Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #37, Summer 1993. ON GOGOL BOULEVARD @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ Neither East nor West: Some History and Reasons for Being By Bob McGlynn On Gogol Boulevard (named after a hangout for Moscow's counterculture) is the infrequently published zine of Neither East Nor West-NYC (NENW-NYC). NENW-NYC networks alternative oppositions in East and West for mutually supportive solidarity (though we're open to anything and also work with the 3rd world and 4th world land-based peoples). OGB also has had sections published in the former Torch and until recently, Love and Rage. (Love and Rage can- celed us and we're fighting to get back in.) Anarchy is now running a 4-pager from us and our section will also appear in Amor Y Rabia (a Love and Rage Spanish edition being published autonomously in Mexico). Fifth Estate ran one section as will the Anarchist Youth Federation Bulletin and Profane Existence. NENW-NYC has its roots going back to 1980 with the formation of Poland's Solidarity free trade union. Individual anarchists and members of the Workers Solidarity Alliance along with the (now defunct) Revolutionary Socialist League hooked up while doing Solidarity support. In 1983, with Soviet exiles, this crew and others formed the New York Trust Group, a sister group to the Moscow Trust Group, a semi-above ground and much persecuted anti- nuclear organization. (Some in the group were also members of the New York-Anti-Nuclear Group and the Brooklyn Anti-Nuclear Group. These two groups helped pioneer putting the struggles of the subjugated in the Russian empire on the anti-nuclear agenda.) New York Trust Group work culminated on Aug. 3rd, '86: After months of secretive preparation, members of the New York Trust Group and Brits from U.K. Trustbuilders were accompanied by the Moscow Trust Group in a post-Chernobyl (and symbolically timed for the Aug. 6 anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing) anti-nuclear leafletting at the entrance to Moscow's Gorky Park. The team was, as expected, busted in 5 minutes and detained by the KGB. The action garnered page 2&3 coverage in major dailies worldwide. One week later two people from the U.K. Greenham Common Women's Peace Encampment repeated the action at the Moscow Zoo, without getting detained. Glasnost was beginning to flower (unknown to many is that it began with Chernobyl) and savage repression against the Trust Group had abated. Sergei Batovrin, its rep abroad in New York, concluded that the special support work could then be put to rest. (One reason for the "Mission to Moscow" was to solidify the umbrel- la of protection Western anti-nukers had provided the Trust Group against complete annihilation at the hands of the KGB.) Months later, many of those involved above plus others formed NENW-NYC to continue the work but with a greatly expanded agenda: mutual solidarity with all the people in the East. That is, not only did we picket for imprisoned draft resisters in Poland, but Poles were asked, if they could, to support struggles here. And yes, they did, for instance with petitioning in favor of NYC bike messengers fighting (and winning) against an attempted ban of bikes in a grid of midtown Manhattan. In the Fall of '87 we published our first issue of OGB (6 to date). It was an immediate hit - nothing like it was being published anywhere. The rest is a lengthy and notable history - we've scored and helped score one success after another (in freeing prisoners etc.). Our unique work pioneered a certain worldwide networking that continues to this day, and is expanding.=20 We're thriving and gaining members. This might seem odd to some who think such work is now pass=82. But current events in Russia with Communists again in the open ought wake people up. We've never wavered in our belief in the continuing validity of our organizing. Unlike other East/West projects, we've seen no reason to stop or even shift gears to any great extent. We're hardly about to abandon our Eastern friends - they'd never consider doing the same to us.... Confusion over the East remains though and so below are some notes justifying our stance of keeping-on, keeping-on RE: "Communism is no more/The East is no more/There's no more East vs. West": "The Soviet empire is dead. Long live the Russian empire." - graffiti in Dushanbe, capitol of Tajikistan (an ex-USSR colony) --The East exists geographically in part, with a shared history and shared present, no matter that the mode of production is supposedly switching (often with seeming impossible difficulty, e.g. Rumania, one of the East states most closely resembling classic Nazism); All the East problems we worked on in the past still continue, i.e., conscription, political prisoners, pollution, censorship, etc., and of course nothing has changed here - as part of what we did/do was/is get Easterners to work on problems that we face here. The fact that some of the East is going the Western route makes joint activism all the more relevant as we'll share the same enemies/problems. And now that communication has been greatly freed up that means it's time to really get organizing, and not to quit; Still, Communists remain entrenched in power positions everywhere in the `Ex' countries: "But I think that behind each breakaway movement is a breakaway demagogue who will set up his breakaway demagogue government. In many breakaway countries the governments now say, on paper, that you are free to be an entrepreneur. Well, that's great if you have the cash to invest. But who has the cash? The party bosses who were there before are the new entrepreneurs. Guys who got thrown out of office wound up buying restaurants, hotels or factories. The drones who were wandering around the streets are still wandering..." -Frank Zappa, Playboy, Apr. '93 (Zappa, a hero of the Czech underground stated, "In Prague, I was told that the biggest enemies of the Communist Czech state were Jimmy Carter and me. A student I met said that he was arrested by the secret police and beaten. They said they were going to beat the Zappa music out of him." Vaclav Havel appointed Zappa to be a special cultural ambassador, but nixed it when caving into pressure from former Secretary of State Baker.) So, many Communists are overnight capitalists and are often changing their stripes to `democrat' or nationalist or fascist. In Slovenia, the most Western of the 6 former Yugoslav republics, Communists hold all key government positions. In Croatia an ex- Communist general, Tudjman, is in power. Serbia has the Communist Milosevic at the reins. Communists are in power in all the 5 former Russian colonies of Central Asia. In Ukraine and Byelorussia the Communist nomenclatura (the Communist administrative apparatus) are firmly in control. `Reformed' Communists were voted back into control of the Lithuanian parliament and the ex-general secretary of the Lithuanian Communist Party, Brazauskas, was voted in as president. (Lithuania was perhaps the most fiercely nationalistic and anti-Communist of all the lands on the Russian periphery.) And Russia?: Gorbachev, Yeltsin, the lot; all were loyal Party hacks, and the Russian parliament is full of unreconstructed Communists. (At press time the tug of war between a dictatorial Yeltsin and a dictatorial parliamentary opposition is still unfolding.) At best, even where obviously the Communists put on a heavy democratic act with real liberalization, their authoritarian manner bleeds thru. And at worst, it's open repression, just as before. Some examples of `liberalization': Uzbekistan: "Uzbekistan is like the old days," Izmetullaev [an opposition leader of the Birlik party] said, "If you want to know what things were like in the Soviet republics, you have come to the right place. We are not allowed to hold meetings in the open. Birlik cannot be a normal party. Two of our leaders were beaten by [president] Karimov's men and must be in exile in Moscow. Several others are political prisoners." -Andrew Kopkind, The Nation, Jan. 18,'93 Ukraine: "It's back to square one," lamented Dora..."After the putsch in Moscow in '91, only one person was removed from the government, and now he is back and has a high position. It's the same old people doing the same old thing. Not only that, but the same old people now have more power because they are not under Moscow's control." -Ibid Lithuania: "There is restrained freedom of peaceful meetings [and] associations...Correspondence with foreign countries is controlled and registered. Telephone conversations are listened to. From the very beginning of the creation of democratic parties and movements, the agents of the KGB carried out their destruction, split them, and if they didn't succeed, created alternative organizations of the same name...[The] government gives subsidies to the parties, movements, and publications which are disposed to it and frustrates economically the others...Our organization is not an exception - KGB agents are permanently libeling our activists, and threatening and persecuting them...Now they are seeking to evict us from our premises...."=20 -May '92 letter from the Social Movement Mutual Assistance to the Berlin May '92 conference "Extreme Poverty, Democracy, and Human Rights in Europe" Poland: "We do not recognize the legality of the existing order of law in the Republic of Poland, because the government has continued to utilize the legal order [Communist constitution] of the Peoples Republic of Poland. In essential spheres the Stalinist constitution of 1952 rules. Key positions at the highest levels continue to be occupied by the co-workers of the UB, SB [Communist security agencies] and foreign intelligence agencies [Soviet GRU and KGB]." -from the platform of Poland's Freedom Party=20 Serbia: "The current Serbian regime allows certain, albeit limited, freedom of the media and functions in conditions of formal democracy...[But] the real nature of Milosevic's regime is predatory or piratical, as are the regimes which existed or are still existing in South America and Africa. In spite of the fact that these regimes are frequently formerly democratic, elections can never remove those who hold it from power." -Branko Milanovic in Borba, Nov. 1, '92 Czech Republic: Anarchists and environmentalists are being busted under a severe riot law held over from the Communists. Results of a Poll: Hungary's Szonda Ipsos institute polled Hungarians, Poles, Czecho-Slovakians, Russians, and Ukrainians as to their satisfaction/dissatisfaction with the state of human rights in their countries as of April '92. With 0=3Dvery dissatisfied and 100=3Dvery satisfied Hungary came in with a high of only 44 and Ukraine with a low of 27.=20 --We still have North Korea, Indochina, Cuba, Pol Pot, Shining Path, armed stalinist movements in Kurdistan, Guatemala, the Philippines and elsewhere. Leninist parties proliferate in the West and 3rd World. China anyone??? --A reversion to closed centralized despotism in the East, however archaic, is an option as a buffer to increasing internal and external economic decay. There's some populist support for this in Eastern countries.=20 --The current competition between Yeltsin and the hardline parliamentarians has revealed what is open talk in Russia of what they call their `hard-right' or `national-Bolsheviks' coming to power. This crew is a mixture of Communists, monarchists, anti- semites, Russian Orthodox Church members, czarists, military higher-ups, and Russian nationalists. It's called the Red(Communist)-Brown(fascist) alliance. There is a literal intermix of them working/demonstrating together. As an example you have the newly formed Russian Communist Party electing an old style Russian nationalist, Gennadi Zyuganov, as its leader in mid-February. Zyuganov is also a leader of the far-right National Salvation Front (NSF). Also from the NSF is Stanislav Terekhov, who heads the Officers Union. The union could become the NSF's military arm. A power vacuum in the military is opening to the advantage of the communists/nationalists: with widespread draft evasion, deferments, and thousands of young officers who fear being thrown out into the civilian economy. The armed forces are now regarded to neither be an effective fighting force nor to have any cohesive order under a central command. The Officers Union rejects the Start-2 Treaty and calls for the restoration of the USSR. Reportedly they've organized secret cells in the military and they openly call for a military dictatorship. At the demonstrations of the reds/browns Soviet hammer and sickle flags fly next to portraits of Stalin and anti-Semitic placards. If they get into power the East will be the East again, and then some. The above are anti-American in the crude sense - and will have nukes. It won't be pretty. Russia is again selling arms to the Chinese and ties between them are increasing. A second cold war could make the first look tame. And you can bet the above wants the empire back. --The East is becoming the category war. War is raging throughout ex-Yugoslavia and the ex-USSR (Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldavia, Arme- nia, and Azerbaijan). Armed conflicts and preparation for the same are reported elsewhere in the ex-USSR. Civil war is openly talked about within Russia. Russia's Muslim area of Chechnya has declared independence for instance. A myriad of violent conflicts may be just around the corner including all of the East countries plus Germany, Austria, Turkey, and Greece. There's no lack of ethnic and territorial scores to settle: Bulgaria and/or Greece seeking ex- Yugoslavia's Macedonia; friction between Armenia and Turkey; friction between Hungary and Slovakia over a joint dam project Hungary canceled and Slovakia is continuing and problems with the formers' large minority in the latter; Germans seeking territory in western Poland lost after WW2; nationalist forces in Austria and Germany seeking resolution for the Sudeten Germans who were first forced to become Czechoslovakian citizens after WW1 and then after WW2 were forcibly expelled to Germany; competition between Rumania and Hungary over the formers' Transylvania with its large Hungarian population; Albania at war with Serbia over Serbia's heavily Albanian Kosovo republic. And what will happen with the US and Russians taking opposite sides vis-=85-vis Serbia? The list goes on. Improbable? One would hope. Impossible? No.=20 --With the 3rd/4th World simply being written off, with technology on the way to for all intents and purposes relatively eliminating the working class as we know it, violent Stalinist insurgency =85 la Shining Path may be an increasingly chosen option. Futuristic portrayals (in many films etc.) of a worldwide fenced-in decay into wholesale barbarism and self-cannibalization/ preying on ones own for the vast majority, alongside a teeny shielded elite, a shield enforced by a super high-tech police state, is not just a simple- minded apocalyptic prediction. As the world is sliding towards this, Nazism/Stalinism may be attractive. Communists turning nationalist/Nazi is well known now.=20 --Time stands relatively still in isolated and enclosed Soviet- type societies. The Communism of the Russian empire and China were/ are simply modern versions of centuries old centralized despotisms (albeit with the ideological fever of a `communist' veneer). The pricking open of these political black holes have and will continue to unleash profound upsurges in many forms from mass strikes (huge ones in the last year in Poland and the ex-USSR hardly mentioned in the US press), to Tiananmen Square massacres, to ethnic/civil wars, to possibly WW3. Over a quarter of humanity is emerging out of a time warp. Lookout.... =20 --Post WW2 is a world with no Nazi movements in power. Yet anti- Nazi/fascist groups and initiatives proliferate. Today of course there are literal threats. But vigilance always must be maintained vis-a-vis Nazism. Why should Communism be treated any differently? Is the East/Communism passe?? Ask an Easterner.... Those are some of the reasons for our continued relevance. We'll need subsidies to mail the other mags carrying us to send to the East/3rd World. Please make checks to the Aspect Foundation and mail to us: Neither East Nor West-NYC, 528 5th St. Brooklyn, NY 11215. THANKS! And if you'd like to see us get back into Love and Rage please drop us a note. See you on Gogol Boulevard! HERE WE GO AGAIN One of the big campaigns in Poland in the '80s was the fight for "alternative service," i.e. civilian service work for those who refused to be forced into mandatory military duty. The fight was mainly fought by Freedom and Peace, Polish anarchists, and supporters abroad, including Neither East Nor West-NYC and others who helped form Love & Rage. Poles eventually did win the fight, but it's been a battle ever since having it implemented. And now they have imprisoned draft resisters once again: Roman Galuszko, 1=AB yrs.; Piotr Krzyzanowski, and Piotr Dawidziak, both 1 yr. The Polish Anarchist Federation, Amnesty International, the Green Federation, Association `Objector', Freedom and Peace, and the Helsinki Committee have had rallies, letter writing campaigns, demos, and concerts for them. This is a major anarchist campaign and international aid is being requested, just as in prior years. PLEASE HELP FREE POLAND'S NEW POLITICAL PRISONERS. LETTER WRITING CAMPAIGNS OFTEN WORK - IT IS NOT A WASTE OF TIME! Please send protest letters demanding the release of the prisoners and an end to forced military training to: Lech Walesa, Wiejska 10, Warszawa, Poland. (Actions at Polish embassies/consulates are called for also.)=20 For more info: Association `Objector', 50-040 Wroclaw, Ul. Pilsudskiego 15/17, pok. 15, Piatki godz. 17-19, Poland, Tel: 44- 46-51 / Jacek Sierpinski, Info Office of Polish Anarchist Feder- ation, c/o An Arche, Uniwersytet Slaski, Bankowa 12, 40-007 Katowice, Poland. `ZAPO' - NEW ANARCHIST GROUP IN CROATIA Dear Friends, We are a group of people from Zagreb, Croatia. We have recently formed an anarcho-pacifist organization called ZAPO (Zagabrian Anarcho-Pacifist Organization). Although we've worked together before, we didn't have any place to work together until Dec. '92. Things we did before: -We've organized anti-war and anti-politics demonstrations. It wasn't allowed by police and only 20-30 people showed in June of '91. -We made the first issue of the anarcho-pacifist fanzine called Comunitas. About our first issue: In the article `Anarchism' we wrote of anarchist basics and eco-anarchism. We took some ideas from old anarchists (Bakunin, Kropotkin, Proudhon) and also from eco-anarchist Murray Bookchin. Of course we put forward our own ideas too. In the `Pacifism' article we gave our opinion about the war and its senselessness, which we felt personally though we weren't directly involved (we didn't serve in the army and we refuse to). We also had articles about ideologies opposite to anar- chism (nazism and racism). Of course we wrote about them in a negative context. Things we are doing now: -We are making a new issue of Comunitas together with people from the Anti-War Campaign Croatia. -We're trying to contact as many more people as we can to exchange material, ideas etc. What we plan to do: -Further work on the zine. -Making posters, stickers, etc. -Organizing protest meetings. -Other things connected to anarchism. We need any kind of help from organizations outside Croatia. That help is needed 'cos we work in very hard conditions. (It's still war here. Average income is low. There's also enormous inflation.) If you would like more information about us, or get materials from Croatia, please write: ZAPO c/o ARK, Tkalciceva 38, 41000 Zagreb, Croatia, Tel: 041-422- 495, Fax: 041-335-230. Many warm regards, Vanja Goldberger PARTIAL VICTORY FOR NIGERIAN ANARCHISTS By Bob McGlynn Anarchist/revolutionary syndicalist political prisoners from Nigeria's Awareness League (AL) - Udemba Chuks, Garba Adu, Kingsley Etioni, and James Ndubuisi - won some reprieve Jan. 29th when they were conditionally released on bail (they must report to the State Security Service each week). Arrested seven months ago during a wave of worker/student unrest protesting IMF/World Bank imposed austerity plans, they were detained under the notorious "Decree #2" - a catch-all "preventative detention" law. At a Calabar court hearing Jan. 25th their lawyer, Ifeanyi Nnajiofor, demanded a grant of bail. On hand were 100 AL members plus (according to a Feb. 1 AL communique) "scores of journalists, activists, members of the Nigerian Bar Association, and interested members of the public." Then on Jan. 29th "we won our greatest legal battle yet...[when for] the first time we would set our eyes on them in seven months. They looked badly emaciated, weak and sick." Setting a legal precedent poking a hole in Decree # 2, the judge granted bail, and set the next court appearance for Feb. 18th. Then as the four left court "there was an attempt to have our colleagues re-arrested out- side the premises, but this was stoutly resisted by the crowd." They were then promptly hospitalized and advised to have a two week stay. The AL has info that the military may try to have the men re- arrested once again. This would not be uncommon in Nigeria where the judiciary and the military are constantly at odds. In our last letter from the AL Feb. 28, the four have had their bail extended but must report to the State Security Service each day. One of them still remains hospitalized. The AL says "Judgement in the main suit is not expected before the end of April, 1993." The central suit maintains that the states action in detaining the 4 without charge was illegal, and that Decree #2 against them should be dropped. "We thank you immensely for your solidarity so far in our struggle to free our four colleagues. We can only ask you not to relent in your efforts." -From AL letter Feb. 28 The U.S. Workers Solidarity Alliance (WSA) and Neither East Nor West-NYC (NENW-NYC) have successfully spearheaded a worldwide cam- paign for the AL. A week of protests at Nigerian embassies was called for Feb. 22-26 with confirmations of actions by anarchists in Moscow, Rio de Janeiro, Dublin, NYC, London, Berlin and Hamburg. (Anarchists were ready to demonstrate in countries like Bulgaria and Norway but they lacked Nigerian targets.) Petitions and protest letters have been received from Argentina, Japan, Turkey, South Korea, Russia, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, India, Norway, Ireland, Holland, Spain, Poland, the U.S., South Africa, Bulgaria (almost 700 names on petitions!), Germany, and the U.K. Anarchist publications worldwide have covered the story. Special thanks to Love and Rage newspaper who mailed an international appeal for AL, and the International Workers Association and Spain's National Confederation of Labor for sending $500 each to AL for legal fees. The question of money is of special priority. Ifeanyi Nnajiofor, the AL's lawyer, must travel 1000 kilometers from Lagos to Calabar, Nigeria. As of last Dec. the AL had a $12,000 debt for legal and other fees. Ifeanyi is being extremely thoughtful and generous according to the AL, but his expenses are obvious and he must be paid. WSA and NENW-NYC know that over $1000 has been received by AL from anarchists abroad, and since that helped keep Ifeanyi afloat, it's no exaggeration to claim that the international campaign played a part in AL's bail victory, possibly saving the lives of these men (you don't get fed in Nigerian jails). International Money Orders or U.K. Bank Checks can be mailed directly to: Awareness League, c/o Samuel Mbah, POB 28, Agbani, Enugu State, Nigeria. Foreign currency goes a long way now in Nigeria with $1 equaling a third of a months wage - and it costs a third of a months wage to mail a letter out of Nigeria! As a fundraising effort for AL, their communiques will be made available for a contribution sent to: NENW-NYC, 528 5th St., Brooklyn, NY 11215, U.S. (Of course AL's letters are in the public domain and are available for a $1 worth of postage and xeroxing fee, but please try to send more.) For more info: WSA, 339 Lafayette St. Rm. 202, NY, NY 10012, U.S., Tel: 212-979-8353 RAPE IN EX-YUGOSLAVIA By Manuella Dobos In July, 1992, the US media reported on Serb detention camps for non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Soon after, the European and US press brought the story of mass gang-rapes of overwhelmingly Muslim, but also Croatian women of all ages by Serb troops. Many people resisted what might be media manipulation to get people to take sides. By January, '93, however, many authenticated reports (from, among other sources, special investigative bodies from the European Council, Amnesty International and Helsinki Watch) showed there was mass rape in towns and villages taken by the Serbs in detention camps and in special brothel-camps. This sexual abuse was often in towns and villages taken by Serbs, public, sadistic and ending in death for the women. They also reported the deliberate incarceration of impregnated victims so that they would no longer be able to get abortions upon release. Women's groups in both Serbia and Croatia also brought the news out as these victims turned up in refugee centers. The war in for- mer Yugoslavia then became real for many women in the US and Europe. That old war crime, rape, was again being used by one side of warring males against the other. Women have begun to mobilize. However, there are problems with how to respond: although there is evidence that Croatian and Bosnian/Muslim soldiers have sexually abused Serb women, all the information indicates that mass rape, along with starvation and massacre is a part of Serbian "ethnic cleansing" of non-Serbs from vast areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. This has been the purpose of Serbian aggression against unarmed civilians. Serbia, with the fifth largest army in Europe, supplies the Bosnian Serbs while Bosnian Muslims are under an arms embargo on the whole region imposed by the U.N. back before the war started. It is this fundamentally unequal situation which has led to 100,000 deaths and an expected 200,000 more before the end of the winter. Already over a million of the original non-Serb population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, 44% of which was Muslim, are refugees. The right-wing nationalist Croatian government has also taken advantage of this situation to carve out an ethnic Croatian enclave in Bosnia-Herzegovina. On the other hand, some feel that directing all protest against the Serbs is playing into the hands of the Croatian or Bosnian male nationalists who aren't great champions of the human rights of women. Serbian aggression and genocide are winning because the U.N., the European Community and the US do not want to stop aggression and genocide. Consequently many women feel that the issue of rape must mean taking sides. Nevertheless, women can move together. Women's groups in ex- Yugoslavia are asking for help from US feminists. For US feminist groups involved contact: Network of East West Women, Sonia Jaffe Robbins, Dept. of Journalism, NYU, 10 Washington Pl., NY, NY 10003, Tel: 212-998-7966, Fax: 212-995-4148. Ex-Yugoslavia contacts: The Autonomous Women's House in Zagreb, Croatia cares for rape victims--C/O ARK, Tkalciceva 38, 41000 Zagreb, Croatia,=20 Fax: 38-41-271-143. The SOS Helpline serves women and children who are victims of violence--C/O Center for Anti-War Activities, Kralja Petra 46, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia, Tel: 38-11-322-226, Fax: 38-11-635-813. Women in Black is a prominent group that holds anti-war vigils-- C/O Stasa Zajovic, Dragoslava Povica 9/10, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia, Tel: 38-11-624-666. Wanna throw a benefit for these groups? Contact: Neither East Nor West-NYC, 528 5th St., Brooklyn, NY 11215, Tel: 718-499-7720.