News From the Soviet Union
By Steve Eke, BBC’s Russian analyst
The latest survey shows that over 60% of all Russian children are unhealthy. They are in poor physical or psychological health, according the Russian government’s very own survey.
Russia’s epidemic of ill health and drastic falling off of life expectancies have received much international attention over the recent years, but the health suffered by its children are less well known.
The most common conditions in children are problems of the digestive and motor systems, often coupled with nervous disorders. Most of these problems are also caused by the fact that more than half of the expectant mothers are under-nourished due to lack of food and terrible conditions of their daily life.
Two thirds of Russian babies are subsequently born unhealthy and infant mortality rates in the poorest regions of Russia are higher than in many parts of the Third World developing countries. Health problems begin at birth and get gradually worse.
By the age of 18, when military service beckons, half of Russia’s young men are rejected because they are unhealthy. Russian doctors say that it will take decades for any improvement to take place. Doctors warn that the growing generation might be just as unhealthy as the troubled children in today’s Russia.
When Brezhnev was the General Secretary of the CPSU-USSR from 1964 to 1982:
* Three fourths of all physicians were
women
* One third of all engineers were women
* 52% of all employed college-trained people were women
* The USSR provided day care or even 24 hour care for all children if desired,
plus day care for children of collective farmers during the harvest season
* Maternity paid leave was 112 days
* 425 women were members of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, much more than all
of the capitalist countries combined
* 47.4% of local candidates elected across the USSR were women
* 49% of all elected labour union officials were women, thus making Brezhnev the
most significant champion of women rights during the 20oth century
FROM BBC NEWS
The Russian Interior Ministry has announced that up to 90% of all goods sold on the Russian consumer market are fake goods. This includes goods as varied as household appliances, but this is not going to surprise the Russians since Russia hardly manufactures any goods now. This news is of deep concern to the international companies.
Electrical goods arte illegally imported from South-East Asia, while cosmetics ad toys are from cheap labour in China. But Russia which also produces fake goods such as audio systems and medicines, without any signed agreements with the original producing firms…all this is manufactured illegally and black-marketed to the people.
The Mafiosi structures, tied in to the government and police, will never put a dampener on the 90% of the total market which are all fake goods.
In any case, as the study shows, most Russians are content to buy fake goods and fake designer clothes, since the economy is in such shambles.
What worries the Russian people is the fake and adulterated food, medicines and drinks that are sold as genuine.
Last week in December of 2002, the Russian TV showed a gang in Moscow which had been caught putting out tins of caviar which contained contaminated roe and thrown away in the garbage cans by the legal manufacturer.
Every year, according to Russia’s own statistics, thousands of Russians die from drinking liquid they take to be genuine vodka, but which is made from deadly chemicals.
Until the present authorities are seen to be tackling this crime seriously and expose the criminal gangs and their government connections, Russian people will certainly be very skeptical about how much the police are really concerned about counterfeit goods.
New Poll:
From De Waarheid
MOSCOW: Nearly 7 out of 10 Russians want that the USSR be returned back, according to the new poll released last December, on the 80th Anniversary of the creation of the communist bloc.
Over 69% of those polled said that they regretted the Soviet Union’s disappearance, while 25% said that they did not, according to the Vy-tsion Institute poll, which was quoted by the Interfax news agency.
Three fourths of the 1,600 Russians polled said that the Soviet Union was better suited for fostering the people’s social and economic growth. Over 55% of those polled said that the USSR was a union of voluntary states and over 59% said that the break-up of the USSR in 1991 could have been avoided.
Statement by the Revolutionary Communist Youth League (Bolsheviks) Moscow
Russian Education Minister Vladimir Filipov, who had made his name by conducting reforms to dismantle what remained of the Soviet education system, published Guidelines for all the secondary schools to introduce God’s Law as a subject, very carefully code-named "Orthodox Culture". Despite this innocent looking name and reassurances claiming that it would be taught on an extra-curricular basis, the move makes provisions for nothing but a compulsory exposure of youngsters to religious dogmas.
More time is being allocated to teaching "Orthodox Culture" than to Physics, Chemistry or History. Although compulsory religious teaching contradicts Article 14 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, and although public opinion survey show that just 28 per cent actually support the introduction of "Orthodox Culture" compared to over 55 per cent in opposition, this subject has already has been introduced on compulsory basis in a number of areas (Noginsk-Moscow region, Kursk region, Volgograd etc., while an array of political parties – from the openly pro-Putin People’s Party to the allegedly opposition party Patriotic People’s Union of Russia – headed by Gennady Zyuganov – issue statements and organize public action and support of religious education.
We herby launch a campaign "Priests out of Schools!" and we call upon all progressive and democratic forces to join the struggle to save the secular character of the State and Education. Our initial demands are to stop religious propaganda in the media, to put an end to education in state-run establishments, to immediately fire Education Minister Filipov, who has terminally destroyed any signs of public confidence. We are ready to draft a program of studying Scientific Atheism as an extra-curricular subject and will be fighting to make it available to schools.
At the same time, we as Communists understand that it is impossible to root out religious prejudice within the capitalist system. A society based on exploitation is the key that keeps the region going. The necessary condition for total destruction of religious prejudice is a communist society.
But, even within an existing order we will be fighting against the imposition of religious dogma by the State. Fighting to make schools deliver the crux of Science, not the obscurity from the Middle Ages. Capitalists would like the schools to train students in subservience, faith and tolerance. We want to see the schools teach pupils to doubt, to think and to struggle.
There is always a trade-off between faith and knowledge, one comes at the expense of the other.
Religion is the prison of thought!
Priests out of school!
Statement by the RCWP-RPC
Leaders of capitalist countries, including Russia, as well as the entire spectrum of bourgeois media, have unleashed a sickening whining campaign concerning the alleged threat by the DPRK Government, who declared its withdrawal from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). The fact that has been completely ignored is that the decision taken by the DPRK Government is a pure necessity and the only possible response to the long series of USA’s subversive plots against the socialist state on the Korean peninsula. This is a step taken by the DPRK leadership to defend their freedom, independence and State sovereignty.
What the world gendarme, the USA hates, is the political system in North Korea. In the attempt to break the endurance of the Korean people in their resistance and consolidation of their socialist achievements, the US administration has branded DPRK a part of the "axis of evil" and has declared that a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the country is possible. USA has turned South Korea into a permanent location by conducting military maneuvers against the DPRK. They used the International; Atomic Energy Agency (ISEA) to introduce sanctions against the country they see as unfavourable. The USA is working in every possible way to prevent the program of peaceful unification between Korean North and South. In 2002, the US leadership suppressed oil deliveries to DPRK, having violated the only part of the Korean-American Agreed Framework they have been fulfilling. At the same time, the USA has ignored the proposals by the Korean leadership to sign a non-aggression treaty. In these conditions, it became an urgent necessity for DPRK to take a step to defend the country from the American political, economic and military threats.
Our RCWP-RPC CC pledges its support to the political leadership and brave people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, who are firmly resisting all the US plots. We support the DPRK Government actions taken to increase their country’s defense capacity. We condemn the Wild-West politics of the USA who have granted themselves the right to divide people into the ranks of the civilized and the rogues and to threaten anyone who does not play the game according to their rules. This war drive against the population of DPRK and other sovereign states has to be stopped.
It is time to stop the aggressors!
Viktor Tiulkin, Anatoli Kriuchkov
Co-Chairmen, Central Committee
Russian Communist Workers’ Party-Party of Russian Communists
This is very revealing excerpt from the newspaper "The Sun" published in Moscow in Russian and in Arabic.
The article exposes the plans of Imperialists since the last century for occupying and exploiting the region around the Caspian Sea. So, the present plan of US imperialism is just a modern version of this on-going demand to grab this oil and mineral rich region.
"Let’s remember that Winston Churchill in 1919 called the Caspian Sea region "the soft under belly of Russia, and having it in our hands will not only help us to control Persia (Iran) but also all the territory of Russia bordering the Caspian Sea, besides having the Caucasus in our sphere of influence – which includes part of East Asia"
The plan of Adolph Hitler in 1940’s was to occupy Iran, Iraq plus the oil rich regions around the Caspian Sea. He said: "Controlling this region in actual fact means controlling its oil resources, and this is the main tactical plan of the German Reich!"
The French General Waygan, commenting on the British-French-Turkish plan in 1940 (before the Second Front was even considered to help the USSR in the event of the imminent attack by German fascism –Editor) to attack Russia from the south through the Caucasus made this very forthright statement: "By occupying Batumi, Baku and controlling the Caspian and Black Seas, we would enter Russia as a knife enters butter."
The Turkish plan in 1942, when the Soviets were in the life and death struggle with German fascism was: "We must have our army enter the Caspian region after the defeat of the USSR through Azerbaijan and Georgia, or together with the German Army, since we have signed a military cooperation pact with Germany on June 18, 1941." This was just 4 days before Germany attacked the Soviet Union!
The modern-day version of this "Storm over the Caspian" by US imperialists is a follow-up of the previous imperialist countries that were not able to accomplish this, due to the heroism of the Soviet people.
We hope that the Soviet people and the peoples of all countries bordering the Caspian Sea region will not allow this plan to be fulfilled! Humanity must not let this modern day fascism pass!
As the young communists of a country where the name "communist" was banned for eight decades, the Youth of the Communist Party of Turkey strongly protest the recent arrests and brutal treatment of Ukrainian and Russian comrades by the Ukrainian police and the groundless charges put against them. There should be no doubt that all of the attempts to criminalize communist struggle and undermine its legitimacy will fail.
We express our deepest solidarity with the Leninist Youth League of Ukraine, and demand instant release of our comrades and all charges against them to be dropped!
The Youth of the Communist Party of Turkey
* The Executive Committee of International Council and the Editorial Board of NSC have sent protests to the government of Ukraine against this injustice and brutality.
Click here to return to the February 2003 index.