News from the Soviet Union
Pravda many times wrote about the incompetence of Prochinok as a labour minister…even though he only carries out the present policies of Putin’s regime.
Nobody is shocked about this government ministers’ richness. While labour minister Prochinok should be ashamed for living in a luxurious mansion in such a poor country like Russia, Prochinok’s wife, as is well known, is the owner of one of the largest Casinos in Moscow. But it is immoral to show this luxury to mill9ons of poor Russians.
By VLADIMIR PRONIN-Ukraine
Last year, as other years, left behind them different impressions. But overall it was a year of further expansion of American imperialism, headed by President Bush, charging ahead to rule the whole world. Amongst many impressions of last year, it is clear that Bush will lead America to that abyss where all his predecessors went, including those that wanted to rule and dominate the world and its resources. USA and its created child NATO, has now incorporated many other countries-states that were part of the Soviet Union, right to the borders of Russia.
President Putin was not even able to utter a faint protest, but in actual fact sanctioned the inclusion of the three Baltic states into the NATO empire.
Our TV and newspapers were full of praise at the success of NATO and US imperialism. With more and more countries being sucked into NATO there are hardly any now existing that can stand up to NATO in any way or form. This inclusion of the Baltic countries has improved the strategy of US imperialism. Russia has now practically no seaports in the Baltic Sea, and thus NATO has now under its control all of the rich resources of this vital region. NATO now is only about one hundred kilometers from Leningrad, and only 30-40 kilometers from Pskov!
This is of course to take advantage of the post-Soviet era. Are they not laughing prematurely, since they will cry some bitter tears about the lately made decisions? They should know that inclusion of about 10 million people, brought up under socialism, knowing in reality what life was like under socialism, not from the writings of anti-socialists and anti-communists, some of them masquerading themselves as Marxists etc. These people knew that they had free medical care, schooling, jobs, holidays and freedom of productive labour. These people and their children will never be totally brainwashed as some other people who never lived under socialism. They saw and lived in real socialism, not the socialism that is written about by all these so-called experts and dark forces in the pay of imperialism.
More to the point, not of their free choosing – citizens of this Atlantic alliance, these people in their majority will be telling the truth about their life to all those that have a complete misconception about Socialism. This will also start causing problems for their NATO masters, since the monolithic NATO policy is beginning to burst at the seams.
At the moment these imperialists are laughing, chuckling at their good fortune and with their pockets jingling with profit, and they’re laughing that their plans of profitability and expansion is going so well. Never mind, we think that the day of reckoning is not that far away, when their situation will not be funny at all!
By KONSTANTIN KOLONTAEV
Months before the end of year 2000, Russian bourgeois press had articles bemoaning the problems, catastrophes, economic woes and all this was without any answers as to the remedy needed to overcome this situation.
The question is in the contemporary Western civilization, starting at the end of late 1950s, the standard of their consumption was twice as high as the production level needed to sustain it, and this difference was covered by the exploitation of the "third world" countries. This is the form of "cultural national-socialism" practiced by the West, without having to build concentration camps or to mobilization by force the people in the economic occupied third world countries.
When there was competition and a Western viciously promoted cold war between capitalism and socialism, the multinational financial capital had to find ways and means to placate and try to resolve the cardinal problem that plagues capitalism, when the main mass of people of the West consumes more goods than it produces. That was the time that the main task of imperialism-capitalism was just to guarantee their internal stability. But when in 1991 the socialist system was overturned and liquidated, then the problem plaguing them had to be again resolved and means had to be found to find a solution.
Until the mid 1990s, this problem was being solved in the West to upkeep its standard of living at the expense of the break-up of the USSR –meaning the outright robbery of and the export of strategic mineral rich resources and products to the West.
But by the year 1996, even this reserve was used up. The solution the Western powers thought which would solve this cardinal problem was the purposely-organized financial crisis in South-East countries and Far East in 1997-1998. From their economies there was siphoned out many hundreds of billions of dollars. At the same time, imperialism and their multinationals started the process of amalgamation, buy-outs of huge manufacturing, trade organizations, financial institutions, corporate conglomerates with the view to eliminate much of the workforce and thus wages, social guarantees and benefits.
Even with all of these piracy maneuvers, capitalism was not able to solve the cardinal problem.
The next step by Western imperialists was the attempt at instigating "social revolutions" all over the world. This produced local conflicts, wars, both local and regional and overflowing into the third world war.
This Third World War will be much different from the other two previous ones. The use of arms of mass destruction is not going to be a option, but a fact.
The practical scenario by monopoly capitalism was tried out in 1997-1998 in Indonesia. Here there took place an organized crash of the stock market and banks and, inside of 6 months the standard of living fell by three quarters, which produced great civil unrest, a change in the government, large-scale unemployment and the beginning of the disintegration of the country.
The fall of industrial countries is the second most pressing problem for monopoly capitalism of the USA, since the liquidation of the economic, financial institutions in smaller countries is done easily and more beneficial than for the US monopoly to take on large industrial countries, who are their competitors.
Imperialism and its lackeys in the "left revolutionary" movement that is promoted and heavily financed by Imperialism is the Right Trotskyites, who mask themselves with phraseology of left wing rhetoric, but are the Trojan horses in the left movement. These Trotskyites are very heavily supported by the representatives of world liberalism movement, such as Soros and Bill Gates, while in Russia money flows from Berezovsky, Tretiakov and Belocerkovsky with the consent and nod of the present Putin regime.
That does not mean that this is the end of the struggle. The final conflict is yet to come, because every action has a counter-reaction!
LILYA LITVYAK
By Wolfgang Mueller
Lilya was born in Moscow on August 18, 1921. Her name was Lilya but her nickname was Lilya. She was regarded by all as "a very beautiful woman", which earned her public appreciation and added to her success as fighter pilot during the Great Patriotic War.
She began her service in the all-women 586th IAP, where she flew mostly defense missions from January to August of 1942. In August of that year she was posted to "male" squadrons because of her very high merits. The first was the 286th Fighter Division (IAD) then to the 437 IAP, which had recently been equipped with the new Lavochkin La-5. With this unit she got her first 2 air victories on September 14, 1943. She was sent as an attachment to the female flight of the 287 IAD, and served briefly in the 9th Guards IAP.
At the end of January 1943, she was transferred to the 296th along with two other skilled women fighter pilots. On February 17, 1944, she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. Two days later she was promoted to Junior Lieutenant and soon after that to a Senior Lieutenant.
On each side of her YAK-1’s cockpit she painted a white lily, which was often confused for a rose – hence here nickname. She was so fond of flowers, she often picked wildflowers and carried them aloft on her missions. According to her mechanic, Inna Pasportnikova, she had a post card with yellow roses on it on her instrument panel.
The white rose of the fuselage became famous among the German pilots, who knew better than to try to get involved in a dogfight with the familiar YAK-1 and they usually tried good to make the escape before she got too close.
She was injured 3 times during combat missions. All these injuries occurred during the spring and summer of 1943, a period of intense combat activity. The first time was on March 15, the same day that she shot down a Junkers Ju-88 bomber, and they bagged another Junker 88 bomber. She managed to land at her base, but passed out and she remained in hospital until May of that year.
When she came back. the 296th had been renamed the 73 Guards Division IAP in honour of the exploits in battle. She was wounded again in battle on July 16 and 18 (the death-date of her combat comrade Katya Budanova). Both times she landed in German occupied territory, but got back to her base on foot, the first time, and the second time another fighter pilot landed after she came down and rescued her.
She was very successful in flying missions, but she was killed in action over Orel, while escorting a unit of Shturmoniks returning from an attack on August 1, 1943. Because of her notoriety amongst the Germans, eight German Messerschmitt Me-109’s attacked her fighter plane from all sides, and it took all eight of them to finally shoot down the "White Rose of Stalingrad". Her body and aircraft were not found during the war, but a marble monument, with 12 gold stars – one for each enemy plane she had shot down – was erected in her memory in Krasny Luch, in the Donetsk region.
She had completed 168 missions and besides her own score, she has 3 shared victories in addition to her personal score of 12 German planes she shot down. She was only 22 years old when she died.
Her remains were only found in 1979, buried under her fallen Yak-1’s wing, near the village of Dmitriyevka. Ten years later her body was recovered for an official burial. On May 5, 1990 she was posthumously conferred the title of Hero of the Soviet Union by the order of the USSR Government at that time.
By MARIA DONCHENKO
12 of our comrades, members of the militant AKM (the youth branch of "Trudovaya Rossia") were arrested in December of 2003 in the Ukrainian cities of Nikolaev and Odessa. They were accused of terrorism and having a weapon. The Security Service of Ukraine keeps them in prison in Nikolaev and are torturing them to know the other names of members of the AKM whom they call "terrorists".
These young comrades are Ilya Romanov, Anatoly Plevo, Andrey Yakovenko, Igor Danilov, Oleg Alekseev, Nina Polskaya, Alexandr Smirnov, Evgeny Semenov, Sergey Beldugin, Alexander Gerasimov, Bogdan Zinchenko and Maria Denisov.
NSC and the International Council have sent protests to the government of Ukraine.
With the votes of the right forces in the Russian Duma and the pro-regime parties, they accepted after the second reading a package of reforms to the energy sector. As we know, the upcoming third reading is just a matter of going through the motions and in fact, this new package of laws about Energy in Russia will be a done deal. This was done under the tutelage and pressure from the "Godfather of Russian Privatization" -Chubais and his plans of complete privatization of all government assets. This is the last of non-privatized sectors in the nation.
The fig leaf used to fool the people is that "the state" will have a minority share in the privatized industry or sector…but for how long? The propaganda told to the Russian people is that competition is healthy! It’s the same competition as if your left hand would be competing with your right hand… but this is only possible if the head is in control! This is a clever scheme of the present "democrats" to fill their pockets again through privatization of the Energy Sector of Russia.
We remember that president Putin promised the Russian people that reforms will proceed "not according to Chubais, but with reason." But, nevertheless is according to Mr. Chubais!
Serge Skvortsov, First Secretary
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