86 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
86 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
How Russian workers spread the word
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ALEX CHIS, a member of the editorial committee of Independent Politics in
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the United States, was in Moscow in October to attend the international
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labour conference ``Modern Telecommunications: New Vistas for Workers'
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Solidarity'', which was primarily organised by the KAS-KOR Labour
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Information Centre. He describes what labour movement activists are doing to
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establish their own lines of communication.
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KAS-KOR is an independent centre which exists to spread information on the
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workers movement in the ex-USSR. Just three years old, it got its start
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during the coal miners' strikes in 1990 when, as Kirill Buketov, one of the
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main organisers of KAS-KOR, said in an interview in Independent Politics
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magazine:
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``It was a big problem for strike committees to organise an exchange of
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information and how to cooperate because the USSR was a big country. When in
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one city the strike only started, in another city the strike was finished.
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It was a very big problem to organise a coordination of activity in
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different cities. And our official newspapers and magazines and radio and TV
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gave only false information.''
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The fact that the conference took place at all is a tribute to KAS-KOR's
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determination. Yeltsin's coup and the state of emergency threw the
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proceedings in doubt, but they decided too much work had taken place in the
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planning and organisation of the conference, and they would go ahead anyway.
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Just one week before the conference was to begin, the army took over the
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conference site. Organising furiously, with the help of friends such as
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Vassily Balog, of the International Department of the General Confederation
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of Trade Unions, KAS-KOR was able to find an alternative site, at a trade
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union school in the village of Saltikovka, just outside of Moscow. They also
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had to organise a special bus for participants, all this during a curfew and
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state of emergency.
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Among the speakers was Anatoly Voronov, the head of Glasnet, a computer
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network with links to Peacenet in the United States and Pegasus in
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Australia. During the events around the coup, while the print media were
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censored, he put out Glasinfo via electronic mail, making available many of
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the stories which had been censored from the print media.
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This made some of his friends in the West concerned for his safety. But as
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Anatoly said, when Glasnet USA ``sent me a message worrying about the
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censorship in Russia, and asking whether Glasnet ought to be more
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circumspect in the coverage of the situation in Russia, I checked the
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Russian Law on the Press, and discovered that electronic networks are not
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included in the list of mass media.''
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Vassily Balog spoke on ``Modern Technologies: New Possibilities for Workers'
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Solidarity''. During the coup Vassily put out information on the arrests of
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Boris Kagarlitsky and other leaders of the Party of Labour to computer
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bulletin boards, facilitating the mass response leading to their release. He
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is the moderator of a computer conference on labour in the ex-USSR.
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These two typified the type of speakers at the conference, not just computer
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experts but participants in the movement as well. People from throughout
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Russia, from Kazakhstan and Lithuania, as well as the West, participated.
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Although attendance was cut by the October events, the conference was a
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success by any standards.
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KAS-KOR is an activist group consisting of a few paid staff and a much
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larger group of volunteers in Moscow, ages averaging from 21 to 28, who have
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so many projects it's hard to keep up with them. They do a weekly labour
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radio show, on the major radio station in the ex-USSR with a potential
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listenership of about 300 million, which has to be the most widely heard
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labour show in the world. They produce a weekly Russian-language bulletin of
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news on the workers movement, which is distributed to about 500
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organisations. Their network of about 300 correspondents throughout the
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ex-USSR supplies the news.
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They have just begun a new project, producing an attractive new quarterly
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English-language magazine, Russian Labor Review. RLR is able to cover the
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events and debates in the labour movement throughout the ex-USSR in a
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comprehensive way.
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Like KAS-KOR itself, is thoroughly non-sectarian, with articles from a wide
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variety of viewpoints. For anyone at all interested in the ex-USSR or the
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international labour movement, it's a must.
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Subscribers also demonstrate solidarity with the workers movement in Russia,
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and help KAS-KOR in its work of spreading the word on workers' struggles
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throughout the ex-USSR and the world. It is hoped that the financial success
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of this project will make it possible to begin other projects, such as the
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new Russian language newspaper, Workers' Action, a joint project of KAS-KOR
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in Moscow and the NERV centre in St Petersburg.
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