News From Former USSR

The "Greys"

A very well know Russian TV personality on TVZ channel, Pushkov, talked much about the "cruel behaviour’ of the "reds" during the "civil war". Of course the "whites" that were financed by Western imperialism were never-ever "cruel".

The leader of the Russian nation nationalists/monarchists, V. Shulgin welcomed a new meaning to this historical epoch by calling some events that transpired as "grey".

What did he really mean, when describing the people that he said were "grey" (reds)? He called them "sadists, nut cases and mentally ill people" who were used by the "reds" to do their cruel work. By using this terminology "Grey", he avoids discussing and pointing out the ideological lines that separated the "reds" from the "whites" thus eliminating the cause of the civil war, the foreign intervention by 17 foreign countries and the life and death struggles as waged by the Communists against the fascist-monarchist scourge.

Unfortunately most of the present Russian capitalist mass media is using this "grey" political tactic to besmirch, obliterate and bury the complete idea of what the "reds" tried to accomplish for the betterment of the people. Thus, they avoid to touch upon the political, economic and social questions of the country.

But the storm is brewing and sooner than later the turn towards change as fought for by the "reds" will come!

Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan. Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan Are Now Nuclear-Free Zone

Last month the above former Soviet republics signed a treaty that set up a nuclear-free zone in Central Asia. But the US, Great Britain and France refused to attend this ceremony which was held in Almaty, capital of Kazakhstan.

US is very perturbed because it had previously signed a treaty with Kyrgyzstan where they established one of six most important military bases in the world. Therefore US is reluctant to give up the option of deploying nuclear weapons in this region in the future. This US base was established five years ago as a hub for multinational operations, since it is in proximity to Afghanistan and this base "Manas" is located near the immense energy reserves of the Caspian Basin, as well as near the Russian and Chinese borders.

According to Jackie Cabasso who heads the "Western States Legal Foundation" in California, wrote: "The United States had drawn up battle plans for the potential use of nuclear weapons in Iraq and was planning to use nuclear weapons against Iran."

Meanwhile David Krieger of the "Members of Nuclear Age Peace Foundation" wrote: "the Bush administration likes to talk about expanding the use of nuclear weapons and the ‘preventive use’ of nuclear weapons and are very negative about countries that want to create or have created a ban on any nuclear weapons within their territory."

This treaty in Central Asia created the first nuclear-weapons free zone in the Northern Hemisphere. Countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia and Africa have already pledged to remain nuclear free.

Far ago, at Catherine II’s time, the Russian writer Alexander N. Radischev was travelling from Petersburg to Moscow. In 2006, during Vladimir V. Putin’s kingship, several VRY(LR) militants made an attempt to travel in the opposite direction. By the way some of them even didn’t make such an attempt but were at home. What was the result – read further.

Our Leningrad militant, a talented and inordinary painter comrade Grusha was detained on July, 7 at the exit from her work at transferring self-made leaflets "Antiglobalism here!!" (a sample of this leaflet is given at the picture). Grusha spent 2 days in the police department, then the court on administrative violation was held and she was sentenced to 10 days of arrest for... indecent abuse in a public place. In the evening og July, 17, the day when the summit was over, Grusha left the detention facility at Zakharyevskaya street.

During the week precedent to the G-8 summit many Moscow militants had to meet FSB [the Federal Security Service] or UBOP [the Organized Crime Department] officers in this or that way, including minor comrades who were demanded to give a written undertaking not to go to Leningrad to the summit. Evidently, the majority of comrades refused to give such an undertaking. As a curious case it is possible to notice that in the evening of July, 14 the policemen came to VRY militant Olga K., a single mother of a 2-year-old son, "invited" her insistently to spend the following day in the police department and they were surprised very much by her refusal reasoned by she had no person to sit with her baby. Yours truly was "met" at the same evening near the ticket-window of the Leningradsky railway station in Moscow and received an insistent advise not to waste my funds: "Masha, don’t spend money, you won’t leave tonight neither by train nor by bus". What a touching concern of communists’ financial condition! How nice it is to be a free citizen in a free country where the freedom of travel is guaranteed by the Constitution!

The adventures of those who managed to reach Leningrad deserve a separate story. On July, 12 a raid was made on one of the apartments where comrades stayed overnight (we cannot give the names in the interests of safety), and an attempt was made to detain them using physical force. One of the comrades who defended himself from the crushers within the limits of self-defence only was threatened by criminal prosecution on the article 318 of the Criminal Code of RF "Violence to representatives of authorities". I must add that in the same evening this comrade being detained succeeded to escape from the police department. To date the problem is solved owing to Leningrad comrades’ aid.

Those who succeeded not only to reach Leningrad, generally by local trains or by autostop (only one of Moscow comrades reached Leningrad by train by a ticket on his name, but during his way he had a conversation with UBOP officers whom he managed to convince that he was going to visit a friend) but also to hold out freeside until July, 15 took an active part in the rally and meeting of the opposition forces. In some days they returned home safely. I consider such experience of extreme travelling will be useful for us.