[PEN-L:398] October 7 and the end of History?

["Frank Durgin" <fdurgin1@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It is absolutely insane: For the past few months, the world has
been hurtling  ever and ever faster toward what, on Wednesday Oct. 7, could
well turn out to be the most cataclysmic and fatal event of world history.
Perhaps even the end of history. Yet the national media froths only over
the Bill & Monica sex comedy. And the academics, whom we would expect to
show some awareness of the gravity of it all, are somehow are unable to see
it,

In Russia, the day after tomorrow, as has been planned for many months now,

several million workers, pensioners, students and some military units, all
of whom
are owed vast amounts of back pay, will descend into the streets en mass to
demand
the removal Yeltsin. They will be joined by millions of others who are
unemployed,
 hungry, homeless and sick.

 	 Here is an except from the Statement by the Central Russian Strike
Movement Coordinating Council:

   "?On 7 October 1998, the day of the nationwide protest action, we
Urge everybody to go out onto the streets with the resolute demand, that is
Common to the [whole] country, for the president's resignation and for a
Change of socioeconomic policy.
  Representatives of the oblasts of Russia's historical center have
agreed to hold demonstrations and rallies 7 October in cities, towns,
settlements, and rural population centers culminating in the blockading of
local administrations, legislative organs of power, and the president's
regional representatives.  The aim of the blockade is to force the local
authorities to demand the president's resignation and to make him realize
that this demand comes from the entire people and must be met
unconditionally.  Another, no less important, point of our demands is
constitutional amendments.  The blockade will not be lifted until we are
certain that the appropriate telephone messages, faxes, and electronic mail
messages bearing the signatures of top officials and presidential
representatives have been sent to the Kremlin.
  In the event that Yeltsin and his entourage do not heed our demands,
conveyed to him via local organs of power, the simultaneous blocking of
main road and railroad routes leading to Moscow for not less than three
hours will begin at 1100 hours on 8 October.
  If not even this galvanizes the person chiefly responsible for our
misfortunes, at 1100 hours on 9 October roads and railroads will be blocked
for 24 hours or more until our demands have been met in full.
  We urge Moscow's working people to support and join us.  Only joint
action will help to resolve in the fastest possible way all our society's
conflicts and crises that have come to a head like an abscess.
  We urge all regions bordering the capital to send their own
representatives 7 October to participate in protest actions with Moscow's
Working people?"





 	Combining that statement with the "heightened combat readiness" of the
power ministries and the government's pledge not to tolerate
any unconstitutional acts" e.g. the blocking of highways, railways and
government offices produces an extremely dangerous situation. Adding in;
) the extreme, impoverishment, exhaustion and anger of the population; 2)
the proliferation of arms among that angry population and 3); the poverty,
hunger and pent-up anger amongst the members of the armed services headed
by generals who are divided as to where their allegiance lie and you
produce and extremely volatile nuclear mixture that a random event  could
ignite a civil war and set off a nuclear winter.



In that highly combustible mixture is a population that for eight years has
experienced continually worsening living conditions,
witnessed an ever expanding chasm between haves and have-nots, and between
government and the people (Yeltsin's popularity is
 now less than 5%). Millions of persons saw their lifetime savings turned
to dust in 1991 and 1992. The privatization vouchers they
received some 5 years ago, representing their pro-rata share the national
wealth, which was being privatized. turned out to be
worthless. Those who subsequently managed to re-accumulate savings have
seen it destroyed during the recent weeks of
inancial crisis. Millions are unemployed, 15 million are starving in a
literal sense of the word, and homelessness and disease
re rampant. The death rate (exceeding that of Bangladesh) exceeds the birth
rate. Agricultural production and per capita food
consumption have fallen over the years. This years harvest was the worst in
some 40 years, and the collapse of the ruble has
made food imports prohibitively expensive with the result that the nation
faces the very real prospects of famine. An ominous
threat is indeed hanging over those people.

This is not the first demonstration of the Post-Soviet era. Strikes and
protest demonstrations have been an almost daily
occurrence for the past 7 years. They have been occurring with ever
increasing frequency, expanding over time from
isolated local action involving local unions into progressively larger
actions involving more unions and action groups at
the province and republic levels. And the demands have shifted from
economic to political.

 To give an example of just one day in the life of ordinary Russians as
described by Matt Talbi in the June 8, 1998
issue of the e'Xile, "On April 9, more than 2
million Russians in 74 out of 89 regions participated in work stoppages. On
That same day, 100,000 workers marched in downtown St. Petersburg, with an
Additional 100,000 marching in other parts of the St. Petersburg region.
The railroad blockages managed to hold up more than 600 trains on one line.
Teachers in Khakassia blocked all the highways out of the capital, while
Scientists blocked the roads out of Vladivostok." And as Fred Weir wrote s
some two years ago, "In some depressed cities
workers and others have come together to form "Salvation committees" whose
purpose are to take over the functions of local
government.  Wednesday's demonstrations will represent the culmination of
this trend: the fusion of all the various forces of
protest in to a all-union wave of protest against the policies and person
of a much despised president whose approval rating is
less than 5%. Picture if you will the sense of emergency and the clamor in
the US press if similar trends were occurring here in the US.


    	The proliferation of guns.	A poll conducted two years ago revealed
that over half of all people surveyed said that
violence, if necessary would be justified to take back the national wealth
from those who had appropriated it.  And the population
 clearly has the arms with which to do that. As the Minister of defense
stated a few years back the "army is spinning out of control,
with soldiers and officers deserting their posts and selling their weapons
to support their families' In May of 1996, "More than 1,000
workers of the Muromsk instrument factory, pushed the military guards aside
and on the 23rd of May, seized defense shops where
explosives and military supplies are assembled.  That action was conducted
in connection with the non-payment of wages in the
course of the previous 5-6 months. Izvestiya has published many articles on
thefts and illegal sale of weapons, one of which was
entitled "Very soon the army will have nothing to shoot with: Theft from
army arsenals has reached fantastic proportions."
Press accounts abound with reports of the availability of various type arms
on the black market. Hand grenades; for example is
reportedly are readily available at 10,000rubles(less than $2.00) each.
Since July of last year it might be noted, it is legal for anyone,
 not just verified hunters, to own rifles.



The army is literally starving. Reliable reports of soldiers dying from
hunger abound. The sight of soldiers begging on street corners is
common. Soldiers, enlisted and officers alike, sell their blood on a
regular basis, work in off duty hours as taxi drivers, watchmen and
 at other menial tasks, just to feed their families. Reports of soldiers
going berserk and shooting comrades in arms are common.

Deaths in the military from beatings, starvation, malnutrition or suicide
mount every year. A Resolution of the Duma (Lower
 House of parliament) in June of this year expressed concern, and noted
"The number of killed servicemen is gradually increasing
in the Army and the Navy." The resolution stated that in 1996 1,057 service
personnel died, 1,057 in 1997 and from Jan to April
 of this year 447 died. Of those 447 deaths, 132 were suicides. And the
suicide rate among the members of the elite Strategic
Nuclear Forces is the highest of all of the armed services.


A top-secret CIA study that was leaked to the Washington Times and reported
in its Oct 22 editions concluded that
 "The Russian nuclear command and control system is being subjected to
stress That it was not designed to withstand as a
result of wrenching
Social change, economic hardship and malaise within the armed forces," It
warned of "conspiracies within nuclear-armed units" to
ommit blackmail involving the arsenal of 28,000
Nuclear-tipped weapons. While the report rated the probability of an
accidental Russian nuclear launch as low, it noted that the three
nuclear code briefcases assigned to President Boris Yeltsin and his top two
military officials provide no security. While they allow
Yeltsin to authorize a nuclear attack, the actual ability to launch
missiles lies much further down the line of command, even in regional
command posts and submarines, which, the CIA report says, "have the
technical ability to launch without authorization by political
leaders or the General Staff." Under these circumstances, many things could
go wrong. The CIA report listed the three most feared
scenarios, the first of which was "A severe political crisis", that "could
exacerbate existing dissension and fractionalization in the military,
possibly heightening tensions between
Russian political and military leaders and even splitting the
General staff or nuclear commands".

    Add to all of this the certainty that in the event of civil war, there
will be terrorist attacks against the nation's nuclear complexes, civil as
well as military.