detective storv writer brought none of his critical faculties to bear on Cardenas, disappointing those of us who have been his faithful readers.
Those in search of documents may find what they are looking for in two recent works by supporters of the Democratic Current, which became the PRD Ifigenia Martinez, a founder of the Democratic Current, has edited a collection of over 40 essays, nearly 500 pages, by leaders of the PRD, and sympathising economists and social scientists striving to present economic alternatives to the neoliberalism of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).
Many of the basic documents of the Democratic Current can be found in La Corriente democratica, edited by Jorge Laso de la Vega. Kathleen Bruhn. Taking on Goliath: The Emergence of a New Left Party and the Struggle for Democracy in Mexico. University Park: Pennsylvania, 1997. Adolfo Gilly. Cartas a Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. Mexico: Ediciones Era, 1989. Luis Javier Garrido. La Ruptura: La Corriente Democratica del PRI. Mexico: Grijalbo, 1993. Paco Ignacio Taibo II. Cardenas de cerca: Una entrevista biografica. Mexico: Grupo Editorial Planeta, 1994. Ifigenia Martinez, ed. Economica y Democracia: Una propuesta alternativa. Mexico: Grijalbo, 1995. Jorge Laso de la Vega, ed. La Corriente democratica: Hablan los protagonistas. Mexico: Editorial Posada, 1987. Uncovering the Right on Campus: a guide to resisting conservative attacks on equality and social justice.
The Center for Campus Organizing (CCO) has released a 132 page book documenting Right-wing activity in academia. The book exposes right-wing attempts to control the debate on affirmative action, financial aid, feminism and gay rights.by way of funneling millions of dollars to student groups and newspapers.
Uncovering the Right on Campus is a culmination of four years of research aimed at blowing the cover on the myth that campus Right-wing movements grow naturally from the students. The book reveals how, despite their backing by millions of corporate dollars, conservative campus groups have yet to make an impact proportionate to their checkbook. Meanwhile, the numbers of progressive student activists are growing.
Uncovering the Right on Campus is written by the staff of the Center for Campus Organizing. CCO is a five-yearold organization dedicated to supporting social justice activism and alternative journalism on college campuses across the USA.
The budget cuts of the "Contract with America" were a recent example of Rightwing attempts to control education across the country. The Right Wing has been funding conservative campus groups at an annual rate of 10 to 20 million dollars since the 1980's in order to to buy influence on college campuses. For example, in 1994 the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation funded by Allen Bradley Corporation donated over a million dollars to conservative campus groups and the Castle Rock Foundation backed by the conservative Adolph Coors Foundation gave $225,000 in campus grants. ISBN 0-945210-07-08. Published by Public Search Inc. Cost: S8 plus $2 shipping from the Center for Campus Organizing, PO Box 748, Cambridge, MA 02142. FAX (617) 547-5067. Excerpts are available on the CCO Web Site at: www.envirolink.org/orgs/right Exposed Realities: Palestinian Residency Rights in the "Self Rule Areas