Comrades,
Viktor Kotel'nikov of the Samara Strike Committee sent me today a
copy your letter and asked to "put things straight" by
responding to it. This is what I am going to do in this late
hour.
I am not going to respond to the ICL letter as such. I hope that
the absurdity of their insuniations will become clear from what
follows.
I must stay beforehand that I do not belong to any party or
political; organization of any kind. My relations with the Samara
stachkom are of purely informal nature.
They began year ago when I received a message from Russia that
two leaders of the three-month long industrial action in the city
of Samara were arrested and needed help. I posted this
information on the mailing list (marxism-general) and proposed to
its subscribers to send a collective letter to Samara authorities
demanding the release of these men. Their names were Grigory
Isayev and Viktor Kotel'nikov. Eight or ten people joined me and
we sent a letter to Samara.
Soon I received a letter from Isayev who thanked us for support
and told that he and Kotel'nikov were freed under the pressure of
Samara workers. And he told me something else. Their stachkom now
had email.
This was a stroke of luck whose significance I did not realize
fully until now. For it was not only the first Russian genuinely
proletarian organization--Isayev and Kotel'nikov are cadre
industrial workers from the machine-building plant--who could now
speak to the world directly, it was also the most politically
advanced organization of Russian workers, with a long history of
struggle and a high level
of theoretical awareness.
The guiding force behind the Strike Committee was the Party of
Proletarian Dictatorship (Partiia Diktatury Proletarita) whose
roots went back to the early 1970s when a group of Samara workers
formed, in deep underground, a political organization to bring
their class to power once again. Their leader and main
theoretician was A.B. Razlatsky who were convinced that the
capitalist restoration in the USSR
was close and that the working had little time to prepare for
that hour when, what he called, the "Administration,"
the ruling class of the country would make the final step and
finish off the social-economical foundations of the October
Revolution.
Already in the 1970s the group was able to organize shop-floor
strikes and influence the mass of workers in the struggle for
better work conditions. Eventually and despite of their
sophisticated conspiratorial methods , the KGB discovered the
organization. Razlatsky and Isayev were arrested and sentenced to
labor camps. Their were set free during Gorbachev's perestroika
and immediately resumed their political work,
expanding and strengthening their class base in Samara's
industrial enterprises.
Soon after his liberation from the camp Razlatsky died but the
struggle continued. In the winter of 1998--during the strike
which began in the plant where Isayev and Kotel'nikov worked and
which included the blockede of the downtown, the occupation of
the plant and the lock out of its entire administration--there
was formed the city strike committee of Samara, with Isayev and
Kotel'nikov as its chairman and vice-chairman respectively. The
Committee represents eight biggest industrial enterprises of the
city.
Soon after the end of the strike, there began the so-called
"rail war" of the spring of 1998. While miners of
Kuzbass, Vorkuta and Tula were cutting the main railway artheries
in the east, north and south of Russia they sent a delegation of
miners to Moscow to picket indefinitely the goverment demanding
its and the president's resignation. They occupied the Gorbaty
Bridge in the heart of now fashionable Krasnaya Presnya district
where in 1905 red workers fought the Cossacks with revolvers and
bricks. But this time they were led not by the Bolsheviks but the
pro-capitalist leadership of the Independent Miners' Union (IMU).
This is when the PPD in Samara decided to send Isayev and
Kotel'nikov to the Gorbaty Bridge and to inject into the picket a
bit of the spirit of 1905. They went and stayed their for four
months, sleeping in their tent under the banners: "All Power
To Strike Committees! " and "All Bosses Are
Bastards!" During that period, they took active part in a
number strikes in and around Moscow and tried to highten the
political consciousness of the picket and the numerous workers'
delegations whio came to support it from all over Russia.
Eventually they succeded in pursuading the miners and their
leaders to form the All-Russian Strike Committee. Isayev became
its vice-chairman. The chairman was the head of the IMU, A.
Sergeev. Soon after he made a deal with the government and lifted
the picket, leaving on the bridge only a dozen or so militant
workers who refused to give up. They were led by Isayev and
Kotel'nikov. The next night Luzkov's riot police armed with
machine guns surrounded their camp, seized the workers, and
deported them from Moscow.
Three months later the Samara people took most active part in the
First Congress of Strike Committees held in the Urals. At the end
of the congress they were asked to organize the second and, this
time, an independent one. As a matter of fact, the first congress
was almost stifled by the communist movement who helped to
organize it: the workers tried to do this on their own but
failed. They had neither money nor "connections."
Communists did. In a letter which I plan to translate and publish
shortly, Isayev describes how the representatives of communist
parties were brought to the congress by bus, train, and plane
loads and outnumbered those of strike committees; how unanimously
they voted down any resolution intendeed to radicalize and
organize the movement of strike committees--those same communists
who otherwise have been getting at each other's throats for the
last ten years.
This is how the idea of an appeal to the international working
class was born. In March the stachkom informed me that many
delegates could not come because they did not have money even for
a one-way ticket and that there was no way that the congress
could convene at the original date. They needed money for other
things as well, of course, but above all for transportation for
on this depended the political composition of their congress. You
bet, it were the most militant committees who were also the
poorest.
The stachkom asked me to help raising money for the congress
abroad. The Internet was the only medium to do this. But we
quickly discovered one problem: How to transfer money to Samara?
Given the expected average amount of donations ($10-20)--after
all it was an appeal to the international working, not banking,
class--the cost of available methods of transfer was prohibitive.
Who would pay $18 for a wire transfer of $20? The solution was to
find people abroad who would serve as collectors of individual
donations so that they could be transfered to Samara in lump sums
thus saving in transfer costs. They gave me several names of
people who they believed could be willing to help them in this
way. I wrote them a letter with this request. Only one answered
yes. Bob Malecki who was another marxism-general old-timer who
signed the letter of protest against the arrest of Isayev and
Kotel'nikov. This is how Bob and I became the stachkom's
"representatives" abroad.
Well, this is all. There are, of course, many more things to tell
about the Samara stachkom, the congress, and the struggle in
Russia. Stachkom will try to do its best to provide as full and
as objective information about the congress as possible. Today
one of their supporters abroad arranged for them a year-long
unlimited access to the Internet. But there remains another
technical problem. I am presently the only one who helps stachkom
with translation between Russian and English. My abilities and
time to do this are limited. Stachkom needs more people able to
help it in this regard. Stachkom fully understands its
responsibility before Russian proletariat to use its Internet
access for providing the international working class with
truthful information about the struggle in Russia. Beside the
bi-lingual web page, stachkom has set two mailing lists: stachkom@onelist.com (in English) and stachkomru@onelist.com
(in Russian).
To subscribe, send a blank message to
stachkom-subscribe@onelist.com
stachkomru-subscribe@onelist.com
Good night, comrades,
Vladimir Bilenkin
Raleigh, USA
PS. I will send a copy of this letter with those of the ISWoR and
ICL to the
stachkom
with the request to publish them on their web page (section: The
letters).
Antek5@aol.com wrote:
From - International Solidarity with Workers in Russia - ISWoR
8th April 1999.
Three e-mails are below. First is the ISWoR response to Ikcelam.
Second is Ikcelam's message. Third is the original message IN
FULL from the Samara Strike Committee.
Dear comrades all, On 5th April, a message was widely distributed
on the international left, see below, condemning the sectarian
behaviour of the ICL, the international Spartacist organisation
and some of their friends. ISWoR, independent of all the comrades
concerned, has investigated the two web sites in question and
come to the conclusions that:
A. The second All Russia Congress of Committee-s is an event of
considerable importance both to the Russian working class and
internationally. It must be supported fully and absolutely. ISWoR
will be collecting donations from our supporters and members and
sending as much as we can to the Samara strikers to organise
their All Russia Congress. We urge all comrades and groups to
send money by whichever way they feel confident. Any and all
attempts to set up similar bodies must be supported.
B. It is clear that the ICL have been involved supporting Samara
workers for some time and are heavily supporting this initiative.
This work is only to be commended. Well done comrades!
C. Ikcelam, the author of the post, obviously does not like ICL
politics or the organisation. We have yet to get a response from
the Samara strikers on his allegations, and we do not know
whether Vladimir Bilenkin is even a member or close to the ICL.
That our left-wing movement in general is sectarian, and not just
the ICL, does not mean we should simply condemn those who make
typical sectarian mistakes - and that is all this is here. ISWoR
did not find any evidence that one penny of this money is going
astray - nor do we think it is.
D. The Samara web site in English does look like an ICL front.
This can easily be corrected but not by removing the pro-ICL
links - this would be sectarian jealousy and give weapons to
right-wing witch-hunters - but by the rest of the left getting
involved, giving practical support, and earning the right to get
their organisation linked on the Samara strikers web site - just
as the ICL and their friends have done! It would be good also for
the Samara web site to put in links and information about other
struggles in Russia - such as the Yasnogorsk/Tula Strikers for
whom ISWoR has been raising solidarity internationally.
E. Friendly advice to the ICL would be to follow the example of
dozens of activists who are members of a wide range of left
political parties or none at all, but despite these differences,
work together in ISWoR. We are a new international body with
supporters in 15 countries already. We are united around four
simple principles of building international solidarity for
workers in Russia, opposing racism and fascism there and opposing
the IMF-Yeltsinite exploitation that has destroyed the economy.
We know the ICL support these principles too. Therefore we would
urge them, and all other comrades of all other groups to work
together in supporting the Samara strikers and all progressive
workers organisations in Russia. This method can achieve maximum
solidarity internationally which is so important in these times.
Lisa Taylor - for ISWoR Interim International Committee
Subj: Re - Spartacists & All Russia Congress of Strike
Committees
Date: 05/04/99 21:26:40 GMT
From: Ikcelam
To: marxist-worker@egroups.com
To: marxism-thaxis@buo319b.econ.utah.edu
CC: owner-sfb-l@tao.ca, john.mcmahon@powells.com
CC: dwalters@pop.igc.apc.org (David Walters)
CC: charli.barbara@btinternet.com (Charli)
CC: owner-fi-press-l@mail.comlink.apc.org
CC: healyite@hotmail.com, anvil@quik.com
CC: freedomroad@igc.org, wwpub!GREGB@uunet.uu.net
CC: visionry@interaccess.com
CC: mluziett@shrike.depaul.edu, DavidMcR
CC: sporegon@igc.apc.org
CC: socappeal@mail.easynet.co.uk, tburghardt@igc.org
CC: chris_brady@earthling.net
CC: theredguard@hotmail.com, bidom@igc.org
CC: redbadtz@hotmail.com
CC: rosetree@popmail.mcs.net (lew)
CC: permath@ifi.ntnu.no, socialistliberty@egroups.com
CC: mccannclan@igc.org, chrisz@bruderhof.com
CC: cofc@igc.org, ryans@freenet.msp.mn.us
CC: lunacharski@email.msn.com (edmond caldwell)
CC: jschaffner@labornet.org, hgautschi@yahoo.com
CC: rayala@bruderhof.com, nicole.gray@powells.com
CC: benn@idirect.com , scott_ana@4cs.net
CC: cfc@igc.apc.org , cstober@bruderhof.com
CC: mluziett@hawk.depaul.edu
CC: ecunning@chat.carleton.ca , fightbak@netaxs.com
CC: GerDowning, jhurd@bloomington.in.us ,
LewDaly
CC: lrpnyc@earthlink.net , DAVIDRAIL, guym@ptw.com
CC: fspnatl@igc.apc.org , Awaskow, esr@open.org
CC: csanders@paonline.com , universalist@hotmail.com
CC: FranScud@compuserve.com , kingja@earlham.edu
CC: achis@igc.apc.org , mconnor@reed.edu
CC: giltapia@igc.apc.org , niilosoc@mosquitonet.com
CC: numbersoup@earthworld.com ,
PerrySandy, Winterjohn
CC: revcenter@hotmail.com , chris@noc.org
CC: wrl@igc.apc.org , theorganizer@igc.org
CC: marcelh@portal.ca , SZVU16A@prodigy.com
CC: paul.addis@powells.com , james.roberts@powells.com
CC: mark@mhark.demon.co.uk , tom@queernet.org
CC: johnp@peg.apc.org (John Percy)
CC: sandyruss@earthlink.net , freedomsoc@igc.apc.org
CC: nandl@igc.apc.org , awald@umich.edu ort.com
Subj: Spartacist & All Russia Congress of Strike Committees
Date: 05/04/99
To: stachkom@mail.com
To the Samara Strike Committee
To the All Russian Congress of Strike Committees
Dear Grigory Isayev,
Dear Viktor Alekseevich Kotel'nikov,
The Samara Strike Committee has made an international Appeal in
English (see it in full below) for funds to help finance an All
Russia Congress of Strike Committee-s on 17th April this year.
This is a very important initiative that must be supported. But
from the point of view of the international working class giving
solidarity and funds, there are some big question marks. The
whole Appeal (in the English version) appears to be a front
organisation for the Spartacists (International Communist
League).
The Sparts are small international sectarian grouping that rarely
collaborates with other political tendencies and who are regarded
as a pariah by most other Marxist tendencies internationally. I
suspect strongly that the Samara Strike Committee is not aware of
this. This will do them great harm when it comes to international
support.
FIRSTLY the Samara strikers web site in English has direct links
to only two other web sites: The Homepage of John Clements
(French Spartacist web site); and that of Bob Malecki in Sweden
(another Spartacist politically). This leads directly to the
Sparts international web site.
SECONDLY, on the Samara Appeal there is an appeal for the money
to be sent to "international representatives", Bob
Malecki (Spartoid in Sweden) to cover Europe; and Bilenkin -
another Spart I believe - to cover the USA; and lastly by Swift
(money transfer) direct to the Samara Strike Committee.
THIRDLY, both Malecki and Bilenkin have distributed this Appeal
widely and internationally by e-mail (and obviously in different
languages and in the Sparts own press) - but having first REMOVED
the request for money to go direct to the Samara Strike Fund, at
the end of the e-mail (see original below the double dotted
lines). On Malecki-s web site, you will find it removed also. So
it seems the Sparts are directing all the money via themselves.
Also on Malecki-s web site there is an appeal for money for
himself personally, which differs in no respect whatsoever from
the appeal for the Samara Strike Committee. This is not an
accusation of theft, and we must give Malecki the benefit of the
doubt on this as it is an easy mistake to make. But it is bad
political judgment and organizational behavior.
I think the Spartacists should collaborate with others
internationally in supporting this All Russia Strike Committee
Conference. There needs to be a constant campaign against
sectarianism and abuse and misuse of connections with workers in
struggle.
Yours for honesty, Ikcelam Brown
THE ORIGINAL APPEAL
To the International Working Class
The Samara Strike Committee--the host of the Second All-Russian
Congress of Strike Committees--had to postpone the beginning of
the congress from March 28 to April 17 due to the lack of money
to transport the delegates of the congress to the city of Samara
(the Volga river).
The coffers of our most militant working class organizations are
empty. Our workers cannot fill them. They do not get paid their
wages. Their families starve. Yet without some minimal financial
resources the desperately needed higher level of class
organization cannot be reached. This is why we, the organizers of
the congress, have no choice but to appeal to the international
working class, its organizations and all progressive people
around the world to help us in making this event happen.
Why do we need this congress now?
We need it because all illusions that the anti-capitalist working
class movement in our country can be organized from the outside,
by the existing communist parties have been proven to be nothing
but illusions.
We can now clearly see that the organized communist movement
("komdvizhenie") formed and led by the remnants of the
former CPSU has broken with Marxism, with the ideas and ideals of
communism , has broken with the working class and has become
either the agent of the nationalist bourgeoisie and the
state-capitalist bureaucracy or has ossified into sectarian,
self-centered formations--politically sterile and hopelessly
removed from the actual struggles of Russian proletariat.
The accelerated disintegration and decay of the communist parties
in our country has been accompanied by the profound weakening of
the physical and moral strength of the working class under the
terrible blows of the cannibalistic regime of capitalist
restoration who now denies to us even the means of bare
subsistence, of mere reproduction of our physical capacities to
work, which even the slaveholders of the past did not deny to
their slaves. We have been driven millennia back to the
conditions of primitive want, of pure, unmitigated barbarism.
But the modern barbarism of the bourgeois society breeds fascism.
The self-appointed "saviors" of workers and the nation
are already marching in the streets of Moscow and other cities
brandishing swastikas under the slogans "Russia for
Russians!" and "Russians Are Supermen!" And they
are not alone. They find sympathizers among the members of the
monstrous apparatus of repression created by Yeltsin's regime to
defend those who stole from us our factories, among broad
sections of the petty bourgeoisie, among many intellectuals, and,
yes, even among not a few workers, demoralized by the abysmal
conditions of their existence.
We now stand alone against the barbarism of 'liberal' capitalism
and the rising barbarism of its fascist twin. We now know that no
savior will come to our help. We must save ourselves. We must
save society. We must save the country. We can do this only by
making it OUR society, OUR country, OUR dictatorship--the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
This is why we need this congress, the congress of strike
committees who have already proven their will to fight in the
battles of the rail war in the spring of 1998, in the occupation
of enterprises, in establishing the de-facto power of the
workers' soviets in a number of towns across Russia. This is why
we believe that we have the right and the duty to ask the
international proletariat to help us now.
All Power To Strike Committees!
Workers of All Countries, Unite!
Donations can be sent
1) by wire to Viktor Alekseevich Kotel'nikov. 443086, Russia,
Samara, ul.
Novo-Sadovaya 179, bunker
2) by money order or check to our international representatives
In Europe:
Robert Malecki
Ekenstamsvagen 7
915 32 Robertsfors
Sweden
Email: malecki@algonet.se
In USA ($US only):
Vladimir Bilenkin
P.O. Box 5192
Raleigh, NC, 27650-5192
USA
Email: rosskommuna@geocities.com
Grigory Isayev, Vice-Chairman of the All-Russian Strike Committee
Victor Kotel'nikov, Vice-Chairman of the Samara Strike Committee
E-mail: stachkom@mail.com
Web page: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Senate/7871/
443086, Russia, Samara, ul. Novo-Sadovaya 179, bunker
Tel/fax: (846-2) 352691, 353262.
-----------------------------------
-----------------------------------
You can also transfer money directly to our bank account via
SWIFT.
Unfortunately,
this method is costly: a flat $30US fee per one transfer. CLICK
HERE to see
the list of intermediary banks in different countries which will
transfer
funds via SWIFT to
THE SAVINGS BANK OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
SWIFT CODE: SABRUMM
in favor of
acc. # 30301840700000605400
SAVINGS BANK OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION (SAMARA OFFICE)
SWIFT CODE: SABRRUMMSE1
Sovetskye OSB 6994
Beneficiary's account: 4230184035443040010301
Beneficiary: Viktor Alekseevich Kotel'nikov
Purpose: voluntary gratuitous donation
The Unity of Labour is the Hope of the World.
Marko, Yugoslavia
The United Front is a combat organization for struggle and not a front organization for bureaucrats in the Russian CP who's politics hardly have anything to do with defending the interests of either Russian workers or the workers in the former Yugoslavia.
sorry - no spare money for donations as times are tough and here we are in the middle of our biggest election campaign since the formation of our organisation.
do you have an international?
good luck with the strike committee - all power to the people!
yours in solidarity,
Jo, a party officer, Scotland
Дата: 3 апреля 1999 г. 21:57
Тема: FWD: From Samara Strike Committee
Samara Strike Committee,
I would really like to make a contribution to your proposal for a congress of all the delegates from the militant unions across Russia. I too feel that political parties are bankrupt by the fact that the politicians are a class of their own with opposing interests to that of working class people. Also I see fascism as an attempt by the elites to distract attention away from constructive class struggle, towards the self defeating nature of the poor fighting the poor. However I'm concerned about your phrase "..dictatorship of the proletariat". Do you wish for another Lenin to lead you towards a just society?? Surely by now you're aware that they'll lead half of you into graves or into their wars, and the other half back to the factories as their wage slaves.
Mario, a Wobbly, USA
Дата: 4 апреля 1999 г. 1:54
Тема: RE: From Samara Strike Committee to the
International Working Class
Hello, I will publish your letter, will you
please fill in the entry form with your information. cheers
Dai, labor activist, UK
Дата: 4 апреля 1999 г. 2:03
Dear comrades in SAMARA STRIKE COMMITTEE:
We received your message , we feel your situation and the hard struggle which you are holding against capitalist system.
we are supporting you in any possible way.
Here, I would like to inform you that I sent your message to the central committee of our party, and soon you will be informed about what we can do for you.please be in contact.
Note: I have translate your appeal to Arabic language and I will try to send it to other worker class organization.
yours
Amin, a communist from a Near-East country
Дата: 4 апреля 1999 г. 2:37
Тема: Re: From Samara Strike Committee to the
International Working Class
Thanks Grigory, . . . we will translate and publish it in LabourNet immediatedly. With deepest solidarity for your struggle, Karl, Vienna