Fwd: [Iskra] IWP - Moscow - On the Chechen War (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 09 Feb 2000 07:45:58 -0500 (EST)
From: SMye5@aol.com
To: SMye5@aol.com
Subject: Fwd: [Iskra] IWP - Moscow - On the Chechen War


distributed on the Iskra-list, 9 Feb 00.

Iskra Comrades,
               The ‘declaration’ below is from the International 
Workers’ 
Party, one of the 31 organisations that founded the revolutionary Movement 
for a Workers Party (MWP) in Moscow last August. They are also supporting 
the 
anti-war demo in Moscow later this month, initiated by the Moscow MWP.

Despite the style of the declaration, in my opinion, it represents a set of 
politics and arguments amongst the best coming out of Russian Marxism 
today. 
It needs to be considered seriously, and studied carefully, by all those 
who 
are serious about supporting and preparing for a new October in Russia - 
and 
spreading it.

In solidarity - Steve Myers

**************************************

Declaration of the International Workers' Party (Russia) - 7  November 1999

STOP THE AGRESSION OF RUSSIA IN CAUCUS

* 1.    The bloody "antiterrorist operation" in the Caucasus represents an 
act
of aggression against the sovereign (by fact and by right) state of
Ichkeria (1) [Chechnya] on the part of the government led by the Yeltsin's 
"heir" Putin
and the so-called "family" around Yeltsin. This war is related, above all,
to the oil interests in the Caspian basin and is aimed at preserving the
power of one of the capitalist clans and the bureaucracy with the support of
the arms dealers, the bureaucrats of the industrial-military complex and the
generals who are seeking to justify the growing power of the military caste.

This war serves the interests of the oil capitalists of Turkey and the US,
who are demonstrating in this way the greater security of the Baku-Zheyjan
pipeline, and also the interests of the oil oligarchs (including some
Russians) who are interested in raising the price of oil in the world
market. The aggression of the Russian government used as its pretext the
provocative invasion by the armed units of Basaev and Al Attab in Dagestan,
as well as the explosions, occurring in suspicious and unclear
circumstances (2), in ordinary housing estates on Russian territory.

* 2.    The working class has no need of this war, and its youth above all 
has
no need of being sent into military service. By carrying out these imperial
and colonial policies, the ruling classes of Russia are beyond a doubt
weakening the physical potential of the Russian working class, wearing down
in the war not just the active and physically healthiest part of the
industrial workers and other ordinary workers, but also other older
generations of reservists, especially those who have already understood that
without the self-arming of the workers, their struggle against the
exploiters will demand greater sacrifices and more victims. And in the
meantime, the exploiting "gentlemen" send their own sons to study abroad and
not into this meat grinder.

* 3.    The events in the paper and cellulose factory in Vyborg (CBK) show
where the "bandits" are and who the "terrorists" are and who the powers that
be in Russia are fighting their war against. The workers of CBK showed all
the workers of Russia, not only how to fight against the terror unleashed by
those in power, but how to defend their factories against the bandits of the
state and the multi-nationals. Today, to impose "constitutional order" in an
isolated village, Sovietsky, in the Vyborg region in the province of
Leningrad, special "Tayfun" detachments of the Ministry of Justice are being
deployed, which were set up to put down mutinies in prisons. State power is
using all the information media as a megaphone to label the fighters taking
on Russian federal forces in Chechnya as terrorists because the lock people
up and take hostages. What words should we use in that case to describe the
"Tayfun" squads, the law officials leading them and the private custody
that, acting together held seven factory workers, including two women, as
hostages for twelve hours?! … No kind of legal or political hairsplitting
can remove the responsibility for this. The brutal fact of beatings and
shootings (3)  done to the workers at CBK can no longer be concealed!
This is not the first time that the CBK workers, led by their strike
committee, have put up a heroic resistance and expelled armed occupiers from
the factory. They are defending the factory against privatization and
plunder and intend to organize production at the company with their own
resources.

*4. This demonstrates yet again that the genocide being perpetrated against
the peasants of Dagestan and the population of Chechnya is a dress rehearsal
for massive repression aimed at the workers throughout the whole of Russia.
The ruling bourgeoisie and bureaucracy throughout Russia are using their
aggression in the Caucasus to reinforce and brutalize their repressive state
apparatus, and to close their own ranks with the goal of crushing the
working class, which during the "war of the rails" terrified the national
and foreign exploiters by demonstrating that their potential for struggle
was by no means exhausted.

* 5.    For this reason the defence of the interests of the working class of
Russia - and of the whole world-demands that we should not let ourselves be 
  
   
sucked along by the sabre-rattling chauvinist hysteria, but instead demand
an end to the imperial aggression of the Russian government in the Caucasus,
denounce the discrimination of "people of Caucasian nationality" and take a
defeatist stand with respect to the war being conducted by the "federal"
repressive forces against Chechnya.

* 6.    The independence of Ichkeria will be the work of workers in the 
towns
and country themselves, freeing themselves from the dictates of their
bourgeois "comandantes", who conceal their class aims beneath radical
Islamic slogans. 

* 7.    Workers of Russia! Only when we are UNITED with our class brothers 
in
Chechnya and the other republics, whatever their nationality or religion,
will we be able to settle accounts with our exploiters. A real solution will
only be found in the voluntary Union of our peoples and with the setting up
of the State Power of the armed workers.

With this as its aim, the Executive Committee of the International Workers
Party has decided to adopt the following programme of action:

· We repudiate the massacre carried out by the repressive "federal" forces
against thousands of rural families in Dagestan in villages that revolted
against the power of the bourgeoisie and bureaucracy of the republic of
Dagestan. We repudiate the ban on the Wahab religion in this territory. The
"federal" forces are not needed here! The Dagestan militias demand arms and
have the right to defend themselves against any invasion from whichever
quarter. Arms for the Dagestan volunteers!

· We repudiate this new punitive expedition against Chechnya! The massive
bombings by the federal air force and the unceasing artillery barrage on
Chechen villages and cities on the pretext of "liquidating bandits" or
"defending the territorial integrity of Russia" represent a savage massacre
of the Chechen people in a copy of the repugnant model provided by NATO.

· We denounce the complicity of the USA and the other G7 powers in the
aggression being carried out by the Russian government. Despite the
hypocritical declarations on their "concern for humanitarian issues", it is
evident that what is taking place is the partition of the Caucasus on the
basis of imperialist interests: that Russia will "re-establish
constitutional order" in Chechnya and NATO will take the rest under its
control, starting with Georgia and Azerbaijan (4). If the power of Russia is
unable to do the job, then NATO will send its "peace-keeping troops" to
Chechnya, too.

· We demand the recognition of the independence of Ichkeria! No to the
transformation of Chechnya into the ghetto of the Caucasus condemned to a
new holocaust!

· We condemn the sabre-rattling chauvinist hysteria and the anti-Caucasian
racism being encouraged by the Putin-Yeltsin government and the mass media
they control. This hysteria is being swallowed by the majority of the
parliamentary factions in the Duma led by the CPRF with the objective of
justifying the invasion of Chechnya and the continuation of a large-scale 
war.

· We demand the withdrawal of federal troops from Chechnya! We demand an
immediate halt to the sending of young workers to the front as cannon fodder
in the service of the business interests of the oil capitalists, the
transnational corporations and the arms-makers! All our support to the
committees of mothers who are trying to save their sons being sent as
soldiers to a new massacre.

· We demand that money from the budget be used to pay the wages and 
pensions
now owed, and to reconstruct public health and education and science, and
not for the enormous expense of the military caste and the 
military-industrial 
complex.

· We repudiate the abuse of workers and "individuals of Caucasian
nationality" on the part of the forces of "order" in Moscow and other big
cities in Russia during searches for documents and the ransacking of homes.
The perpetrators, instigators and accomplices of the terrorist attacks will
more probably be found among the oligarchs associated with the Yeltsin
"family" than in the railway stations, the collective housing or the
barracks of immigrant workers. No to the anti-democratic "registry" (5) of
travellers which abolishes the constitutional right of free movement!

· The security of the working people can only be guaranteed by the workers
themselves! We actively support the formation of committees of self-defence
and popular militias in apartment blocks and housing districts.

· On the other hand we repudiate the objectively provocative actions of
"commandants" Basaev and Al Jattab. Their armed invasion of Dagestan against
the express wishes of the vast majority of Dagestani workers and their
association with many acts of kidnapping and other acts against the Russian
masses distances them from the international working class. What is more, by
doing this, they betray the struggle of the Chechen people themselves for
their independence, also isolating their Caucasian brothers and sisters and
giving the Putin government a facile excuse for proclaiming to the whole
world that "Russia is under attack by international terrorism".

Moscow  -  November 7th 1999

****************************
Notes:
 1  Ichkeria is the name of the state (known in the west as Chechnya) which
the Chechens themselves gave their republic after the victory of 1995.
 2  The bomb attacks in Moscow and other cities, which left more than 300
people dead and hundreds wounded, were blamed on the Chechens. But they were
soon followed by a number of scandalous mutual accusations between different
power groups in Moscow and the Federation which incriminated the Russian
secret services. The commission of investigation has still not produced any
convincing results which would permit the conclusion that the attacks were
organized by the Chechen guerrillas. This version, however, is still
engraved in the minds of part of public opinion.

 3  At the CBK factory, 18 workers were wounded by bullets and dozens of
others suffered bruising and wounds from clubbings and stun gases. The
workers dislodged the anti-mutineers, and have kept the factory under their
own control for two years now. They are fighting for the annulment of the
fraudulent privatization of the company to an "English" firm, registered in
Cyprus, and are demanding its renationalization.

 4  NATO presented Georgia with a dozen Apache helicopters, sent instructors
and are including Georgia in joint military exercises. The recent visit by
Pope John Paul II to Tbilisi (the capital) shows that the political-military
plans for the zone are accelerating.

 5  The "registry" is a measure originating in the "prapiska" (internal
passport in which changes of residence or lengthy trips had to be recorded)
of the Soviet period. Now on arrival in Moscow the traveller living in
another city must register with the authorities in less than 72 hours. If
papers are demanded in the street and there is no record of the change
within the interval mentioned, the traveller is put on the next train or
plane from the city (at his or her own expense) or detained.