#WORLD #WORLDWIDE #RUSSIAN #ANARCHISM #News #Journal #Update - (en) #Russia, avtonom: Russia: mobilization and resistance (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 On September 21, following the Ukrainian counter-offensive in early September,

Vladimir Putin announced a "partial mobilization" of the Russian population to
support the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February of this year.
Written in collaboration with Russian anarchists and including translated
materials from our avtonom.org website, crimethinc examines the reaction of the
anti-war movement in Russia and the potential for unrest in Russian society in
general. ---- At the end of March 2022, we wrote that the first phase of the
Russian anti-war movement had reached its limit, suppressed mainly by brute
force. We assumed that the next phase would not begin until economic sanctions
and the loss of loved ones in the war had an impact on the population. However,
contrary to expectations, the Russian economy did not collapse - due in part to
the loyalty of Western capitalists to Russian oil - and Putin managed to minimize
discontent in Moscow and St. Petersburg, thanks to the use of soldiers mainly
from small towns.

Another development that could put pressure on Russian society is the
mobilization of those who have been called up for military service - and in
Russia all men aged 18 and over are subject to conscription. After Russian
casualties in the war reached five figures, Putin finally chose this path.
Already now we are seeing how people are forcibly enlisted in the ranks of the
Russian armed forces. Does this mean that the war will drag on indefinitely? Or
will a new period of political instability begin in Russia?

In our opinion, the militant anti-war movement in Russia remains the only hope
for peace in the entire post-Soviet region. As we wrote in March,

The only way this war could have been prevented - and probably also the only way
to stop it now without huge casualties on both sides - is if a powerful and
international anti-war movement broke out in Russia that could shake the Putin
government, which would Something similar followed in Ukraine and other countries
of the world. If the war drags on indefinitely, or is somehow ended by the brute
force of nationalist militarism, it will lead to the fact that in the following
decades people on all sides of the conflict will find themselves in a nationalist
and militaristic trap.

But if the war in Ukraine ends as a result of the uprising and solidarity of
ordinary people, this could set a precedent for new uprisings, uprisings,
solidarity that could spread from Russia to Ukraine, Western Europe and the
United States.

The problem is that over the past decade and a half, Putin has systematically
suppressed all movements in Russia, as well as in neighboring countries.
Countless Russians who might otherwise form the backbone of Russia's anti-war
movement are already in prison or in exile. Anarchists from Irkutsk wrote about
this in their Telegram channel the day after the announcement of "partial
mobilization":

"Summer was a period of recession. No one protested, and if they protested, then
in an individual form, and it was more like everyday activism.

Yesterday the situation changed again. And as someone wrote at the end of
February - congratulations, we have a revolutionary situation, but we hasten to
upset that we have no revolutionary force in our country."

How to create a revolutionary movement in the conditions of the most severe
repressions? This is more or less the same question that people have been
wrestling with in Iran for the past decade, albeit with more unpredictability.

The announcement of "partial mobilization" caused a new wave of emigration. Long
queues appeared at the borders, for example, at the border with Mongolia.
Ironically, if Russia successfully defends its borders from deserters to make
mobilization more efficient, that could also turn off the pressure valve that has
so far kept Russian autocracy resilient.

Immediately after Putin announced a "partial mobilization", protesters took to
the streets across the country. As in February and March, feminists helped
organize many of these rallies. The protests on September 21 and over the weekend
were not as large as the demonstrations at the height of the first wave of
protests. But when you consider that the punishments have become so severe that
you can now spend years in prison for holding a poster, it is impressive that
they took place at all. (As lovers of the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky, we would
like to send warm greetings to the participants of the action, who were detained
for trying to read anti-war poems at his monument on Triumfalnaya Square).

The police, as usual, responded to the protest with brute force. In addition,
military mobilization itself is used in a punitive manner: many of those arrested
were given mobilization notices at police stations. Of course, such a practice
would contribute to the disturbing impression that mobilization - this is a red
herring on the part of the Putin government, directed against certain segments of
the population, and not to achieve a patriotic goal, and this may lead to the
fact that the mobilized troops at the front will also be less reliable.

The most interesting protests took place in small towns on the Russian periphery,
where the protesters began to try to defend themselves. For example, in the
village of Endirey in Dagestan, the police were forced to shoot over the heads of
demonstrators in order to regain control of the situation. In Makhachkala, the
capital of Dagestan, protesters tried to block a road and clashed with security
forces. If the Russian network of control begins to tear, then it will begin to
tear at the edges, and not at the center of the regime.

Because ordinary protest is so expensive, the main form of protest that has
gained momentum over the past seven months has been underground actions, in
particular the burning of military registration and enlistment offices and the
sabotage of railways. Prior to the announcement of "partial mobilization," there
had been at least 37 arson attacks on military enlistment offices and
administrative buildings since the invasion of Ukraine; by the morning of
September 25, after Putin announced the mobilization, at least 17 more such
attacks had been recorded. Another happened when we were finalizing this text,
bringing the total number of attacks to 55 (as of 09/26/2022).

Some of these attacks may very well be the work of organized anarchists, such as
those associated with the underground Anarcho-Communist Fighting Organization,
which has been getting a lot of publicity since we interviewed them last month.
Some other attacks are simply acts of desperation. In the last 24 hours, one
person protesting against the mobilization set himself on fire at the Ryazan bus
station. Another shot a military commissar in the city of Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk
region. Reportedly, when the military commissar was instructing conscripts, the
attacker said: "No one is going anywhere!" and shot him. As in Kazakhstan, the
fact that protesting openly is so difficult means that the line between taking to
the streets with a hand-drawn poster and going out alone with a can of gasoline
or homemade firearms is thinner than in Western Europe and the United States.

While it is finally possible to speculate that, driven into a corner, Putin may
soon lose power, this does not guarantee that what comes next will be better.
Frustrated nationalism is a classic breeding ground for fascism, and many of
those who dare to criticize Putin's foreign policy are war hawks who have
demanded a more aggressive policy towards Ukraine and its allies. Putin
cultivates loyalist nationalist and fascist movements while suppressing
autonomous and anti-authoritarian movements and subcultures, and the legacy of
the Soviet Union has discredited leftist and communist ideas in the minds of
millions of Russians.

It is critical now that resources and support be directed to Russian anarchists
and anti-war protesters so that they have at their disposal the means they need
to get their message across to other Russians - not only for an end to the war in
Ukraine, but for a new model of society, which will replace the Putin regime,
more participatory and egalitarian. The rampant capitalism and mayhem that
followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a catastrophe of immense
proportions; it is understandable that many Russians are therefore afraid of
change, and it is the anarchist movement that must show that social
transformation can lead to different results.

As we stated in the article "Rebellion in Kazakhstan",

"Real social change in the Russian sphere of influence, as in the West, will
require a long struggle. The overthrow of governments is necessary but not
sufficient: to protect themselves from future political and economic impositions,
the common people will have to develop collective power on a horizontal,
decentralized basis. This is not the work of one day or a year, but of a whole
generation."

We have long emphasized that the situation in Russia deserves our attention, not
because it is a flagrant and exceptional case of state oppression, but rather
because it is a variation of the same situation that we all face around the
world. Totalitarian autocracy in the 21st century has not lost its position as a
model of state power. It is gaining momentum in Europe - evidenced by the victory
of the far right in elections in Italy this week - and also in the United States.

As resource conflicts intensify, exacerbated by the environmental crisis, we are
likely to see more wars like the war in Ukraine. In fact, this is already
happening in other countries of the former Soviet Union, for example, the heat of
hostility between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Armenia. Those who
today are fighting against authoritarianism and militarism in Russia are fighting
the same thing that we must fight around the world, and we must learn from them
and support them.

https://avtonom.org/news/rossiya-mobilizaciya-i-soprotivlenie
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