Today's Topics:
1. France, Alternative Libertaire AL #280 - Comic Strip:
Demonstrates (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
2. ucl-saguenay: We are responding to the call made by several
American groups to an international day of action, Saturday,
March 24, for the rojava and defence of afrin por Collectif Emma
Goldman (fr) (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
3. France, Alternative Libertaire AL - Strike ! No strike !
Strike ! Who do they take us for? (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
4. black rose fed: MARIELLE FRANCO, PRESENTE! - POLITICAL
MURDER AND STATE TERRORISM IN BRAZIL (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
5. Greece, APO Call for CONCENTRATION AT THE AEGEAN COURT and
report about the action (gr) [machine translation]
(a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
6. US, black rose fed - REVIEW OF ANARCHIST ENCOUNTERS: RUSSIA
IN REVOLUTION AND THE EXPERIMENT: GEORGIA'S
FORGOTTEN REVOLUTION,
1918-1921 (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
7. Britain, afed: MARCH 18 - ACT IN SOLIDARITY WITH RUSSIAN
ANARCHISTS! (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Mathieu Colloghan is a draftsman (he also paints) accustomed to militant publications.
There are countless stickers, articles, illustrated brochures of his characters who fight,
denounce or criticize. With humor and more, which does not spoil anything. He publishes
today his first graphic novel: Manif, Editions Adespote. ---- We meet three friends in a
Paris demonstration. Presumably not one of the most successful. One of those that
resembles a weekend ritual, but you have to do it, and that you like to do it anyway
because you find yourself there to exchange, discuss, sometimes argue, but always beat the
pavement at the same pace. This is the case of these three friends who will try to share
with us, as we promise on the back cover, " political commitment as we have never told
you: at the height of man ."
Initially they seem to get bored dry. Then, to deceive the boredom, they talk for a long
time each and sometimes all at once. And the device, far from tired, starts to work, case
after case. We listen to them (finally we read them and we watch them) to remember their
parades, their habits - and their diet - of protesters. The incredible processions of May
1 st . Those also where the anger remains intact just to remember. In 1996, the
sans-papiers of Saint-Bernard are expelled, " with humanity and heart " it seems. More
than twenty years later, the pages that give us Colloghan on the wild event that ensues
revive both the disgust of the activists that day and their rage and dignity.
But Mathieu's graphic novel is not limited to Paris - and the rain that stalks our
characters and ends up forcing them to retreat to a bar between Repu 'and Nation. For
those who have not known it, it is the occasion to have a glimpse of what could represent
the cycle of altermondialist protest opened in Seattle in 1999. The evocation of the
social forums of Porto Alegre (2002) and Nairobi (2007), it is here that the irruption of
disputes, sometimes upsetting the stilted norm of these great demonstrations and / or
questioning within them the mechanisms of persistent domination.
Because even if the humor is still present the book does not address less serious
questions and always current, as when our three friends discuss the reports of the left to
the popular districts. In fact, the best is to read this comic because there are many
other things in it. Manif, by Mathieu Colloghan, Editions Adespote, to order in bookstore
" all together and all together ! ".
Theo Roumier (AL Orleans)
Matthieu Colloghan, In Manifesto, Editions Adespote, 2017, 19.90 euros.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Bande-dessinee-En-manif
------------------------------
Message: 2
We will do an action of solidarity and information in place of the citizen (downtown de)
from 11 pm on Saturday 24 March. This massacre cannot be silenced! ---- Bijî Kurdistan!
---- Afrîn: towards ethnic cleansing. ---- In blue: the Turkish army; in yellow: Kurdish
forces; in green: rebel groups; in red: the Syrian regime. The situation has worsened and
the vice has tightened in the last days. ---- For more than 50 days, the canton of Efrîne
has suffered the incessant attacks of criminals of the Turkish army. Erdogan's government
did everything in its power to bring down Afrîn. Drones, fighter planes, artillery,
armored vehicles, special forces, jihadist allies, etc. Turkey, the second largest armed
force in NATO, now controls 60% of the enclave where Afrîn is located. On March 9, the
strategic town of Jandaris, 17 km from Afrin, fell under the control of the Turkish army,
as did the Maydanki Dam, which supplies water to the city. According to an inhabitant of
Afrîn interviewed by the newspaper L'Orient-Le-Jour: "We have no water at all because of
that. For electricity, we depend on fuel oil, but who knows when the reserves will run
out? Internet and telephone communications are extremely reduced .
NATO member countries, including Canada, could prohibit Turkey, which is also a member of
this organization, from continuing its military aggression. But imperialism requires, the
great powers will not commit such a gesture. Afrîn is thus sacrificed on the altar of the
political and economic interests of countries such as Turkey, the United States and
Russia. Despite heroic resistance from Kurdish forces and their allies, the situation is
critical. The worst is to be feared for those who will be stuck in Afrîn. Already several
hundred civilians have been murdered by Turkish air raids and many people live in the
anguish of ethnic cleansing. Erdogan has repeatedly stated that he wants to eradicate the
Kurds at his border,
For the moment, Afrîn is not completely encircled, but the last access to leave is the
target of violent bombing. Civilians take this route to leave Afrin for the neighboring
towns of Nobol and Zahraa. According to Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights: " Nearly 2,000 civilians have already joined the neighboring community of
Nobol, while hundreds are still trying to leave the city. Just recently, Kurdish forces
have been reinforced by Syrian pro-regime militiamen and 1,700 fighters from the Syrian
Democratic Forces Arab-Kurdish Alliance (SDF).
We can not stand idly by Turkey's aggression against the Kurdish people. We must support
the Kurdish revolution and do everything in our power to prevent the massacre of Afrîn's
population!
That is why we respond to the call made by several American groups[1]for an international
day of action, Saturday, March 24, for Rojava and the defense of Afrîn.
We will do an action of solidarity and information at the Place du citoyen from 11:30,
Saturday, March 24. The goal is to inform as many people as possible about what is going
on in Afrîn. This massacre can not be ignored!
Biji Kurdistan!
[1]Demand Utopia, North American Kurdish Alliance, Institute for Social Ecology, Kevok,
Friends of Rojava in North America, Olympia Assembly, Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement,
American Kurdish Association, and Solidarity Rojava NYC.
Here are the requests of the grouping:
- Immediate condemnation of the invasion of Afri by Turkey and its jihadist allies.
- Immediate withdrawal of Turkish troops and cessation of hostilities against Afrîn and
the Democratic Federation of Northern Syria. Impose economic sanctions on the Turkish
state until it complies with the demands.
- Immediate stop of the sale of arms to Turkey.
- The immediate establishment of a no-fly zone over northern Syria (and more particularly
Afrîn).
- Arm YPG / YPJ troops in Afrin with surface-to-air missiles (MANPADS) so that they can
defend themselves against the bombing of Turkish aviation on civilians.
Listed 1 hour ago by Collectif Emma Goldman
http://.blogspot.co.il/2018/03/afrin-vers-un-nettoyage-ethnique.html
------------------------------
Message: 3
Even if they are sometimes useful to build a mobilization, we all know that we do not win
with repeated 24-hour strikes. We stop working a day and we resume work the next day: it
does not block the economy and it does not allow to organize. The CGT, UNSA and CFDT
federations have just decided worse: they are asking us to lose not 1 but 2 strike days
every week for 3 months. What does the CGT do with these federations ? Why not call with
SUD-Rail to organize an extendible strike ? ---- One of the essential differences between
" square " strikes of 24 or 48 hours and a renewable movement is that in the first case
strikers are confiscated the conduct of the strike: it is not the strikers who decide in
general democratic assemblies, but federations that say " strike ", " not strike ", "
strike " ... !
On March 22, we will be together in the street, in Paris. Then, let's organize in our
services for a powerful strike on the 3rd, with general assemblies closer to the field, in
which WE will decide and organize the suites !
Who can think that a renewable movement would not be more effective than what we propose
these three federations: The 3, the 4, but not the 5, the 6, the 7, probably the 8,
probably the 9, but not the 10th, the 11th, the 12th, the 13th, the 14th, the 15th, or the
16th and the 17th, but not the 18th, the 19th, the 23rd, the 24th, the 28th, the 29, and
we start again, the 3, the 4, the 8 ...
This article is from the blog Le Raguelne . The raging Rail is made by railroad workers
and AL railroad workers.
http://leraildechaine.org/
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Greve-Pas-greve-Greve-Pour-qui-nous-prennent-ils
------------------------------
Message: 4
We republish this urgent statement of solidarity by our compañerxs with the Coordenação
Anarquista Brasileira (CAB) on the political assassination of Black socialist activist
Marielle Franco. ---- Statement By Coordenação Anarquista Brasileira (CAB) / Anarchist
Coordination of Brazil ---- On the night of Wednesday, March 14, after leaving a debate
with other Black women in the Rio de Janeiro neighborhood of Lapa, Marielle Franco was
brutally executed. The driver of the car that Marielle was in, Anderson Pedro Gomes, was
slain as well. ---- This execution of a Black, lesbian and feminist-socialist activist who
was born in the Favela da Mare, who was an advocate for Human Rights, municipal
councilwoman for PSOL (Socialism and Freedom Party, a left-wing split from the PT or
Workers Party), and who recently became the rapporteur of the commission responsible for
investigating the placing of the military in charge of policing for the state of Rio de
Janeiro in February 2018.
For years, Marielle had been denouncing the abuses of the state police, and was closely
following the cruel unfolding of the recent federal-military intervention. Only four days
before her death, Marielle had exposed the aggressive action of the 41st State Police
Battalion at Favela do Acari, where policemen terrorized the residents, invaded homes, and
where young men were found dead in ditches.
The murders of Marielle and Anderson represent an orchestrated action by a terrorist and
genocidal state which doesn't wear any masks to carry out its action to decimate Black
people and send a message to anyone who stands against the unrestrained state-sanctioned
massacres promoted in the periphery of the city. It is not a coincidence or an error of
the Public Security Policy of the State that the death of the compañera happens in full
force of the federal-military intervention. The growing of repression through this measure
is what enables this new and deepening step towards state terrorism. This was clearly a
planned action: Nine shots were fired into the car. This clear example of the summary
execution of a people's fighter.
The state, Brazilian capitalism, and its institutions continue to operate in their
historical role of maintaining the structural inequalities and the direct or indirect
perpetuation of barbarism.
In this moment of pain, sadness and hate, we give all our solidarity to the families of
Marielle and Anderson, to the compañerxs of PSOL, and to all compañerxs who are daily
entrenched in the struggle against the genocide of Black peoples.
The State is the Terrorist!
For the End of the Federal-Military Intervention!
For Memory, Truth and Justice!!!
Marielle Franco: Presente!
For mainstream news coverage on this assassination read here - This statement is based on
a translation by Anarkismo.net and has been edited to give greater context and readability
for an English speaking audience. The original in Portuguese can be found here. For more
detailed analysis of the current political situation on Brazil in Portuguese we recommend
reading "A intervenção federal no Rio de Janeiro e o xadrez da classe dominante" (The
federal intervention in Rio de Janeiro and the chess of the ruling class) published by the
Federação Anarquista do Rio de Janeiro (FARJ)
https://www.anarkismo.net/article/30890
http://blackrosefed.org/marielle-franco-presente/
------------------------------
Message: 5
CALL AT THE CONCENTRATION AT THE AEGEAN COURT, ON THURSDAY 15/3, FROM THE WOMEN INITIATIVE
AGAINST PATRIARCHIA by dwarf horse [APO] ---- "God and Homeland are an unwritten group.
Break all record of oppression and bloodshed " -- Luis Bunuel ---- In December 2015, the
Metropolitan of Aegialia, Ambrosios, published on his personal website the following,
referring to homosexuals: " Well, those who are stoned, spit on them! Discard them! They
are abodes of nature! Mental and spiritual suffer! They are people with intellectual
disorder! Unfortunately, these are three-worse and far more dangerous than some living in
mad collections! Do not hesitate, then! When and where you meet them, spit on them! Do not
let them lift their heads! They are dangerous! " ---- Following these statements, some
people decided to move lawfully against Ambrosios by filing a lawsuit for incitement to
violence and public incitement to hatred and for misappropriation of ecclesiastical
office. The hearing of the case is scheduled for Thursday 15/3 at the Aigio Court of Justice.
At the time of the takeover of the state and the bosses, the main pillars of the assembly
of the world of power attempt to exacerbate the rottenness of the state, capitalist and
patriarchal way of organizing society. As the crisis deepens and the attack that we
receive in all fields is intensifying, the attack on the field of separations is
intensified on the basis of sexuality and / or gender. There is a framework in which
dominance determines who is inside or outside the one defined by the same "normality",
with the direct effect of imposing the doctrine of zero tolerance on whoever is left over.
The diffusion of racism, sexism, the promotion of socialism and cannibalism comes as a
continuation of the institutionalization of the state of exclusion for the evildoers and
sinners,
The social consolidation of this framework is also strengthened by the church, fulfilling
its negligible role within the state / capitalist system. The diffusion of one speech in
the Patris-Family-Religion model reproduces specific patterns for women as mothers and men
within the family by further consolidating existing gender roles. Metropolitan Ambrosios
is no exception to this institutional expression. On the contrary, through the cruelty of
his words, he reveals the essence of his antisocial nature, permanently and inseparably
linked to the very antisocial nature and constitution of the Greek state. In the most
vulgar way, it not only condemns and isolates those who differ on the basis of sexuality,
but also urges violence against them. This does not impress us, since he is also a loyal
to his institutional role, he is a well-known fascist of the region. His recent entrances
with the neo-Nazis of the Golden Dawn in the Macedonian nationalist rally organized by the
island in the city of Aegio are recent. Older, but not forgotten, are the hymns in the
junta, which served as a gendarme from 1968 to 1976, with the modern remains of which,
continues to maintain excellent relations.
Against religious obscurantism, patriarchy, fascism, and every form of oppression imposed
by the state-capitalist system, we respond with fighting resistances. All of us, the
fighters of this world, should not allow anyone to throw his racist poison undisturbed.
The world of freedom, a world that will fit all the worlds, will pass over them ...
AGAINST THE STATE, THE CAPITAL AND THE PATRIARCH ...
ENANTIA IN RELIGIOUS TRUTH, PHASE AND MODERN INTEGRATION
TO DISASSEMBLE DISORDERS AND MANAGEMENT OF ALL EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYEES: WOMEN, LGBTQI +,
WORKERS AND MIGRANTS
ABOUT HANDLING AND FREEDOM
CONCENTRATION: THURSDAY 15/3, 9 AM, AEGEAN COURTS
Women's Initiative Against Patriarchy
--------------------------------------------------------
Greece, APO, About our participation in the anti-fascist / anti-homophobic gathering in
Aigio courts on March 15 - Posted by dwarf horse (gr) (fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
On March 15, a gathering took place in the Aigio Courts because of the trial that had been
set there for the homophobic and sexist comments of Metropolitan Ambrose against
homosexuals. The lawsuit was made by 8 people from Athens. ---- We made our own call to
the gathering and found ourselves at the Aigio Court of Justice, responding to Patras
Pride's college call, realizing that we need to intervene in every field where racist,
sexist and homophobic propaganda of the state and patriarchy occurs. ---- The gathering
was flanked by about 100 people from various collectives from Patras, Aigio and Athens. At
8.30 am the central gate of the court house was occupied, and there was a clear signal
that the presence of fascists, sexists, neo-Nazis, and other cleaners would not be
tolerated on our part. A fact that was confirmed in practice as a little time later he
"ate a few groans" and was hunted by the goldsmith, a former MP, Michalis Arvanitis, who
ran to hide behind the police, while fights followed with fascicles, with and without
garbage the duration of the concentration, among them the well-known fascist
agro-syndicalist of Aigio Paraskevas Spyropoulos.
Inside the site, besides a common banner of collectives and comrades from Patras, which
wrote "against fascism, sexism and homophobia - on the way to fight for freedom" there
were also the banners of patras pride (for every sexist and transphobic there is a place
in the patriarchal), the initiative of women against patriarchy (against religious
obscurantism, fascism and homophobia ... for emancipation and freedom) and the anarchist
group "dwarf horse" / APO. (State-Media-Church-Neo-Nazi all the wrecks work together).
Then around 2 pm there was a demonstration on the main streets of Aegio, during which
slogans were written, tirkays were thrown and the initiative text was shared. The
demonstration ended in the Metropolis of Aigio. There was a subduction of the
Christian-Lithuanian flag of Amvrosiou and the flag of the community of LAKKI was posted.
About the story: In December 2015, the Metropolitan of Aegialia, Ambrosios, published on
his personal website the following, referring to the homosexuals: "Well, these stoning
ones, spit on them! Discard them! They are abodes of nature! Mental and spiritual suffer!
They are people with intellectual disorder! Unfortunately, these are three-worse and far
more dangerous than some living in mad collections! Do not hesitate, then! When and where
you meet them, spit on them! Do not let them lift their heads! They are dangerous! "
Within the courtroom, among the various pearls that worshiped his preaching, his racist
and homophobic delirium, he did not hesitate to refer even to the intention of executing
homosexuals by himself using a weapon. To reward him, civil justice has acquitted him. We
have no illusions about its role, as well as about the inextricably linked relationship of
the church and the state, about their antisocial nature and their criminal action at the
expense of humanity.
We will continue to fight against them. Any attempt to diffuse their racist, homophobic
and sexist discourse into the public domain will find us facing them.
On Thursday 15/3, we all stood together in the streets of Aigio. Collectively and
compounded against fascism, sexism and homophobia. And so we will continue to deal with
everyone who lives and lives. We'll crush them!
AGAINST THE STATE, THE CAPITAL AND THE PATRIARCH ...
ENANTIA IN RELIGIOUS TRUTH, PHASE AND MODERN INTEGRATION
TO DISASSEMBLE DISORDERS AND MANAGEMENT OF ALL EMPLOYEES AND EMPLOYEES: WOMEN, LGBTQI +,
WORKERS AND MIGRANTS
ABOUT HANDLING AND FREEDOM
Women's Initiative Against Patriarchy
Contact: Every Tuesday 19: 00-22: 00 in the self-managed area On the walls (Patreos 87) |
mail: enantiastinpatriarxia@gmail.com
https://ipposd.wordpress.com/2018/03/16/
------------------------------
Message: 6
A. W. Zurbrugg (ed) -- Anarchist Encounters: Russia in Revolution -- London, Anarres
Editions, 2017. 259pp., £10.99 pb. -- ISBN 9780850367348 -- Eric Lee ---- The Experiment:
Georgia's Forgotten Revolution, 1918-1921 -- London, Zed Books, 2017. 160pp., £12.99 pb.
ISBN 9781786990921 by Javier Sethness ---- Both of these intriguing new works take
critical views of the Russian Revolution, whose centenary has just passed. Anarchist
Encounters comprises an edited volume of eyewitness reports written by Spanish and Italian
anarcho-syndicalists who visited Russia in the years 1920-1921 that also includes Emma
Goldman's critique of Bolshevik hegemony over the Revolution, based on the two years she
spent living there. Eric Lee's The Experiment examines the relatively unknown Georgian
Democratic Republic, a three-year period of Menshevik, social-democratic governance in
Russia's southern neighbor and former colony that was crushed by the Red Army in 1921.
According to Ethel Snowden, a Fabian who participated in a delegation including former
members of the Second International who visited the Republic in 1920, Georgia under the
Social Democrats represented the "most perfect Socialism in Europe." As Lee explains, it
is rather significant that these internationalists traveled to Georgia and not Russia.
True to their leader Karl Kautsky, who also visited Georgia in 1920 and had emphasized in
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (1918) that there can be "no Socialism without
democracy," the Georgian Mensheviks opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917
together with the one-party State which soon followed, declaring independence in May 1918.
The Mensheviks' relationship with the regional proletariat and peasantry provides a less
harrowing example than those seen in Russia during the Civil War years, 1918-1921. In
parallel, based on their observations of the "tremendous defects of communist
centralisation" (73), as writes Ángel Pestaña Núñez, a delegate from the Spanish
Confederación Nacional de Trabajo (CNT), many of the syndicalists whose works appear in
Anarchist Encounters actively discouraged their labor organizations from affiliating with
the Communist International and its Red Trade Union International (RILU).
Vilkens, the pen-name of Manuel Fernández Álvarez, a Spanish journalist associated with
the French Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT), observes in his report republished in
Anarchist Encounters that, by the time of his visit to the Soviet Union in mid-1920, it
was already a clearly defined class society, with "VIPs" receiving higher salaries than
the rest of society. Vilkens identifies a sex-economy of sorts among young females who
made themselves available to bureaucrats, commissars, and the emerging "Sov-bourg" in
exchange for access to greater privilege. He defines the "living conditions of producers
in Russia" as "not brilliant," and identifies compulsory labor under the Bolsheviks'
increasingly bureaucratic-centralist regime to be the continuation of "feudal service"
(19). In fact, Vilkens holds the Reds responsible for their shackling of the independent
initiative of workers, as is reflected in the Communist Party Central Committee's decision
after October 1917 to favor Taylorism and one-man management over workers' control via the
soviets and factory committees that had (re)emerged during the Revolution. Pestaña, who
visited Russia in summer 1920, too, expresses similar concerns about how the committees
had degenerated from drivers of the Revolution to an institutionalized "workplace police"
(79). Vilkens presents the strike at the Perovo locomotive factory in July 1920 that was
met with a show of force by the military and the CheKa, or "Extraordinary Commission," as
a grim "example[...]of how the so-called dictatorship of the proletariat imposes suffering
on the real proletariat" (34).
Regarding authoritarianism, Vilkens discusses several examples of the Bolsheviks
dismissing and invalidating elections of non-Bolshevik delegates to the soviets and
laments that the option to recall authorities is effectively absent. As such, he concludes
that the soviets have been subordinated to the Red State, such that "a government of
bourgeois intellectuals and nobles is imposed on the people: Rakovsky, Manonilsky,
Petrovsky, Lenin, Trotsky[...]" (50). Indeed, the Bolshevik regime's continuity with
capitalism, according to Vilkens, is starkly illustrated by its delay in the people's
emancipation, seen most clearly in the CheKa dictatorship, which for Goldman represents
not just a State within a State but a State over a State. An especially moving episode
illustrating such oppression is mentioned by the volume's editor Zurbrugg: the case of the
syndicalist Lepetit, his fellow CGT comrade Vergeat, and Lefevre, French delegates to the
summer 1920 Comintern congress, who were denied exit and sent to their deaths in the
northern port city of Murmansk once the Red authorities had discovered the delegates'
critical take on the Revolution's clear betrayal through their refusal to surrender
documents.[1]
Furthermore, Armando Borghi, a delegate from the Italian Syndicalist Union (USI) at the
July 1920 RILU congress, reports a conversation with Victor Serge which belies the former
anarchist's public support for the Bolsheviks: "In the factories, the disciplinary system
is ruthless. Trotsky is a perfect tyrant. There is neither communism here, nor socialism,
nor anti-communism, but Prussian military discipline" (84).
In his "Nine Points" on the Revolution (1921), Vilkens clarifies that this event cannot be
reduced to the Bolshevik Party, which represents a class above the workers and
antagonistic to them; that the "true revolutionaries"-"principally the anarchists"-are
persecuted, incarcerated, and murdered without due process; and that consequently,
self-management of the workers and peasants, the very meaning of the Revolution, is
missing. Vilkens here concedes that the imperialist blockade of Russia represents a
"monstrous crime," in parallel to Pestaña, Goldman, and Peter Kropotkin, all of whom went
further than Vilkens in refraining from criticizing the Bolsheviks as long as the
imperialist onslaught raged. Yet afterward, Goldman would denounce the Reds for imposing
the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which stipulated peace with Germany; commencing the
razvyorstka, or grain-requisition regime, which greatly contributed to the famine of
1921-1922; disarticulating the cooperatives; and effectively instrumentalizing the soviets.
Gaston Leval, a CNT delegate to the RILU's summer 1921 congress in Moscow, observes
explicit class divisions in the new education system after visiting a special school in
Bolchavo dedicated to the upbringing of the next generation of State administrators and
reports meeting Goldman and Alexander Berkman, describing them as highly disconcerted by
the recent suppression of the Kronstadt uprising and the ever-burgeoning powers of the
police-bureaucracy. In her analysis, Goldman relates her own impression after visiting an
official school that this was a mere Potëmkin village concealing widespread hunger and
misery.[2]Leval further discusses the Left-Social Revolutionary leader Maria Spiridovna, a
former political prisoner from the Tsarist period whom the Bolsheviks imprisoned
intermittently from 1919-1921, and Alexandra Kollontai and Alexander Shlyapnikov, leaders
of the Workers' Opposition within the Communist Party, who outlined a more democratic
political structure whereby the State would serve trade unions. The Workers' Opposition
met with Lenin and Trotsky's reprobation-including, per Leval, a specifically sexist
attitude by Trotsky toward Kollontai-and as such was silenced at the Tenth Party Congress
of March 1921. In 1936, shortly before the beginning of the mass-purges, Kollontai would
observe retrospectively that "[Stalin's]dictatorship brought with it rivers of blood, but
blood was already flowing under Lenin, and doubtless much of it was innocent blood" (11).
Now, in The Experiment, Lee describes the development of the Georgian Menshevik movement
in Georgia. In his youth, Noe Zhordania, a central figure within Georgian Menshevism, had
identified with Russian Populism, but became a Marxist after encountering Kautsky's
writings. During the 1903 split of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, most
Georgian followers of Zhordania sided with the Mensheviks, reflecting their commitment to
a mass-party strategy, while a small minority, including Stalin and Sergo Ordzhonikidze,
joined the vanguardist Bolsheviks. As orthodox-Marxists, the Georgian Mensheviks were
committed to a stages theory of history, and so believed that the agrarian and ‘backward'
Georgia required capitalism and bourgeois democracy before progressing to communism. Yet
the emergence of the self-governing and anti-Tsarist Gurian Republic among the peasantry
in western Georgia from 1902-1906 led Zhordania and other Mensheviks to reinterpret
peasants as rural workers, publicly support the uprising, and open party membership to the
peasantry.
In Guria, directly democratic village meetings and peasant courts expropriated and
redistributed State-owned and private lands, making political demands including calls for
a constituent assembly, abolition of the standing army, and freedom of speech and
assembly. Interfacing with the Mensheviks, Gurian peasants formed Red Detachments for
self-defense, and their efforts, which Lee compares to those of the Paris Commune, met
with the support of Tolstoy, who declared that "[w]hat should be done is exactly what the
Gurians are doing, viz., to organize life in such a manner that there should be no need
for authority" (29). In parallel to the Commune, the first Gurian Republic was suppressed
by the Tsar's overwhelming forces in 1906.
In 1917, according to Lee, Georgian soviets and the State accorded in favoring Menshevik
rule, such that there was no dual-power situation in the country, as in Russia: the
soviets remained intact and the workers were not disarmed. The Social Democrats rejected
Red October and refused to recognize the new regime as legitimate. In April 1918, Georgia,
Armenia, and Azerbaijan declared independence as the Democratic Republic of Transcaucasia,
but its precipitous collapse a month later led the Social Democrats to make an agreement
with Germany that permitted the latter's exploitation of Georgia in exchange for defense
against Russia and Turkey. At the end of World War I, the Germans were replaced by the
British, who in turn supported the White Armies against which Mensheviks and Bolsheviks
alike struggled. In December 1918, the Georgian Mensheviks and Armenian Dashnaks engaged
in a brief war over disputed territories that was inflamed by chauvinism on both sides.
In Georgia, the liberation of the land came together with anti-imperial struggle, given
the concentration of territory held by occupying Russian state. In December 1917, the
Mensheviks passed land reforms confiscating the properties of large landowners without
compensation and abolishing the sale and purchase of land, though this market was
subsequently reintroduced following the People's Guard's suppression of agrarian revolts
among the Ossetian minority. Lee here shares Teodor Shanin's critique of the agrarian
reform: that it demobilized the Georgian peasantry. While this dynamic limited what was
possible, Menshevik Georgia at least avoided war between the city and countryside, as seen
in its northern neighbor during War Communism, and numerous strikes broke out under the
Georgian Democratic Republic, reflecting workers' constitutionally recognized right to
strike. The Mensheviks proclaimed several other labor rights and supported the expansion
of cooperatives but stopped short of nationalizing industry, mirroring their
self-conception as intellectuals building capitalism as the basis for the socialism to
come. Even so, the relationship between labor and the Menshevik State provides an
alternative to the militarization thesis advanced by Trotsky at the Third All-Russian
Congress of Trade Unions (1920)-a proposal that would have to wait until Stalin for its
full application.
Ultimately, chauvinistic Menshevik policy toward ethnic minorities such as the Abkhazians
and Ossetians precipitated the collapse of the experiment. Whereas the Bolsheviks lacked
support in Georgia outside the peasantry and working class due to Menshevik policy, Stalin
and Ordzhonikidze exploited grievances held by national minorities against the Social
Democrats. In November 1919, the Reds attempted an unsuccessful coup, and in February
1921, they ordered the Red Army to invade following a putatively staged revolt in the
border region with Armenia. Thus was Georgia forcibly reincorporated into the Russia
Empire, now the Soviet Union. Yet in 1924, a courageous uprising against the occupation
broke out, leading Zinoviev to liken it to the Kronstadt and Tambov rebellions in terms of
significance, yet this too was crushed.
Thus, these two volumes, anarchist and social-democratic in orientation, provide
critically important perspectives for understanding the myriad failures of the Russian
Revolution. Both perspectives rightly repudiate the goal of establishing State capitalism
through dictatorship. While The Experiment self-evidently lays bare many of the Georgian
Mensheviks' problems-reformism, chauvinism, and a disposition to terror-the viewpoints of
the contributors to Anarchist Encounters may in turn be utilized to reveal the affinities
between Menshevism and Bolshevism as statist and effectively bourgeois.
[1]Voline, The Unknown Revolution (Montréal: 1975), 321-3.
[2]"Potëmkin villages" refer to the Russian militarist Grigory Potëmkin's practice of
staging fake villages for Empress Catherine II's review during a 1787 visit to Crimea.
http://blackrosefed.org/6165-2/
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Message: 7
We have a new message from our comrades in Russia, calling for solidarity actions. ----
"During the last months, Russian secret services have arrested several anarchists and
antifascists in Penza and Saint-Petersburg cities. They were accused of conspiring to
organize a "terrorist organization". The arrested were tortured with electric cables and
shockers for many hours, brutally beaten without care whether hard damage is made and
whether visible traces of beating are left. The officers humiliated our arrested comrades.
They tried to force them to testify against themselves and against each other. These true
Gestapo actions of Russian FSB secret service can evoke only vigorous protest from every
honest person. ---- The international solidarity action week on February 7-12 exposed wide
reaction of the anarchist movement worldwide to these repressions and made considerable
media effect in Russia. But it seems to be not enough to overcome the situation. Very
soon, it became known that some of arrested anarchists were tortured and intimidated
again. The FSB officers demanded that they stop participating in the campaign of
resistance against tortures and repressions. Moreover, after solidarity actions took place
in Russia, the police launched repressions against those who took these actions. Our
comrades were prosecuted in Moscow and Chelyabinsk. Anarchists in Chelyabinsk were again
tortured with electricity by the police, while being accused of "hooliganism" (!).
Simultaneously with the arrests in Saint-Petersburg, FSB raids and arrests against
anarchists were made in the Crimea.
It is necessary to continue and strengthen the campaign of solidarity to force Russian
authorities to end tortures and political repressions. The best day for new actions is
March 18: the day of presidential elections in Russia. In this day, the ruling regime is
the most vulnerable and the eyes of the world will be turned to the situation in our country.
We urgently and desperately call to all anarchist, leftist, antifascist and democratic
groups and communities all over the world to organize actions of protest and resistance of
any kind against tortures and repressions in Russia: by the embassies, consulates and
other official offices of Russian Federation in your countries.
Our slogans are:
FSB is the main terrorist!
Your electricity won't kill our ideas!
Freedom for Russian anarchists and antifascists!"
#stopFSBtorture
https://avtonom.org/en/news/call-soli-actions-russian-anarchists
Background information:
http://afed.org.uk/support-anarchist-and-antifa-prisoners-in-st-petersburg-and-penza/
Tags: Russia, Solidarity
http://afed.org.uk/march-18-act-in-solidarity-with-russian-anarchists/
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