[Marxism] Putin confronted by rising protest movement

[Thomas Campbell <avvakum@xxxxxxxxx>]

From: Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [Marxism] Putin confronted by rising protest movement

>The protests got only sporadic coverage in the Russian news media until
May 20, when a group of citizens burst into the meeting of an emergency
committee at the mayor?s office. A camera crew from a regional
television station, 100-TV, captured a passionate speech by a young
mother, which can be accessed on the station?s Web site. Ms. Antropova,
the trade union leader, said that film clip was a ?turning point.?

You can watch that TV report here:

http://grani-tv.ru/entries/758/

Good for the folks in Pikalevo, but it should be mentioned that 100-TV
(a Petersburg channel that I don't think can even be viewed in
Pikalevo) is owned by Oleg Rudnov, a close friend of Putin's. Rudnov's
Baltic Media Group also owns a news agency, a popular radio station
(Radio Baltika) and four Petersburg dailies. Since regional governors
-- including the governor of Leningrad Oblast, Valery Serdiukov -- are
now appointed by the president (Putin's strange political reform in
response to the Beslan hostage tragedy of 2004), it doesn't hurt for
"independent media" like 100-TV to stir up a little populist
discontent against local leaders so that the "good tsar" (Putin and/or
Medvedev) can then show up in town to give them a dressing down and
hand out money to "the people." Then the whole circus is shown at
great length later that evening on all the Putin-controlled national
channels.

To get a better sense of the irony involved in Putin's yelling at Oleg
Deripaska and throwing a pen at him, imagine Dubya showing up at Enron
headquarters back in the day and doing something similar to Ken Lay.

Also, since the Petersburg Economic Forum was under way at the same
time, Putin could use his media stunt to kill two birds with one stone
-- put an end to an embarrassing situation (which, I repeat, may have
been allowed to surface so that he could publicly embarrass a
"wayward" governor and a "wayward" oligarch) and impress the foreign
press corps on hand for the forum with his personal "crisis
management" skills.

What the reactionary gangster capitalist ruling class here really
thinks about the crisis and their "historical role" was revealed by
the wild economic forum "after-party" thrown this past Friday by
oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov (Deripaska's ex-business partner) to
celebrate the first anniversary of his new magazine "Russian Pioneer."
(Among the magazine's celebrity authors are Vladimir Putin -- who
contributed a piece about how to fire employees -- and arch Kremlin
ideologue Vladislav Surkov -- who wrote about the Woodstock Festival
and the murder of Tupac Shakur!) The guests included Petersburg
governor Valentina Matvienko, various government ministers, assorted
oligarchs, and tons of celebrities. The venue was none other than the
battleship Aurora. How is that for counterrevolutionary symbolism!

>That message could resonate in other industrial cities. Mikhail
Viktorovich Shmakov, chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade
Unions, said Thursday that the protest mood was rising in ?many
one-factory towns,? among them the cities of Tsvetlogorsk and Baikalsk,
where 42 employees of a paper mill have begun a hunger strike over
unpaid wages.

Ah, the intrepid New York Times! Going to Mikhail Shmakov for
commentary on labor unrest is like going to George Meany or Lane
Kirkland. Shmakov's "Federation of Independent Trade Unions" is the
post-perestroika equivalent of the AFL-CIO (but worse). They've sold
the Russian trade union movement down the river. A couple years ago,
at their congress, Putin and his goon ministers were sitting in the
presidium. But now, apparently, Surkov and United Russia are upset
that some of Shmakov's locals have done wildcat actions, and so
they're shifting their support to another big trade union association,
SotsProf, where they installed their own man as chair. I guess that
means that Shmakov can allow himself the occasional "funny" comment
(to the foreign press) to improve his street cred.

If the Times had wanted a real assessment of the situation, they
should have gone to someone like Alexei Etmanov, the leader of the
quite combative union at the Ford plant in suburban Petersburg.
Etmanov is the co-chair of the new militant Interregional Trade Union
of Autoworkers (MPRA), and he's also started talking about forming
some kind of new political party for workers. It's a measure of
Etmanov's militancy that he's been physically attacked something like
four times in the past several months.

http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2008/11/11/knuckledusters-as-an-instrument-of-social-dialogue-more-on-the-attack-on-russian-union-leader-alexei-etmanov/

Other MPRA activists have also had a rather rough time of it, as
you'll see if you read the following interview by Petersburg Marxist
Ruslan Yusifov with two MPRA activists at the TagAZ plant in Taganrog:

http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2008/12/13/tagaz-itua-solidarity-campaign/

And this is only the tip of the iceberg. It's very clear that, once
they could no longer deny that the crisis had hit Russia, the Kremlin
gave the FSB and the Interior Ministry the command to go after
"unrepentant" activists of all stripes with everything they had, from
wiretaps and constant summons for "prophylactic discussions," to
beatings and (even) murders. This has had a depressing and bewildering
effect on semi-activists and folks who just keep abreast of such
goings on. As for the rest of the population, the TV channels they
depend on for their information almost never talk about this stuff.

In general, both the Times article and the Guardian piece are examples
of wishful thinking. (But what is it they're wishing for?) Russian
workers have more than enough reasons to send the criminal gang
running the country down the tubes, but they lack all the things that
many workers in other countries also lack at the moment -- militancy,
solidarity, and political clarity. An article I read the day after
Putin's visit to Pikalevo (on a regional news website whose editor is
one of Petersburg's most mysterious and controversial leftists)
painted a very different portrait: the people of Pikalevo waiting for
hours in the pouring rain for Putin to show up; then, after he did
show up, waiting for another couple hours while he threw pens at
Deripaska during their "landmark" powwow; then hanging on his every
word when finally came outside to address them for a couple minutes.
In short, it was a portrait of a completely degenerated working class.
I hope I'm wrong.

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