George Gruenthal
|
George Gruenthal |
On August 26 in Toronto, the 16th anniversary of Northstar Compass was celebrated. The meeting was somewhat smaller than expected, with eight members from the Toronto Branch of Canadian Friends of Soviet People, Dr. Adelard Paquin of Montreal, editor of the French edition of NSC, and George Gruenthal from New York City, USA, Secretary of U.S. Friends of Soviet People. The size of the meeting did not in any way prevent an important discussion.
A major topic was once again a location for the Third World Congress of the International Council for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People. It was reported that there will be a meeting of Communist Parties this November in Minsk, Byelorussia to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the October Revolution. Although this meeting will be under the auspices of Zyuganov of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Communist Party of Greece, it will be held with the blessings of President Lyukachenko. It will be attended by comrades of the Workers Party of Belgium and others. These comrades have agreed to inquire about holding the Third World Congress in Minsk, and it was decided to await their report before determining a venue for the Congress.
One other alternative discussed was Moscow, if the Congress can be hosted there by our sister organization, the Soviet Society for Friendship with Foreign Countries, and organized by the International Council. We would also need a reasonable prospect of getting visas for the main delegates from abroad, particularly Michael Lucas, chair of the International Council and editor of NSC. Other possible locations mentioned included Cyprus, Venezuela, Chile, or possibly eastern Germany (former GDR). The fallback, of course, would be to hold the Congress once again in Toronto. Besides the expense of hosting the foreign delegates, it would mean political stagnation of an organization that is still based in Canada.
The meeting discussed the various language editions of NSC. Besides the English edition, which has been published for 16 years, and the French edition, which has been published for seven years, there is now a Russian edition published by the Soviet Society for Friendship with Foreign Countries. Although its publication is still somewhat irregular, it is now printing its fourth issue. The first issue of the Spanish edition, published by comrades of the Communist Party (Proletarian Action) from Chile, has now been printed. This is a tribute to the internationalism of our comrades, who understand the importance of getting the news of the fight for the resurrection of the Soviet Union and socialism circulated in their own languages.
There is a tendency in both the Russian and the Spanish edition to simply translate articles from the English edition (and for the Russian edition this sometimes means retranslating articles that originally appeared in Russian). It was agreed to contact the editors of these editions to request that they use whatever additional material that they think would be useful to their readers.
We also discussed the problem of the time delay for material to appear in NSC. News of an event in the former Soviet Union may be printed a few weeks later in a communist or other progressive paper there; it then takes literally a month until the paper reaches Canada (by airmail!), and it may be almost another month until it is printed in the English NSC. Thus, news of May Day demonstrations may not be printed in English until July and then not in the Spanish or Russian edition until August. Also, photo quality is often poor, as photos must frequently be scanned from newspapers, and then sometimes rescanned for the other editions and for the NSC web site.
This is unnecessary in days of electronic communication. News of events, with quality color photos, are frequently posted on the internet with a couple of days. It would be best of the Soviet parties and organizations, and especially the Soviet Friendship Society, could e-mail these articles and photos to our editor and/or our web-master, so that they could be made use of as soon as possible.
But all readers of NSC are encouraged to help by sending us articles and photos as well. If you find material that would be useful to NSC, please forward it (in Russian or other languages) to:
Editor Michael Lucas:
MLucas3545@aol.com
Web-master George Gruenthal
georgeg@northstarcompass.org
Material to the web-master should include a subject line: For NSC in English letters, not Cyrillic, so that it will not be treated as spam.
Although Michael translates from Russian (as well as other Slavic languages), any translation help from readers, from whatever languages, would be appreciated. Those who can help should contact Michael at the above address.
One other item that was agreed to was to continue the $30,000 financial drive for NSC until the end of 2007. With the contributions that came in during the anniversary celebration, we have now reached about $20,000.
Finally, continued efforts will be made to increase the readership of NSC, in particular in Canada, the U.S. and former Soviet Union. A letter will be sent out to all NSC readers in Canada to ask for help in reviving the chapters of Canadian Friends of Soviet People. A letter will sent to all members of U.S. Friends of Soviet People asking for people to re-subscribe to NSC – readership has declined considerably in the U.S. due to lack of meetings, which has been due to ill health of the director and assistant director. And finally a letter will be sent to all subscribers in the former Soviet Union to encourage them to form chapters of the Soviet Friendship Society.
As can be seen, the meeting was very productive. Also, the celebration was greatly aided by our member, John Baby who is a caterer, who made sure that there was good food and sufficient wine for several rounds of toasts.
Click here to return to the September 2007 index.