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               We've got an attitude! -Bad Brains
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         NEWS & VIEWS FROM (THE FORMER) SOVIETSKY SOYUZ

 No.3                                              February 1995
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        Jahrbucher fur Psychoanalitik und Psychopatalogik
                 der Russischer Radikalbewegungs
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                       GENERAL COMPLAINTS
                                
   Greetings from the weak link of the worldwide revolutionary
                           resistance!

In spite  of the  word 'news' in the name of this bulletin it has
always  been   views  that   dominated  it.  Just  as  any  other
publication from  the former  USSR, ours is very opinionated, not
to say  sectarian (we  haven't got  a sect).  Since, due  to  our
irregularity, we  fail to  deliver news  that doesn't  stink,  we
always make reviewing some tendencies in the anarchist scene here
our main preoccupation. This time too, we offer you the following
general complaints. (Well, there will be some news and events.)

The period  since the  previous issue  of 'News  & Views' (August
1993) was  characterized by  the more  and more evident withering
away of the ideological federations (that is the Confederation of
Anarcho-Syndicalists (KAS)  and the  Federation of  Revolutionary
Anarchists (FRAN).A third federation,the Association of Anarchist
Movements (ADA)  never was  an ideological  federation and due to
its very  informal character just can't die, because it was never
actually so  much alive).  This fact however shouldn't bother you
so much,  since in  places where  there's enough will to continue
anarchist activities,  they are  still carried  on -  on  a  more
humane and  non-sectarian basis.  Unfortunately not everywhere it
is so  and anarchist  groups that  actually do  something can  be
counted by  numbers, plus, information exchange between different
groups is  in fact  falling apart due to the fact that almost all
the anarchist info-bulletins collapsed -the Petersburg-based "An-
Press" which  was published  by libertarian  capitalists  is  now
defunct while  its publishers  finally did  what they should have
done long ago - joined some liberal party. "KAS-Contact" that was
moved from  Moscow to  Tomsk 2  or 3 years ago finally collapsed,
too, and  was moved  to Irkutsk where it was being published very
irregularly due  to lack of actual information and activities and
technical  problems.   The  only   bulletin  that   carried  some
occasional news  that was buried under heaps of gossip was Moscow
IREAN's "Novy Nestor", that many people were forced to read since
there was  nothing else. (When I say the bulletin was filled with
gossip and not news, I present not my personal point of view, but
the position  of the  editors of  the bulletin, who from the very
beginning looked at it as a joke. It's very ironic that they were
delivering crap  ahead of  schedule (about  30 or  40 issues were
published since  the beginning  of the  last  year),  while  they
failed to publish their paper with the same regularity - although
the latter only served the interests of anarchism in Russia since
the paper  was filled  with RAF  communiques and salivating about
how IREAN loves them.)

      UKRANIAN ANARCHISTS RE-GROUP (WHAT ELSE CAN THEY DO?)

In September-October last year some Ukranian anarchists, tired of
sectarian fights  between KAS  and FRAN  and the  absence of  any
workable anarchist  network in  Ukraine itself, decided to launch
some kind  of an  all-Ukranian federation.  Although not  all the
Ukranian anarchist  groups participated  in  the  gathering,  the
organizers (the  Donetsk KAS  group) got  positive responses from
various groups  and activists from Lvov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov,
Nikolayev and  some smaller  towns. As  a result of discussion at
the conference  they decided  to put  an end to sectarian debates
(that were  mainly 'imported'  from Russia  anyway) and quit  all
the federations  they were part of - KAS, FRAN and ADA - and form
the Confederation  of Revolutionary  Anarcho-Syndicalists (KRAS).
(In  fact   the  Donetsk   KAS  group   proposed  to  create  the
Confederation of  Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists  with a more
traditional, IWA-type  program  at  the  last  KAS  gathering  in
Moscow, but this proposal was declined partly because of the lack
of substantial  reasoning behind  it and some rather bureaucratic
proposals for  how this  new federation  should be  run.) The new
all-Ukranian federation adopted a traditional anarcho-syndicalist
program modelled  on the  one of  the IWA.  The latter  seems  to
arouse a  lot of  comradely interest  for  KRAS,  although  their
position on  the possibilities  of affiliation  with the  IWA  is
different from  that of the "Friends of the IWA" in Moscow - KRAS
feels that the question of affiliation is still not on the agenda
and it  won't be  in 1996  (the planned  date  of  the  next  IWA
Congress) due  to the obvious weakness of anarcho-syndicalists in
the former  USSR and  the absence  of the  "critical mass"  for a
syndicalist union. And it's true - none of the syndicalist groups
in this country can be called a union, because of their miniscule
size.

Although the  anarchists of  Donetsk region  who were  the  motor
behind the  creation of  KRAS are  rather  optimistic  about  the
future of  this  organization,  they  obviously  will  face  some
serious problems  - like  the one  they had  last year  when  the
officials  warned   them  that   they  can't   be  an  "anarchist
federation" and  publish a paper of this "federation" since it is
not legally  registered with  the state. In case they will try to
violate this,  they were  promised to  be charged several hundred
dollars worth  of fines.  This was  one of  the reasons  why  the
second issue of their "Anarchy" paper wasn't published (the other
reason was  the primitive  stage of  capitalism  in  Ukraine  and
virtual inavalability  of accessible  printing  places).  Anyway,
Ukranian anarchists didn't abandon their desire to continue their
publication. So  far they  launched a  small internal  discussion
bulletin that  aims at creating a discussion about the activities
and principles of their organization.

   REVOLUTION OF THE SPECTACLE IN THE SOCIETY OF EVERYDAY LIFE

The lack  of appeal of 'radical' ideas and actions to the general
population forces 'radicals' to think of new ways to seek popular
support. The latest frenzy in the anarchist, communist and proto-
fascist circles  is the  concept of  being 'cool'  and presenting
your ideas  and activities in the most spectacular way. The first
to dive  into this  marketing  strategy  was  Edward  Limonov,  a
scandally-famous Russian  writer,  founder  of  the  spectacular-
extremist  National-Bolshevik   Party.  That  Limonov,  this  re-
incarnation of  Malcolm MacLaren, decided to gain some popularity
and money  on the scandals surrounding his 'political' activities
was quite  predictable. What  was hard  to predict was the recent
obsession of  pretty traditional  Young  Communists  (RKSM)  with
creating a new image of communism, which is to be marketed to the
youth.

I doubt  that they  would ever  have arrived  at such  a 'modern'
concept, had  they not  been surrounded by some 'anarchists', who
were in  fact the  main orchestrants  of this  frenzy. Already  a
while ago  some people  from IREAN  headed to  the Stalinist-lead
"Student Defence" "trade union", where some monarchists and other
miserable creatures  were also  involved. Anarchists  wrote  some
'cool' articles  for the  Young Communists'  paper  giving  these
bores some  brand new  ideas and  images -  some class  war, some
poorly-digested  feminism,  etc.  "Student  Defence"  managed  to
organize some  'cool'  protest  in  April  last  year  with  some
occasional  'anti-capitalist   actions',  which  were  afterwards
disproportionally blown  up  in  their  papers.  After  that  the
concept of  'spectacular revolution'  was given  final shape with
statements like  "to make  a revolution  today... it is enough to
film the moment of rebellion and make a videoclip".

On January  17, 1995  Young Communists  organized a  "theoretico-
practical conference on "New Revolutionary Communism", where they
talked a lot about the need for a new ideology. Also they spoke a
lot about the 'similarity' between the new left and new right and
the necessity  of acting  together on  some concrete  issues. The
reason for that was found in the 'numerous historical examples of
Communists acting  together with  {left} fascists'.  However, the
reasons for  such activities and their possible outcomes were not
analyzed at  all -  it seemed that analysis of any kind is out of
their reach. These tendencies were rather well articulated in the
papers of  IREAN, RKSM  and the National-Bolshevik Party recently
and thus  it became  possible for the Russian Section of the Last
International and  the Clandestine  Committee for the Eradication
of Professional Revolutionaries, Militants and their Sympathizers
to go to considerable lengths denouncing all these stupidities of
these  self-proclaimed   'radicals'.  The   communique  of  these
organisations called  "A Good  Cure for  Obsolete  Communism:  An
Appeal to  the Victims of the Theoretico-practical Conference..."
attacked the  superficial claims  about putting  the spectacle to
the service  of  revolution,  the  discovery  of  the  similarity
between the  new left  and the  new right  that we should somehow
'use'  and   the  general   stupidity  of   the   above-mentioned
tendencies.


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                            CHRONICLE
=================================================================

On December  7,  1994  about  a  dozen  anarchists  picketed  the
Indonesian embassy  in Moscow,  protesting against the continuing
occupation of  East Timor  and the  genocide of its population. A
couple of  articles about the tragedy of East Timor was published
in some (almost mainstream) paper, thus putting an end to the 20-
year-old silence  of Russian propaganda on this topic. Protesters
handed a  letter to  the ambassador.  Unfortunately this time the
Moscow office  of the  BHP (a  company extracting  oil from  East
Timor  in   spite  of   occupation  and  genocide  there)  wasn't
spraypainted and thrashed, but we'll sure do it next time.

Protests against  the war  in Chechnya sparked some life into the
anarchist scene in Moscow. Anarchists participated in most of the
demonstrations and pickets against the war. On December 12, which
saw the  biggest demonstration  against the war (several thousand
people, ranging  from Communists  to  liberals  and  the  Chechen
community of  Moscow), they  tried to  organize a small 'radical'
march  on   the  Defence   Ministry  together   with  some  young
Communists, Trots  and radical  liberals, but were stopped by the
police. Several  people were  arrested later  in the  evening. On
December 19  five  activists  of  radical  Democratic  Union  and
anarchists painted the Defence Ministry with anti-war slogans and
even 'bombed'  it with  fireworks. Some  of them were reported to
the police  and arrested, but the court set them free without any
fines. There  was also  some leafleting in Moscow metro (which is
now filled  with policemen  and military,  looking  for  "Chechen
terrorists"), with  a couple  of people  arrested and  fined, and
some spraypainting  around the  city. On  January 30  some Moscow
anarchists and  radical liberals  from the  Democratic Union (DS)
spraypainted 13 military call-up stations with anti-war and anti-
imperialist slogans.  They are  also planning  an active campaign
against the military call-up this spring.

In Nizhny  Novgorod (former  Gorky)  the  local  Anarchist  Club,
Rainbow Keepers  and the  local Green  Party launched  a campaign
against the  military institutions and the war in Chechnya. Local
call-up stations  were spraypainted  with  slogans  like  "Russia
shouldn't be a gendarme!", "Turn your arms against those who send
you to  kill!" and  "Here are  the headquarters  of  the  fascist
army". This happened after the local authorities remained deaf to
the demands  of protesters  who were organizing pickets. Well, if
they still  will be  deaf, anarchists promised to go further than
words.

Khabarovsk in  the Far  East is  also bubbling  - some anarchists
make a  radio show  "While Mommy Watches Santa-Barbara", bringing
some  music   and  attitude   to  a  young  audience.  Khabarovsk
anarchists also  launched a  campaign  against  bus  controllers,
agitating for  going without  paying, collective  obstructing  of
controllers and  damaging some bus equipment. This campaign is an
answer to another increase in the cost of public transport. Among
the  other   activities  of   these  joyful  Far  Easterners  are
continuing  attempts   to  organize  a  rock  club  and  a  'free
university'  (regular   seminars  and  discussions  on  different
topics).

In Tver,  a city located in the middle of the road between Moscow
and St.Petersburg,  anarchists participate  in a campaign against
the construction  of a  superhighway between  the  two  capitals.
Construction of  the superhighway,  that will have a deep base is
likely to  destroy the  natural underground  water system  of the
region.

On February  11 activists  from various anarchist, ecological and
radical liberal  groups held  a discussion in Moscow. Originally,
the  topic  of  the  discussion  was  rather  broad  -  from  the
traditional ways  of organizing  in this  country (and  why  they
can't help  us  achieve  anything)  to  the  role  of  family  in
undermining broader  communities to  what we  can do this spring.
However, people who have gathered for the discussion preferred to
discuss how  it happened  that  radicalism  lost  even  the  tiny
grounds that  it had  in the  emerging social  movements  of  the
perestroika era  (this discussion  has been  around  for  several
years already), but didn't pay attention to what was really wrong
with the  existing forms of organizing (i.e. ideological groups).
Anyway, since recently we witnessed the creation of some down-to-
earth groups oriented on specific issues (mainly ecological), the
radical movement  is moving  in the  right direction. It's a pity
that this  is done in some unconscious fashion. As the discussion
proceeded, issues  of cooperation  between different  groups were
discussed, namely around the anti-war and anti-draft campaign. It
was more  or less agreed to hold regular meetings and stop inter-
personal and  inter-group infights that were going on for several
years. The  groups that  decided to  participate  in  the  future
meetings included  the Confederation of Anarcho-syndicalists, the
Group of  Radical Anarcho-syndicalists  (GRAS),  Rainbow  Keepers
(anarcho-ecological group), "A" Cultural Centre, "Cherepovets-95"
ecological group,the  Democratic Union  (radical  liberals),  The
Emma Goldman  Dancing Brigade  and some  other activists that are
active in  other groups.  (All of these groups are rather or very
tiny.)

-----------------------------------------------------------------
               DON'T EAT YOUR REVOLUTION! MAKE IT!

On November  7 all the Stalinists gathered on Oktyabrskaya Square
in Moscow  under the still-standing huge Lenin. Later they headed
to   Red Square, followed by some small groups of Trotskyists and
even some  anarchists who  successfully created  an illusion that
"young people"  were with  them. While  the latters'  red-n-black
banners and  dull  papers  were  surely  unable  to  destroy  the
traditional way  of celebrating  the October  revolution day, the
assault came  from where nobody expected it. As the demonstrators
were going  down their  route they  inevitably confronted a small
group of some vocal revolutionaries who were standing on the side
of the  road under  the banner  of 'primitive communism' (made of
fake red  fur) who were fearlessly banging their big drum. As the
crowd passed  by them  and tried  to find out what they wanted to
say, the  atmosphere was getting more and more tense. "The Blind"
(that is the name of an artistic group) announced that people who
gathered at the demo had nothing to do with revolution, that they
'ate' their  revolution and  shitted it  out, that the only thing
they can  do is  ask the  government for more money. Their poster
announced "Proletarians  of all lands, enough eating!" Instead of
asking the  government for  money, The Blind announced, we should
make another  revolution and  realise  the  real  -  primitive  -
communism. We  should care less about material things and instead
turn our attention to people around us. After the demo passed and
the  shouts  "They  are  Jews,  Zionists!  Go  back  to  Israel!"
addressed  to  The  Blind  finally  dissolved  in  the  air,  the
'primitive communists'  headed back  home  and  were  stopped  by
police, who  asked for  their IDs.  In spite  of that, the affair
ended peacefully.
                                
                          STRANGE FRUIT

On September  5 some  Moscow anarchists  and punks were trying to
defend their  'property rights'  to a  basement that was for some
time used as a non-commercial club named first after the infamous
sell-out Jerry  Rubin and later after Ho Chi Min (due to the fact
that the  club was situated not far from a square named after him
and a  surreal monument to Ho). On  New Year's Eve anarchists had
a rather  nice party there after which the club finally moved out
- into  nowhere. Since  both the  Jerry Rubin/Ho Chi Min Club and
the "A"  Club which  was run  by anarchists  were homeless,  they
decided to  join their  forces. There are some reasons to believe
that this union will bring about not only a cheap club where kids
can hang  out, but  some constant  place for radical meetings and
activities. So  far we  found a basement that was given to us and
now we  are looking  forward to  cleaning it  up and using it for
meetings and some kind of infoshop and anarchist library.

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                 THE ABC OF LIBERTARIAN LENINISM
                     (this will be a comix)

Characters:
Male announcer - a hero of some
comix, more or less like a Superman

Comrade Lenin - the leader of
proletarian revolution, founder
of Leninism

Male announcer:  Contrary to  what is  usually believed, Leninism
too has   strong  libertarian potential. Unfortunately anarchists
tend   to disregard  it while  they point  out that  only on  one
occasion Lenin  supposedly 'stole'  their  ideas  when  he  wrote
"State and  Revolution". If  we dig  a  little  deeper,  we  will
discover the  unknown terrain of Leninism which is highlighted by
aphorisms, not  less poetic  than those  of Bakunin, Marx and the
situationists. Please, comrade Lenin, give us just one example.

Comrade Lenin (sitting on a chair, his arms on his knees, seems a
little depressed, announces in mechanic voice): You can't live in
society and be free from society.

Male announcer:  Brilliant, don't  you think? For years and years
philisters exploited  just one  of the  numerous creative methods
appropriated by  Marx  from  Hegel,  namely  Marxist  dialectical
double-speak. Here  we find  another creative tool for building a
critical social  theory, the  one that  can  be  called  critical
reductionism. Let  us now  take the  same phrase,  but this  time
without the last word. Please, comrade Lenin!

Comrade Lenin: You can't live in society and be free...

Male announcer:  Terrific! But  we still haven't seen the rest of
the method.  Let's take  out some  more  words.  Please,  comrade
Lenin!

Comrade Lenin: You can't live in society and be...

Male announcer:  Fantastic! Do  you understand  now what  a great
potential libertarians  missed when  they claimed  Leninism to be
inherently authoritarian?  Contrary to  this narrow opinion it is
as critical as, say, young Marx... Let's see, what will happen if
we take out some more.

Comrade Lenin:  You can't  live in  society... You  can't live...
(Clenching  his  fists,  angrily.)  You  can't,  you  can't,  you
can't!!!

Male announcer: Assistant, please! Can you take comrade Lenin and
provide him  with another  dose of  morphine?  His  authoritarian
syndrome is back, we need to calm him down!..

=================================================================
       some @narchist e-mail contacts in the former USSR:

cube@glas.apc.org :
a little  cell of  cyberspace occupied  by Laure Akai and Mikhail
Tsovma. The  name comes from Cube Press, a project that they hope
to lift  off  the  ground  sometime.  So  far  one  pamphlet  was
published -  on Bakunin's  philosophy and  social ideas. The plan
for 1995  includes Daniel Guerin's "Anarchism", George Bradford's
"Triumph of  Capital", Fredy  Perlman's "The Continuing Appeal of
Nationalism" and  probably a small anthology which we so far plan
to name  "Mickey Mouse,  Fuck Off!  An introduction  to  critical
theory" (it  will contain  some articles from "Anarchy: A Journal
of Desire Armed", some Bob Black, Fredy Perlman, etc.)

tretyput@glas.apc.org :
"Trety Put"  (Third Way)  anarcho-ecological magazine  edited  by
Sergei Fomichov,  part of the rather loose network called Rainbow
Keepers that  is organizing  some ecological campaigns every year
since late 80's

ecodefense@glas.apc.org :
Vladimir Slivyak in Kaliningrad/Konigsberg on Baltic Sea, also an
anarcho-ecologist

nadia@glas.apc.org :
Nadezhda Shevchenko from Kiev, Ukraine, anarcho-ecologist

volga@glas.apc.org :
Olga Pitsunova, anarcho-ecologist in Saratov

rk@glas.apc.org :
Moscow group of Rainbow Keepers, still in the process of building
their technical  base, that's  why you  might not get response if
you write to them

Also available  for GlasNet (Russian APC network) is a conference
glas.radical. We  intend to  keep it  mainly Russian-language and
thus it  is not  networked to  other APC networks (there's also a
problem with transfering/decoding cyrillic letters.

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COMING SOON:
In the  next issue  of News&Views  I hope  to give some materials
about:
- anarcho-ecological  groups in Russia and their activities, both
in the  recent years  and the  ones that  they plan  for the next
summer
- the  activities and the current state of syndicalists groups in
projects
-  "the   wonderful  world   of  ZAIBI",   THE  most  interesting
(anti)music (anti)group and some of its ideas
=================================================================
Contact us:
via e-mail:             cube@glas.apc.org
via regular mail:       POB 500, 107061 Moscow, Russia

                   Compiled by Mikhail Tsovma.
          Long live the ANC (Absolutely No Copyright)!

Materials published above reflect only the personal opinion(s) of
   the author(s), but this doesn't mean they should be treated
  differently from the positions of the so-called federations.
=================================================================
 If I can't be a graphomaniac once a year, I'm not part of your
revolution! (Sorry for all the non-existent English words that I
                    put into this bulletin.)


