From: ww%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (Workers World Service)
Subject: Moscow Workers Reject Privatization
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>
Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1992 08:18:14 GMT


Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


MOSCOW EYEWITNESS:

              Workers mobilize against privatization

                          By Bill Doares
                              Moscow

Life is grim in the former Soviet Union.

The Yeltsin regime's assault on socialist property is causing
tremendous suffering. The crash of the ruble over the past year has
reduced the average worker's wage to the equivalent of $10 a month,
and driven tens of millions below the poverty line.

Older workers say they are eating less today than they did during
the Nazi invasion. Begging, once almost unknown, is a common sight
on Moscow streets.

But working class resistance is also growing. And this fact is
missing from the U.S. media's coverage of the struggle between
Yeltsin's pro-capitalist "reformers" and the Congress of People's
Deputies.

On Dec. 10, at the height of his confrontation with the Congress,
Yeltsin visited the Moskvich auto plant here. He demagogically told
the workers that the "slow pace of reforms" was to blame for the
inflation that is devastating their incomes. The pro-capitalist
press reported that he "received the unanimous endorsement of 1,000
workers."

But there are 30,000 workers in that plant, and Workers World
interviewed several. According to them, Yeltsin was roundly jeered.

100,000 RALLY IN MOSCOW

On Nov. 29 over 100,000 Moscow workers marched to Manezh Square
under communist leadership. And every day the Congress of People's
Deputies met inside the Kremlin, thousands of workers massed
outside to support the communist deputies and demand the ouster of
Yeltsin and his "presidential dictatorship."

An assembly of workers, peasants and soldiers has been called for
Dec. 24. There is talk of an all-Russia political strike.

The pro-communist crowds that gathered in Manezh Square were men
and women, young and old. They represented many of the
nationalities that make up Russia and the former USSR. They easily
outnumbered the well-heeled crowds that gathered to support Yeltsin
and Gaidar.

Most were workers from plants in the Moscow region, though some
came from as far away as Siberia, the Baltics, the Caucasus and
Central Asia. A group of Turkish construction workers in Moscow on
contract was there, waving red flags.

As they waited each night for communist deputies to report on the
struggle inside the Congress, they chanted, "Soviet Union," and
"Bring the Yeltsin gang to trial," and sang revolutionary marching
songs. They spoke about the suffering caused by the capitalist
"reforms."

"Things have changed horribly for the workers in my plant," said
Tatiana Balalaieva, a solderer at a Moscow electronics plant who is
a leader in the Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP). "For the
first time there is real hunger--no milk, no meat, not enough
bread. We are seeing vitamin deficiencies, especially among
children. Prices have shot up, and our wages remain low. Most
workers are now living below the poverty line. Only people with
relatives in the country can get vegetables.

"We hope that Yeltsin and his government can be forced out
peacefully, by mass action," she continued. "We don't want civil
war. But before we allow the restoration of capitalism, we will rip
up the stones of this square and build barricades."

Kola Bukovna, a machine operator who was standing nearby, joined
in. "Workers in my factory can no longer feed their families," she
said. "I will only vote for communists."

Victor Kuznetsov, a collective farmer, had come all the way from
Uzbekistan to protest outside the Congress. He carried a red flag
bearing the emblems of all the former Soviet republics. "All the
workers on my kolkhoz [collective farm], Uzbek and Russian, feel
the same," he said. "I am here to represent them. High prices are
impoverishing us, and next year we may not have jobs. We need to
get rid of Yeltsin, Gaidar and his gang of thieves, and restore the
Soviet Union."

"The so-called independent leaders of Georgia and Armenia are twins
of Yeltsin," a Georgian worker told the crowd. "For the people of
these republics, `independence' means only the freedom to die from
hunger or in nationalist wars meant to distract the people and
break their resistance. Comrades, if you overthrow Yeltsin, our
Yeltsins will fall, and the Soviet Union will be restored by the
people."

Yuri Nosov, a leader of the RKRP, read a message from workers at
the Hammer and Sickle Metallurgical Combine in Moscow. They said
they would occupy the plant before allowing it to be privatized or
closed.

The RKRP, which grew out of the left opposition to Gorbachev inside
the Russian Communist Party, is the most active communist
organization in Russia today. On Dec. 5, it held a constituent
congress in Chelyabinsk in the Urals. The congress called for the
Dec. 24 assembly of workers and peasants, and for establishing
Soviets to resist privatization.

Returning from Chelyabinsk on Dec. 8, RKRP leader Victor Anpilov
told the crowd, "We will build organizations in the factories,
offices, collective farms and army units that will challenge
Yeltsin and the puppets of the International Monetary Fund--the
government that is permitting Soviet people to die of hunger for
the first time since the Great Patriotic War [against Hitler's
armies].

"Socialism will not die," Anpilov said, "and the USSR will not
vanish from the globe. In Russia airplane fuselages are painted
with the tricolor, but in Turkmenia and Kirghizia they preserve the
red flag. In Tajikistan, our comrades are fighting for socialism.
But here in Russia we must mobilize the power of the working class.
The voice of the workers will be heard."

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)


 NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit
 Modem: 718-448-2358  *  Internet: nytransfer@igc.apc.org
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive