Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways.  The point however is to change it.  Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
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No 0720 October 5th 1993                                                                                                                       10p 
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The ever-mounting problems facing Yeltsin's rule reflect the deepening crisis for reactionary- imperialist forces everywhere as capitalist slump wrecks economic hopes. This was no new 'October' but one step towards a new spontaneous February revolt, held back only by the lingering confusion sown by anti-communist 'leftism' now heading fast right.

The revolts against creeping capitalist counter-revolution in the former Soviet Union are getting bigger.

The August 1991 attempt to return to planned socialist stability was led by just a handful of ex-leading bureaucrats who had ludicrously helped Gorbachev to start liquidating the dictatorship of the proletariat in the first place.

The October 1993 attempt to halt the relentless onslaught on the old workers-state stability by the influences of Western market-imperialist reaction has originated with wider sectors of the ex-USSR around parliament.

What will finally be decisive, however, is when broad layers of workers begin taking the revolt into their own hands against the revival of free-enterprise exploitation in their midst, - at some stage in the not-too-distant future when the effects of slump, mafia-corruption, and poverty-wealth inequalities have become intolerable, - as they are becoming intolerable all over the capitalist world.

In 1991, no shots were fired, and the politburo apparatchiks in revolt were out-manoeuvred by their own stumbling lack of any vision to replace that of the 'one world order' christian-pacifist Gorbachev and the inebriated opportunist oaf Yeltsin.
And although there has been some spontaneous insurrection to back up the 1993 revolt, there has still been no real leadership capable of stirring up the masses to fight seriously in their own interests against the advance of capitalist domination.

Rutskoi and Khasbulatov are hopeless anti-Leninist philistines themselves, and were actually helping Yeltsin in 1991 to start trying to put together a potential dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. They know nothing of appealing to the class interests of workers to take a stand against the forces of world imperialism:

"They are murderers. They are shooting point-blank, crushing people with tanks. If you are a real Christian, you have to do something," the vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, screamed over the telephone at the constitutional court's chairman, Valery Zorkin.

Ruslan Khasbulatov, the other rebel leader, sat with his tie awry, muttering: "I never thought he [Yeltsin] would do this. Why isn't anyone coming to help us?"

At dawn tanks rolled in, shooting at the building and forcing spectators to flee. The defenders responded with volleys of shots.

Mr Khasbulatov denied minutes before his arrest that the uprising's leaders had ordered Sunday's attack on Moscow's main television centre.

"We never ordered the television attack. This was pure provocation," Mr Khasbulatov told a French television crew. "I only heard about [the attack] on my way to the parliamentary session. All this was organised in order to discourage our sympathisers."

We put to him that they had incited the crowd to attack the mayor's office, the Kremlin and the television station. "None of that is true," Mr Khasbulatov said. "I never gave such an order." The attack on the Ostankino Tower was, he said, a spontaneous initiative by an infuriated crowd.

He denied that the people who came here to defend the parliament were fascists and provocateurs. "They were ordinary people of all kinds. We could not send away people who had come to defend the parliament."

Mr Rutskoi was listening. We asked him: was he afraid of dying?

"I am afraid for those close to me," he said. "I have two brothers and they are both here,
with me. I don't want them to die like this. I am afraid that my wife Lyudmilla and my two children may be left alone."

Only very dimly are these opportunist parliamentary layers grasping now the obviously brutal and authoritarian route that capitalism must pursue if it is ever fully to get back into the saddle in Russia:

PRESIDENT Boris Yeltsin moved swiftly last night to stamp bis absolute power on Russia by suspending a range of political movements and closing opposition newspapers after the surrender of his main parliamentary opponents in the wake of the assault on the Russian White House.

Under a decree following the state of emergency which Mr Yeltsin imposed on Sunday, the National Salvation Front, the Russian Communist Party, the United Front of Workers and the Union of Officers were banned, while Pravda, the former organ of the Soviet Communist Party, and a number of other papers were told to cease publication.

An overnight curfew was also imposed throughout Moscow.

The ministry of justice justified the clampdown on the grounds that the groups banned had supported the armed uprising launched by hardliners on Sunday afternoon.

With elections promised in December for a new bicameral parliament the bans will severely limit the options for Russians who oppose Mr Yeltsin. They will also remove the risk that those unhappy with the government's tough economic reforms will vote for communists on the model of Poland.

The bans, which were formally signed into effect by Yuri Kalmykov, the justice minister, also hit opponents of Mr Yeltsin in the army. Beside the Union of Officers, a radical movement called Shield was also outlawed. Mr Yeltsin clearly wanted to send a powerful signal to the army that political activity was forbidden.

There is no doubt that the leaders of the groups banned were among the defenders of the White House. As if to underscore this, arrest warrants were issued last night for Ilya Konstantinov, co-leader of the National Salvation Front and another prominent hardliner, Viktor Anpilov.

But Mr Yeltsin's ban echoed his action two years ago in banning the Russian Communist Party. The Constitutional Court later ruled that he had no right to ban an entire organisation because of the actions of its leading bodies.

With the collapse of the parliamentary opposition, most of its key figures were under arrest last night, including the former vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, and Ruslan Khasbulatov, parliament's speaker.

But it emerged that on Sunday night police had detained two deputies of the Moscow City Council, Boris Kagarlitsky and Vladimir Kondratiev, who had no connection with the rebellion. The men were reportedly released last night.

"I DON'T like Den or Pravda but I'm against censorship," said Yurii Schekochikhin, chief investigative reporter for the liberal weekly Literaturnaya Gazeta.

His paper, which shares a printing press with the nationalist anti-Semitic daily Den, has been hit by Mayor Yurii Lushkov's decision to ban Den, Pravda and other papers which support Alexander Rutskoi and Ruslan Khasbulatov. Its publication this week is in doubt because of the closure of the printing presses.

Tass quoted the information ministry as saying the newspapers were controlled by organisations involved in an armed uprising on Sunday.

At Sevodnya, another Moscow liberal daily, which was founded earlier this year and, unlike most Russian newspapers, is privately financed, today's paper will concentrate on chronicling events rather than commenting on them.

Since Boris Yeltsin's announcement of emergency rule in Moscow a press censor is in effect. None of the big dailies came out yesterday.

"Tomorrow we may have to leave blank spaces on our pages," Dmitrii Frolov, one of Sevodnya's journalists, said. "Our position is that we understand what happened yesterday was the only possible outcome of this situation. But questions remain unanswered about Yeltsin's actions," he said.

And even then these deluded 'democratic' circles and their supporters fail to identify for workers the only real alternatives in this class conflict, - either domination by the forces of international imperialist counter-revolution at one end, - or domination by the forces of proletarian dictatorship at the other.

Even when spontaneous insurrection (against hypocritical, unjust, and brutal autocracy, such as Yeltsin's farcical reign represents), reaches February 1917 proportions, - which might have happened this time and will almost certainly happen next time, there will still be the greatest problem of all to overcome, - that of the apparent absence still of the remotest scrap of Marxist-Leninist scientific leadership to carry spontaneous revolt through to successful re-establishment of proletarian-dictatorship revolution (in the face of worldwide bourgeois reaction and intervention) such as the Bolsheviks provided between February and October in 1917.

But meanwhile, the world inter-imperialist warmongering crisis, the sharpest expression of the capitalist system's insoluble contradictions which are the main driving force of all modern history, is still continuing to clarify some key points bit by bit.

Because the extreme exploitation conditions of the worldwide free-market slump have forced the privatisation measures (introduced into Russia by anti-Leninist reaction of all kinds) to have such a devastating early impact, the real face of Western pluralist 'democracy' has been shown up yet again almost immediately:

Yesterday they were nose to nose with riot shields and could not contain their rage at what the "demokrati", a word spat out with venom, had done to the country.

Two 17-year-old women, wearing smart Western macs, stood by unimpressed: "You call these people intelligent?" Marina said. One of the knitted beret brigade turned on her. "What money do you live on, then?" Another replied: '"They are probably prostitutes."

Marina stood her ground: "My father is a plant director in Podolski and my mother works in a kindergarten" — as if this information was enough to flatten the highest of barricades.

The two girls were students "in flower arranging", one said proudly.	1

"So you know the price of things, on a grant of 8,000 roubles ($8) do you? You say that 8,000 roubles is enough to buy food and that you can live off that?" the older woman snarled. She had won the argument, implying, probably rightly, that the two girls lived off handouts from their parents.

The girls stood arguing, symbols of the new Russia that Yeltsin wants to promote. The old women turned their backs. The police cleared the barricade. "It will be here again tonight," jeered the crowd.

All this took place outside a metro station called Barricadnaya. I asked someone why. "Oh this is where the 1905 revolution started," came the nonchalant reply.

The 'free'-world hero Yeltsin has for a fortnight laid siege to the Parliament, cutting off electricity, heating, water, and telecommunications, etc, just to resolve a 'constitutional' impasse over how and when to impose cuts in living standards in Russia, and how and when to hold new elections to resolve that impasse.

Instead of compromising with the Parliament's different proposed schedule for balloting and with the Constitutional Court's verdict that neither the Presidency nor the Parliament had absolute authority on the issues in contention, Yeltsin deliberately put in the violence boot, - with full support and encouragement from the West, - physically threatening the parliamentary building and its inhabitants, and making the legal parliament's work impossible.

So much for 'democracy'.

The further gross provocations were the censorship of the pro-parliament press, and the transformation of the national television and radio networks into total Yeltsin propaganda vehicles.

And when the parliamentarians were finally provoked into striking out against the 1984-style propaganda monopoly and the local governmental bullying, Yeltsin seized his chance to kill his enemies and wreck their assembly building.

For this, he received yet another Western accolade on the grounds that "Yeltsin was democratically elected" and that the Parliament of nearly 1,000 MPs did "contain communist hardliners", etc.

So much for 'democracy'.

And one of the worst temporary results of the defeat of the parliamentary opportunists is that there has been no chance on this occasion to demonstrate once again that 1984 type thought control is still powerless frequently when events are being forced in a direction which the natural progress of class-struggle history is refusing to take.

Far too few anti-imperialist forces were roused to fight bourgeois dictatorship in this showdown. But it is also much more noticeable that the Yeltsinite reaction could rally no public support at all, despite the total misleading and provocative press and television manipulation, - (including the evil role played by the 'free'-world news media which have been dictating the 'result' they wanted to see long in advance, regardless of whether it proved accurate or not, on the CIA calculation, usual in such cases, that if the world's agencies are humming with the idea that 'Yeltsin is winning', it will flood back into Russia and change confidence to help that come true, - but that if it proves wrong, no one is going to remember that much later).

The ultimately futile role of this CIA worldwide 1984-type thought control escaped exposure this time; but all that such reckless deception will achieve is to divorce the moribund US imperialist bourgeoisie more and more from reality.

The planet is not going back to becoming a safe place for imperialist capital to exploit and dominate in every corner of the globe.

By believing that its CIA black propaganda and dirty tricks in support of reactionary regimes (like Yeltsin's) all round the world will secure supremacy for American capitalism for all time, the US ruling class is simply plunging itself ever deeper into grotesque illusions which can only end in an almighty crash when the markets-collapse finally catches up with the unsustainable postwar dollar-inflationary boom.

Once again, short-term advantages will encourage the stock exchanges and the money markets briefly, and will demoralise the anti-imperialist struggle still further.

But the longer-term view is the only one that counts.

Human society has had a long period of workers states now which were minus any capitalist, free-enterprise bourgeoisie, and minus imperialist domination.

And they worked, - remarkably well, considering the unfavourable circumstances of imperialist hostile encirclement and sabotage, the backwardness of the countries involved to begin with, and the wretchedness of the revisionist philistinism which eventually recaptured the leadership role there, ousting Marxist-Leninist philosophy of conscious uninterrupted world socialist revolution as the only perspective for all of man-kind.

Those colossal cultural, economic, and political/military achievements, and heroic anti-imperialist sacrifices are so clearly the only future for the whole world society that the present period of reactionary doubt must rank as the most deceptive passage of history on record.

But periods of black reaction are precisely what have occurred previously before the next great leaps forward in civilisation's attempts to overcome once and for all the painful and destructive contradictions inherent in the capitalist system of periodic inter-imperialist arms-race warmongering to settle global cut-throat trade-war competition which cannot be settled in any other way. The 1907-1917 fearful reaction, particularly in Russia, only prepared the ground for all-the-more-earthshattering a breakthrough in October 1917 to replace for the first time in history the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie in the only way possible, - by the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The terrifying reaction of 1931-1941 only presaged an even mightier advance by revolutionary forces post 1945 when the whole world knew that it had the imperialist system to thank for setting up German, Japanese, and Italian fascist aggression to begin with, and the Socialist Soviet Union to thank for being able to provide the only worthwhile obstacle to this holocaust of inter-imperialist warmongering.

The period of worldwide ideological reaction now, - opening the door again for degenerate pro-imperialist violence of all kinds from Somalia to Moscow, the real fascism, - is also only the precursor of renewed revolutionary advance shortly on a far vaster and more decisive scale than ever before.

One cause of confusion still holding workers back from thinking in terms of a communist class-war challenge against the insane and criminal impositions on them from the slump, trade-war, and arms-race warmongering effects of the capitalist crisis, - is the scandalous, treacherous role of the fake-'left', - the Trotskyites and others who have flourished as 'pure communists' in the postwar epoch of profound ideological reaction against the USSR and the socialist camp because in reality they are the most demented anti-communists of all, - extreme individualist petty-bourgeois who are bitterly hostile to the dictatorship of the proletariat, - the deepest wisdom of Marxist-Leninist science.

Redgrave is one such prominent Trot reactionary, symbolic of all the rest, who is currently declaring her solidarity with Clinton and Yeltsin fascism in a follow-up to the barmy Trot campaigns in support of Muslim fundamentalist reaction in Bosnia:

President Clinton has rightly supported President Yeltsin against the various groupings of nationalists and fascist parties which support Khasbulatov and Rutskoi.

Such is the ravaged confusion that the poison of anti-communism can inflict on middle-class minds.

Listen to what even the Daily Mail is prepared to admit about the really fascist authoritarianism in Moscow, even while supporting it and its usefulness for the cause of imperialist reaction worldwide (which the Trots ludicrously accept as being synonymous with 'democracy'):

JUST before midnight on Tuesday Alexander Rutskoi was sworn in as President of Russia by a rebel parliament only hours after it had been abolished by President Yeltsin.

By breakfast time there can't have been a single newspaper reader in the Western world who didn't know this. Plenty didn't in Russia, though.

Rutskoi's appointment wasn't reported here until the early evening news gave it a derisory mention nearly 24 hours after the event.

And while foreign correspondents spent the night shivering outside the White House with a bunch of hostile hardliners waiting for the troops, relaying words and pictures of barricade-building and armed parliamentary defenders to the world, Russian stations didn't run an inch of film on the resistance speeches by Rutskoi or Parliamentary speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov.

Defiance

They vaguely flashed a couple of video-clips across the screen instead.

As for newspaper readers, unless they happen to subscribe to the parliamentary mouthpiece, Rossiskaya Gazetta, they probably don't even know that they now have an alternative minister for defence, the interior or KGB — nor that parliament is currently in session in defiance of Yeltsin's decree.

The staggering bias of Russia's media in favour of Yeltsin has left foreigners in Moscow gasping as local journalists faithfully report the President's every word with near adulation whilst dismissing his opponents, when they are mentioned at all, with a snide condescension which would be unthinkable on British television.

Alexei Abakumov, an interviewer for Russian television, admits it is not the sort of reporting you might expect 'in a civilised country'.

But he adds: 'Our country is at the edge of the abyss of civil war. When I ask a question I have to think of the reaction of angry, hungry Russians who are sick of politics.'

Referring to an occasion when he failed to grill the chairman of the Central Bank on exactly who was responsible for the disastrous currency reform which threatened to wipe out Russians' savings last month, he says: 'What if it had emerged that Yeltsin was responsible and the people go and surround the Kremlin walls and bring down the government? And chaos breaks out? What then?'

Yevgeny Kiselyov, former presenter of Russia's most popular and authoritative weekly news programme, Itogi, and well known as a staunch Yeltsinite, says he and his colleagues cannot afford to remain impartial in today's Russia.

He insists that because the country is in crisis he cannot approach stories the way that reporters in the West do. 'We are not only journalists. we are representatives of political parties,' he says.

There is little doubt that the unswerving support of most of the fourth estate has contributed to Yeltsin's continuing popularity and helped clinch his April referendum victory.

And yes, perhaps it is true that reporters in a country that is teetering on the brink of civil war have an extra responsibility to measure their words carefully.

But to defend partisanship is a dangerous argument.

This time they are on the 'right' side, just as Yeltsin is on the 'right side' in his flagrant breach of the constitution.

Trotskyism's deranged fake-'left' stance is just as badly exposed for its real anti-communist essence by its bizarre support for the phony 'independence and justice' claims by reactionary Muslim fundamentalism in the Bosnian region of the former Yugoslav workers state, broken up by imperialism (with Trot support) so as to destroy Serbian efforts to keep some workers-state institutions together in order to resist imperialist pressure and prevent the West's plans for complete Balkanisation of the region (to make super-exploitation all the easier).

Against the Abkhazians' far better claim to self-determination (now that the Georgian region of petty 'great nationalism' has left the protective umbrella of the former Soviet Union), Redgrave backs the darlings of Western imperialist reaction, - Yeltsin, Grachev, and Shevardnadze.

But for the wholly ludicrous nonsense of Muslim fundamentalist tyranny wanting to carve out a territory for itself in Serbo-Croat speaking and ethnically South Slav Bosnia, these Trots cannot pull enough anti-communist propaganda stunts with stage-managed rallies, round-robin bourgeois letters to the press, convoys from the hopelessly reformist Timex trade-union debacle to the near-feudal reactionary Izetbegovic, whose failed backward nonsense even the imperialist media are growing cynical about:

All of this notwithstanding, it does now appear that the ruling elite is bent on erecting a Muslim state. This week's rejection in Sarajevo of the Geneva peace plan is not a rejection of partition. Mr Izetbegovic's party now seems to support the carve-up. It just wants a bigger slice of the cake.

It is also embarked on a centralising drive apparently aimed at concentrating power in its hands through government reshuffles and changes in the collective presidency or head of state. This is where the biggest obstacles to the creation of a Muslim state lie. The population of the proposed country is around 30 per cent non-Muslim.

FIGHTING erupted between rival Muslim forces in the breakaway Bosnian pocket of Bihac yesterday for the first time since a local business tycoon, Fikret Abdic, proclaimed an "autonomous province of western Bosnia" there a week ago.

According to the government army commander in the region, ordered by President Alija Izetbegovic to put down the revolt, nine people were killed in the village of Johovica.

Last night fighting was also reported in Skokovi, a village which was on the edge of territory held by Mr Abdic but is now in the hands of the Bosnian loyalist army.

To the north lies Velika Kladusa, power base of Mr Abdic, a wheeler-dealer businessman and former member of the Bosnian presidency, whose separatist movement is largely the outcome of Sarajevo's rejection last Tuesday of the Geneva peace accord.

The dissident leader, eager to normalise relations with Serbs and Croats, has accused the government of prolonging the war to the detriment of the long-suffering Muslim community.

Confronting the rebels is the might of the Bosnian army's Fifth Corps, commanded by General Rasim Drekovic, which has swept northwards from its stronghold in Bihac town, at the southern limit of the region, restoring government authority by seizing radio stations and municipal buildings held by Mr Abdic's followers.

In the Velika Kladusa region, Mr Abdic is regarded as a folk hero who single-handedly saved the enclave from hunger and military defeat at the hands of the encircling Serbs.

"Izetbegovic brings us war and Daddy [Mr Abdic's nickname] brings us peace and prosperity," said Hussein Munjahovic, a company employee aged 24, as he hopped on a bus destined for a rally.

From his company offices on the outskirts of town, Mr Abdic dictates orders to his forces, a detachment of civilian police and two local army brigades. "We will not tolerate Izetbegovic's military dictatorship," he booms defiantly. "We must preserve our autonomy."

"Drekovic and his men are Muslim fundamentalists. They want to drag us back to the dark ages. We won't submit to them. We are Europeans and want good relations with our neighbours," said Senad Pezovic, aged 32, raising his gun in the air triumphantly after the convoy withdrew.

The paradox of all this is that the whole East European problem for Trotskyism since 1917, - hatred of which has been the sole explanation for the remarkable success of these Trot 'communists' in the West since then, - has become even worse for their twisted ideology now that the revisionist regimes in the workers states have collapsed, at last fulfilling Trotskyism's lifelong ambition to 'overthrow Stalinism'.

This was always just a cover for petty-bourgeois individualist hatred of the dictatorship of the proletariat, however, - (extending Trotsky's lifelong middle-class hatred of having to accept better and wiser leadership than he himself could provide).

Fishing in the muddy waters of every anti-Soviet and anti-communist stunt of the relentless Cold War on the USSR ever since 1917, the Trotskyite fake-'left' mentality had to dream up the sick 'Marxist' invention of the 'political revolution'.

This would allegedly be able to take advantage of all communism's imagined 'difficulties' (as chronicled or invented by the capitalist press and as fanatically recycled by the bourgeois Trots), in order to 'overthrow Stalinism' but without jeopardising the survival of the 'degenerated' workers state (or the 'deformed' workers state in the case of East Europe and China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc, according to the near-religious and totally demented Trotskyite litany).

But this 'political revolution' cant was always a complete fraud, revelling as the Trots did in every scrap of anti-communist propaganda in the West which could only ever lead to counter-revolution gaining strength again throughout the world, helping further to demoralise Moscow revisionism towards total liquidation, and ensuring the triumph of reaction on the final debris of the workers states.

This is exactly as the ILWP alone explained would happen when challenging the entire Trotskyite fake-'left' (from the 'Leninist' to the RCG and the Sparts) for refusing to support Polish workers-state proletarian dictatorship against Solidarnosc fascist-nationalism in 1980, - and it is exactly as it has turned out.

The Trots' problem is that they now cannot escape the plain historical evidence of their actions, - that what in fact they have been backing is "Better no workers state at all rather than a degenerated or deformed workers state".

In other words, either any workers, in revolt anywhere, come up with a perfect socialist state straightaway, or else the Trots will help Western anti-communist propaganda to destroy it.

It requires no brains at all to realise that such 'support for revolution' can only operate inside the 'permanent' closed minds of petty-bourgeois intellectuals (and their handfuls of deranged supporters) whose 'perfect' armchair-socialist strategies never go far beyond the ivory-tower comfort of their pampered Western middle-class existence.

For the forces of real proletarian struggle trying against phenomenal odds and against all kinds of weaknesses and disabilities to grind out some kind of socialist-state victory over imperialist reaction anywhere round the world from Angola to Vietnam, from China to Cuba, from East Europe to Ethiopia, etc, - Trotskyism will only offer a further Western spit in the eye.
But now these petty-bourgeois anti-communist 'revolutionaries' are embarrassed by all of the enormous turmoil caused by the collapse of the revisionist regimes in what were supposed to be only joke workers states, where there was no 'real socialism', and where in fact workers were not only 'just as badly exploited as in the West' but on top of that were forced to live under 'utterly-inhuman tyranny' , etc.

So why this quite serious revolt in Moscow representing the feelings of millions of ordinary people who would prefer the USSR to be restored as it was even, to the current chaotic mess?

Why are such hopeless parliamentary opportunists as Khasbulatov and Rutskoi bothering to fight at all when they could be just like revisionist/reformist cretins everywhere and just take the money or post on offer to give up their struggle?

Why did Western imperialism, which according to the Trots always pulled the strings anyway behind Moscow's counter-revolutionary role in the international workers movement, decide to change what would obviously have been a very neat winning formula (had it been the reality) to undermine anti-imperialist struggle everywhere, - Moscow subverting from the 'friendly' side, and Moscow's phony 'enemy' Washington bashing such struggle directly on the head?

And especially why change things when backing Yeltsin against the more Gorbachev-like revisionist remnants could spark off real revolution again.?

If exploitation was already just as terrible for workers, or even worse, in the USSR as in the West, so as to set no unfavourable comparison problems for unhappy Western workers, but at the same time if Soviet economic production was no great competition for the free-market powers, then why suggest such huge Western credits to allow Yeltsin & Co to totally transform things, - especially at a time of such sharpening trade-war blows against each other among the imperialist nations?

Redgrave at least has followed the logic of the entire history of Trotskyite nonsense. She now feels obliged to conclude that with Stalinism at last 'thankfully overthrown', then anything that Yeltsin does must surely be better for the workers there, so she will support it.

But a better explanation for this reactionary gibberish, of course, is that the Trots have only really wanted to support anti-communism from the start, - out of their incurable middle-class mentality. And as the most vicious and cynical anti-communist around, Yeltsin is obviously the man to go for.

The rest of the fake-'left' just shuts up these days about their part in the historical anti-Soviet anti-communist record which has inevitably ended up in the Yeltsinite counter-revolution, and the make-believe 'political revolution' never anywhere in sight, and never to be heard of again, now that the treachery is complete, and the dictatorship of the proletariat has been successfully overthrown to suit everyone's bourgeois ideological prejudices.

And so dishonestly shamefaced are these sick Trot sectarians that they no longer parrot their 'political revolution' anti-communist fraud against Castro's Cuban workers state, for example, for fear of being branded as the obvious counter-revolutionary provocateurs that they are.

Trot centrists like the SWP will try to avoid their 'neither Washington nor Moscow' responsibility for aiding the historical path to Yeltsinism by pretending that 'rank-and-file socialism' briefly had a chance for a look-in somewhere in between the 'chaos caused by Stalin, Yeltsin, and the White House opportunists', etc. But this is just as dishonest in its own way as the fake-'theory' litany of the more orthodox Trots with their 'perfect political revolution' daydreaming. Even allow for some supposedly 'purely rank-and-file socialism' to be bogusly presented somewhere - and the SWP & Co would stay supporting it in their ivory tower for just so long as no 'mistakes' were made. But at the very first mistake, they would immediately be looking elsewhere for some new 'totally spotless' banner to support. No wonder there have been very few SWP-type workers states yet to trouble the historical record books.

The only Marxist-Leninist position on Soviet historical turmoil has been to always call for the maximum strengthening of the dictatorship of the proletariat at all times, and simultaneously to call for the strengthening of Moscow's international revolutionary perspectives, and oppose their liquidation which took place under Stalin and subsequently (see ILWP Books vols 3 to 18).

Yeltsin's victory is disheartening, and the inadequacy of support for the spontaneous revolt is disappointing. But there is no more cause for tears on Rutskoi and Khasbulatov's behalf than there was for the Yanayev failed August plot 1991 or for the demise of Gorbachev's perestroika itself, - all hopelessly-deluded perspectives of petty-bourgeois idealism of one kind or another.

It is rubbish to describe these events as a 'new' but 'failed' October Revolution. Feeble parliamentary attempts to halt the worst forces of fascist-imperialist reaction have nothing in common whatever with the Bolsheviks' October 1917 revolution to rout the bourgeoisie permanently with the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Rutskoi & Go carried guns not because they were Bolsheviks but because the historical conditions of class struggle are so far advanced on the former Soviet territory that even the Russian equivalents of John Smith and John Edmonds have to go armed there, so sharply poised is the momentous confrontation between the forces of reaction and the forces just dimly represented by Rutskoi & Co of holding onto something of the Soviet workers-state status quo (although the parliamentarians themselves are incapable of articulating precisely what).

As soon as the proletarian-dictatorship reality of the 1917-1987 Soviet success story begins to be identified again, plus their international anti-imperialist essence, then even February 1917-type spontaneous forces of revolution will be in with a chance of quickly neutralising the army. But to complete a fully successful resumption of socialist construction, a new completely Marxist-Leninist leadership will be needed. A.L.

World Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Any delusions in 'democracy' soon corrected in El Salvador

THE SO-CALLED Truth Report by a UN-sponsored commission headed by the former Colombian president, Belisario Betancur prematurely raised expectations which have led to nothing but frustration for the people. Meanwhile, the military has put out an unusual call to defend the country's sovereignty, though it is they who have violated it for years.

Naturally, no one really believed the report would solve the grave crisis, but it served as a pretext for the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva to continue its biased treatment of the subject and completely ignore the situation in El Salvador.

The report did indeed make known the names of those responsible for crimes which horrified international public opinion, though critics are questioning the depth and scope of some of the points raised.

For example, the report fails to mention the U.S. administration's involvement during the period in question at which time it invested some seven billion dollars in the civil war. There was also no mention of the death squads, which are still not disbanded.

The report also attributes most of the crimes and human rights violations to a mere handful of officers.

Among other points, the report recommends that 40 officers be dismissed from their posts, that the members of the Supreme Court of Justice resign and that guerrilla leaders be forbidden from holding public office for ten years.  Although at first the Salvadoran government and the rebels accepted the recommendations, just a month later, only the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has kept its word.

It is worth remembering that almost immediately following the report's publication, President Alfredo Cristiani declared an amnesty for the accused which was approved by the National Constituent Assembly with unusual speed and then hastily by the president.

The UN interpreted the amnesty given to the military officers as a violation of the commission's recommendations. In the words of one UN spokesperson, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali believes that even though the matter is strictly a domestic issue, there is good reason to worry. The Salvadoran clergy described the amnesty as a "hasty decision" and said that truth was the only path to peace, but that the country lacked the courage to face it.

As time goes by, the military and government seem to be moving further and further away from their original hopes for peace. The delays, a constant feature of the peace talks, have gotten longer, with the exception of the amnesty.

For example, it seems as if the necessary purging of the armed forces (to include the current defense minister, General René Emilio Ponce; the deputy defense minister, General Juan Orlanao Zapeda, who recently resigned; and General Rafael Bustillo, commander of the air force) will begin at the end of June. Those officers implicated in crime will initially be able to claim temporary retirement on full pay until December 31 when they will be pensioned-off officially, according to a report Cristiani presented to the UN.

But rather than feeling discouraged, the military's spirits are rising. It is rumored that they are preparing a libel suit against the three UN commission members. And as if this wasn't enough, Vice President Francisco Merino publicly attacked Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the commission members, whom he described as mercenaries. At the same time he demanded that the report's proposals be ignored, said Prensa Latina.

According to IPS news agency, Edgar Palacios of the National Peace Talks Committee said that the Cristiani government is "unmasking" itself before the international community by "trying to promote nationalist sentiment through demagogy in order to defend human rights violators."

Naturally, as is their custom, Salvadoran officials haven't made any protests against official U.S. statements demanding that the measures outlined in the report be applied. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher reaffirmed his endorsement of the report, insisting that its recommendations be carried out, and that the Salvadoran military officials accused of murdering U.S. citizens would eventually be prosecuted,

A recent study of the eight-month period ending January 31, 1993 by the UN Peace Commission (ONUSAL) found that human rights violations persist in El Salvador. Of the 1480 reports filed, 106 were murders and 165 death threats, all of which can be traced back to former police and military personnel, investigations show.

The report also states that the death squads are being funded by Salvadoran immigrants residing in Miami and such well-known figures as Hana Chist, Ricardo Sol, Constantino Rempone and Ernesto Panamá.

Nevertheless, while the report admits that El Salvador's human rights record has improved since the peace accords were signed, it insists that the Salvadoran department of justice continues to be notoriously inefficient and incapable of enforcing the law.

Obstacles aside, faced with these developments, many observers are wondering about the seriousness of the situation, since the original causes still exist. It should suffice to remember that one of the signatories of the Truth Report, Venezuela's former foreign minister, Reinaldo Figueredo, said that the terrible injustices which exist in El Salvador are responsible for the war which has claimed more than 75 000 lives.

Granma

Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No.39 Friday October 1 1993

Trotskyite degeneracy cheers on Yeltsin reaction and sucks up to US imperialism.

Trotskyism's public backing, via its luminary Vanessa Redgrave, for Yeltsin's ludicrous fascist coup, and her praise for US President Clinton for similarly backing Yeltsin, and her demand that the equally demagogic Shevardnadze should receive UN support - perhaps a 'bomb-the-Abkhaz' campaign would satisfy her - is the clearest sign yet that the fake-'left' anti-communist swamp's historical role is to end up as the cheerleaders for fascism.

At the very least they are rapidly being exposed as the most nauseating bunch of middle class anti-communist self-seeking frauds that have ever walked the planet, whether running Labour councils, lining their pockets and sacking workers like Militant in Liverpool did, or driving 'workers convoys to Bosnia' to join in imperialism's 'hate-the-Serbs' 'bomb-the-Serbs' propaganda campaign.

Millions of workers are clear that what is now happening in the former Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe is the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the Cold War 'boring communism' versus 'exciting', glitzy consumerist capitalism was a very sick fraud, and the true nature of capitalism as a system of fascist exploitation is all that is on offer.

Millions of workers are expressing a strong preference for the days of 'boring communism' with its social justice, steady growth and stability.

Only the poisoned minds of a few thousand Western fake-'lefts' can fail to see that Soviet society prior to its Gorbachevite liquidation was infinitely preferable for the overwhelming majority of Soviet people to the Yeltsin mafia mob rule which benefits only the gangsters and their imperialist paymasters. 

The feeble and uninspiring opposition to the Yeltsin dictatorship among the parliamentary opportunists offers no real leadership to the working class; it is completely compromised by chaos, cowardice and self-interest, and is no more than an extension of the same anti-Leninist 'democracy' drivel of Gorbachevism which liquidated the Soviet Union in the first place.

In imperialism's attempt to impose its fascist slump conditions on the former Soviet Union, and reduce it to 'Third World' levels of exploitation, all vestiges of Soviet workers state planned socialist economic stability have to be destroyed. To the extent that the 'opposition' is standing in the way of the 'reforms' dictated by the imperialists then they will be shut down.

Whilst the parliamentary 'opposition' present no real threat to Yeltsin, the massive proletariat of the former Soviet Union do, and the battle is far from over. In fact, it has only just begun.

As economic chaos in the metropolitan West begins to demand similar 'anti-democratic' dictatorial 'coups' like Yeltsin's, i.e. shut down the opposition in the 'national interest', axe all social benefits 'in the national interest', and dragoon workers into dying for capitalism's profits in a war 'in the national interest', then it will become ever more clear how much the anti-communist war has not been won.

The 'left' swamp of middle class anti-communists from the SWP downwards though will do their best to confuse every issue which is clarifying class consciousness amongst the proletariat.

Right on cue up jumps the Trotskyist 'super star' to turn reality on its head and provide a round of applause for two of the biggest anti-working class reactionaries on earth:

In an interview that day Shevardnadze explained a "Russia is divided along democratic and reactionary lines. The reactionary forces are concentrated within the legislature (Supreme Soviet and Parliament). We suffer from this. Not a single treaty we have signed with Russia has worked."

President Clinton has rightly supported President Yeltsin against the various groupings of nationalists and fascist parties which support Khasbulatov and Rutskoi.

All member states of the UN must immediately support Shevardnadze, or nationalism and fascism will take over the Georgian state, and, subsequently, win the day in Russia.
Vanessa Redgrave.
London W4.

Since when has the President of the biggest and most savage imperialist power in all history ever supported the working class side of the struggle?

Some of the fake-'left' academics might argue that Redgrave is 'out of line' or has simply gone off her head completely and try and claim a different brand of Trotskyism which has a subtler 'anti-imperialist' position. It won't wash though. This Trotskyist support for imperialist-backed fascist reaction is entirely consistent with every position taken by the fake-'left' swamp for the past forty years at least.

One of the clearest examples of this must be the support given to the CIA funded Solidarnosc counter-revolutionary movement in Poland by the entire 'left' swamp, including the revisionist European CPs. Now that the fascist Pilsudski-loving hero of the swamp, Walesa, is running Poland on behalf of imperialist reaction, what do the SWP, or Labour, or Workers Press, or the RCP, or any of the other opportunist sects have to say about how this furthers the socialist revolution?

Nothing - of course, because like every other inconvenient or embarrassing piece of history, it is swept under the carpet so another day of unblemished posturing for the 'perfect' revolution can begin.

And where has the latest 'revolutionary' posturing been focusing itself? In defence of the 'Bosnian' Muslims, who, according to Trotskyist mythology are not really Muslims at all:

"To be a Muslim in Bosnia is not a religious designation [...] The Muslims [are] a nation, separate from both Serbs and Croats" (Workers Press 370).

If this is the case then perhaps the 'bomb-the-Serbs' apologists would like to explain why Itzebegovitch's idea of a workers state turns out to be an Islamic theocracy, as reports in the capitalist press are making clear despite being hedged around with confusion about how 'Bosnian Muslims aren't really Muslims' etc:

WHILE Western capitals and international mediators keenly await a decision tomorrow from 'Bosnia's parliament on the Geneva plan to partition the country, a power struggle is under way inside Sarajevo's Muslim elite not so much over the plan as over what kind of rump state will follow the peace.

For the past four days the capital's movers and shakers have been plotting and arguing in secret conclaves in shell-pocked halls and smoky backrooms in an attempt to hammer out a blueprint for the rump Muslim-dominated state which is emerging.
Bosnia's Serb and Croat leaders have already accepted the plan, which leaves the Bosnian Muslims about 30 per cent of the partitioned country.

President Alija Izetbegovic has called an emergency session of what remains of the Bosnian parliament tomorrow to deliver a verdict. But in an effort to pre-empt debate and present MPs with a fait accompli, another, exclusively Muslim, assembly meets today.

The consensus here is that it is today's assembly, and not tomorrow's parliamentary session, that is the key meeting.

"In many respects the assembly is more competent to decide than the parliament," Alija Isakovic, a leading Muslim nationalist activist, said yesterday. "The Serb and Croat sides have made their decisions and we must make ours." Mr Isakovic heads the Congress of Muslim Intellectuals and is regarded as close to President Izetbegovic.

Today's assembly has been organised by the main Muslim political party and by religious and academic figures, and its backers constitute a Who's Who of power and influence in Muslim Sarajevo, from the president and military leaders to the head of Bosnian television.

A hard core of 30 to 40 leaders representing five key Muslim organisations has been meeting to plot today's outcome.

All the signs are that they have already accepted the Geneva plan and are concentrating on dominating the institutions and political machinery of the rump state being formed.
They argue that their assembly of about 350 representatives from the parts of Bosnia not seized by the Serbs or Croats is the true representative of the Muslim people and that its decision will constitute a mini-referendum on the peace plan. But unlike those in parliament tomorrow, the assembly is self-appointed and unelected.

All its deliberations have been behind closed doors and today's debate is also likely to be a closed session.

Mr Isakovic and his colleagues maintained yesterday that everyone in the Muslim-dominated state would enjoy full civil rights. But by excluding non-Muslims from today's meeting, they have effectively denied them a voice in deciding their fate.

"The very moment the borders are fixed and open, the Serbs and Croats will leave," said Kemal Khrelja, another leading congress member.

"Izetbegovic is preparing this assembly to proclaim a Muslim republic. It's a coup d'état," said Muhamad Filipovic, a leader of the Muslim liberal opposition. "Izetbegovic is behind this. They've already accepted the peace agreement. Now they're fighting for power in what comes next."

IN THE cafes and bars of Sarajevo which continue to ply their trade regardless of war and siege, it has become trendy for young Slav Muslims — blue-eyed, whisky-drinking, pork-eating, perhaps mini-skirted — to greet one another in 19th century terms, using old Arabic Koranic blessings not heard since the days of their great grandparents. "Hi" has become "Merhaba". "See you later" might well be "Alahimanet" these days.

Their intellectual elders, or some of them, meanwhile, are waxing nostalgic about the heyday of the sublime port, the 400 years till 1878 when Bosnia was an Ottoman imperial holding and the local Slavs who converted to Islam wielded power and influence in the empire's bureaucracy.

Ever since the Turks were kicked out of the Balkans, they complain, the Bosnian Muslims have been harried and harassed.

All at once, prominent political leaders are lecturing their people on what it means to be a Bosnian Muslim. The new imam is calling for Muslim unity against the enemy, and a new, cross-party, exclusively Muslim assembly has been called into being this week, bringing together political, religious, intellectual, and cultural luminaries — the brains trust of the Bosnian Muslim people.

Ostensibly, the assembly was convened to return a verdict on the Geneva peace plan to partition Bosnia into three ethnic states.

But the imam, a Chicago-educated cleric by the name of Mustafa Ceric, insists the Muslim assembly is here to stay and that its function is to encourage Muslim "patriotism". Senior government figures describe the conclave as a constituent assembly for the mainly Muslim republic emerging from the Geneva settlement.

In short, Balkan Muslim nationalism is emerging as the binding force for the putative mini State of the Geneva-mediated carve-up.

The principal agents of the nationalist surge are President Alija Izetbegovic's Democratic Action Party, a Muslim nationalist outfit with a strong clericalist-wing, the Islamic religious community led by Imam Ceric, the Muslim charity Merhamet, arguably as much a political as a humanitarian organisation, and the Sarajevo-based congress of Muslim intellectuals.

The whole purpose of the Trotskyists' insane support for the 'Bosnian' exercise, pretending that Trot solidarity with Itzebegovitch is workers' internationalism from a 'revolutionary' perspective, is in reality simply another example of the swamp jumping onto a Western imperialist propaganda bandwagon and giving it a 'left' cover.

Perhaps Itzebegovitch is another "intuitive revolutionary genius" like the Ayatollah Khomeini, as claimed by the WRP forerunners of this insane sect.

The comeuppance of these ridiculous middle class poseurs can't be soon enough. There is every indication that it's coming very quickly, because the political perch upon which they have rested has been blown to pieces by reality, and recent events simply add strength to this analysis printed in E&PSR 715, four weeks ago:

'These 'revolutionary' Philistines utterly despise any serious study of Marxist-Leninist theory, and have survived in the petty-bourgeois swamp on one opportunist gimmick only, by falsely claiming to be 'communist' opponents of Stalinist revisionist degeneracy, when what all 57 varieties have really been all the time is simply anti-Soviet.

At the present stage of world ideological turmoil when it is still far from clear what a genuine (and largely worthy) alternative to imperialist world domination the USSR and then the socialist camp provided, - these anti-communist cretins are still escaping exposure.

But the real crash of the capitalist system is going to change all that.

The real nastiness of this slimy deception by this fake-'left' middle-class anti-communism has been the fact that in reality, its political perch has rested entirely only on the actual relative success of the capitalist system, compared to how the struggle was going in the socialist camp and the Soviet Union.

These anti-Soviet 'revolutionaries' tried getting away with a briefly-muttered 'I told you so' when Gorbachevism took revisionist defeatism to its ultimate self-liquidation retreat, suddenly revealing how different 70 years of Soviet socialism had been from Western imperialist domination on the rest of the world (when the fake-'lefts' had all declared that it was not different at all).

And they have kept quiet since then as international understanding has begun to dawn of what enormous advantages in the planned Soviet system were thrown away by the grotesque opportunist folly of the Gorbachev bureaucracy in inviting capitalist market forces back into the USSR territory, now a nightmare of mafia-capitalist corruption, fascist slump, and national-chauvinist warmongering where all had been basic economic stability, strict law and order, and genuine cultural advancement before.

The dictatorship of the proletariat as the only realistic and civilised immediate world aim was what the philistine Gorbachev bureaucracy could not remotely grasp, abandoning it for the same bourgeois 'democratic' anarchy that the rest of the world is suffering. And the dictatorship of the proletariat is what the petty-bourgeois anticommunist 'left' swamp in the West could not tolerate the thought of either, - paradoxically leaving both strains of anti-Soviet anti-Leninist cretins in the same sinking boat together at the end.

For while superficially it may seem that it is the USSR and 70 years of planned socialist development which has sunk without trace, - as all the anti-communist 'lefts' are happy to let people think, - in reality the coming crash will show that it is anti-Sovietism which is in the deepest trouble historically speaking.

The course of imperialist corruption, crisis, and warmongering, - now hammering the former territories of the USSR, - is beginning to look as if it will force direct historical comparisons back onto the agenda ("Why did we give up planned security and progress for this slump-ridden mess") as well as eventually forcing workers in the former Soviet Union to relearn long forgotten class-war struggle against a capitalist ruling class.

The dramatic markets collapse in the West, with all the hysterical ideological turmoil that will unleash, - is likely to give another enormous boost to that process of having a historical rethink about abandoning planned socialism for free-market anarchy and capitalist/mafia exploitation. 

And what will be the role of the anti-communist swamp (currently re-inventing itself in various anti-Marxist forums up and down the country) in this historical rethink?

On past form, it will continue its anti-communist confusion-mongering with a vengeance. Unless the whole issue of the 'left's role in furthering imperialism's anti-communist aims in the working class is clearly addressed, and decisively exposed and rejected, and a serious struggle for Marxist-Leninist theory engaged in, then it can do nothing else.

Equally clearly addressed and decisively rejected must be the popular front 'peaceful road to socialism' anti-Leninism of the Stalinist tradition which ended up with Gorbachev liquidating the world's first workers state.

Fight for Leninism.
Build the ILWP.
D.Watts