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No. 494, January 26, 1990

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No. 494, January 26, 1990 WfJRlllRI ,,1N'(lI1,, 25¢ No. 494 26 January 1990 From. Perestroika to Pogroms BloodyNationalist Strife in USSR JANUARY 22-In order to clamp down on the com­ bare the price of nationalist rampage, speculation on sacred munalist slaughter raging in the Caucasian republics, national feeling. It is a crime to push people to blind enmity, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev found it necessary to to the madness {)f fratricidal war." send in troops. After heavy fighting against Azerbaijani It is indeed: However, the violent nationalisms which nationalist partisans armed with weapons previously now threaten to rip apart the Soviet Union are the seized from the army, Soviet forces now occupy the product of six decades of Stalinist bureaucratic rule capital of Baku. Mass demonstrations are continuing, and have been intensified by Gorbachev's own policies. led by the Azerbaijani Popular Front, which is raising The immediate trigger for the decision to send troops the spectre of secession. Other Soviet forces are mov­ was the pogrom against the several thousand Arme­ ing to gain control of the area along the Azerbaijani nians who still lived in Baku. Azeri mobs-many Armenia border, which had become the front line in made up of refugees from the two-year-long blood feud a savage civil war. -dragged people out of homes, reportedly burning Addressing the Soviet people, Gorbachev explained: them alive, beating them to death and throwing them Time "The tragic events in Baku, the border areas of Azerbai­ off high balconies. Some Azerbaijanis were horrified Azerbaijani nationalists burn down border jan and Armenia, other regions of the Caucasus have laid continued on page 12 posts between USSR and Khomeiniite Iran. Trotskyists to Fight in East German Elections The Spartakist-Arbeiterpartei Deutsch­ The imperialists and their front men lands (SAPD-Spartakist Workers Party had expected the ruling SED (Socialist of Germany), founded at a meeting in 'Spartaki~t Workers Party Founded Unity Party) to simply dissolve as in East Berlin on January 21, has an­ Hungary or, following the Polish exam­ nounced that it will present candidates ple, to meekly make way for a capitalist and participate on a Leninist program in press, stepped-up pressure for reunifica­ Leipzig demonstrations, and the first acts government after an expected rout in the the 6 May 1990 elections to the Volks­ tion from the West German government, of violence in Berlin. The capitalists elections scheduled for May 6. (And kammer, the parliament of the German demands for unlimited penetration of want to put a stop to the so far peaceful e indeed the recent defection of the SED Democratic Republic (DDR). Representa­ capital from Frankfurt. bankers, anti­ development of a political revolution Dresden mayor and his group in the tives of the Spartakist-Gruppen and the Communist witchhunt propaganda in the against Stalinist bureaucratic rule. continued on page 5 Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands joined in forming the SAPD for that purpose. "With this election campaign, the Spartakist-Arbei terpartei Deutschlands seeks to mobilize against the sellout of the DDR, bringing to the broad masses • of working people the program for polit­ ical rule of workers and soldiers coun­ cils and their allies-in particular white­ collar employees, pensioners, collective farmers, members of the intelligentsia, students and pupils-as well as for forging a truly internationalist Leninist party in all of Germany," a press release stated. Among the documents upon which the party was founded are "What Do the Spartacists Want" (see WV No. 492, 29 December 1989) and the "Open Letter to All Communists" (see page 10). Since the beginning of the year, big sections of the bourgeoisie have gone . Spartakis! all out to provoke a crisis in the DDR: 30 December 1989-Spartakist banner at Treptow Park anti-fascist demonstration: "For the Communism of Lenln­ scare-mongering headlines in the Western Liebknecht-Luxemburgl For a Leninist-Egalitarian Party'" - tation of the Third World? undergoes racial purification. Ar~rekorr I believe that to make this possible Economically the' DDR and the A.Letter to demands far more of the Soviet USSR, especially in the framework of Union than it does of us, but it could federative union, could be made to Soviet Socialist Republics? Ifthe Sovi­ give us a viable economic and social fit well together; and if Kaliningrad The following letter is appearing in et Union, through the decisive interven­ way out of our present crisis, and (Konigsberg) became a town in the ArbeiterpressekorrespondenzNo. 20, 26 tion of the conscious and organized with fundamentally more freedom than DDR of the USSR, it could become an January 1990. Soviet working classes, were to eradi­ by being seized by the BRD with its anti-imperialist bastion in a region of cate Stalinism, introduce multi-party capitalist instability, its Berufsverbot ill-advised nationalist and capitalist restorationist unrest. 19 January 1990 democracy, maintain the collective [blacklisting] and virulent nationalism ownership of the basic means of pro­ and inhumanity. As things now stand, The qualitative reduction of internal Arbeiterpressekorrespondenz duction, reaffirm the right of separa­ one of the revanchist .ideas is to ex­ security forces, i.e., their elimination as tion of nations in the union who are not pel the Turkish population, including organs suppressing legitimate and even Dear Comrades, carrying through capitalist counter­ those born in Germany, and replace intemperate internal dissent, could be Shouldn't we consider, subject to revolution-would we not be better their labor with that of East Ger­ a strong financial source for the selec­ profound transformations in the Soviet off than to be thrown into the pit of mans and Volksdeutsche[ethnic Ger­ tive recapitalization of the industrial Union-many of which are essentially imperialist capitalism with its violent mans from East Europe], while creating base of both areas and for' the ecolog­ identical to those which we in the DDR economic crises, its illegalization of neocolonial spheres in which non­ ical cleansing of noxious industrial face today, if we repel the current hys­ abortion, its underlying threat of wars Aryans would labor in places like Po­ waste. terical assault to drive us into the for spheres of influence, a capitalism land or the western Ukraine "Lebens­ Best greetings, arms ofthe BRD-joining the Union of which sits astride the ruthless exploi- raum" while the Fourth Reich itself A sympathetic reader January 15 is the 71st anniversary of the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Karl Liebknecht Luxemburg, victims of the bloody repression organized by the Social Democracy to smash the January 1919 Spartacus uprising. For decades, the Social Democrats have Brothers, Comrades, Friends! The day tried to hide their bloody crime by attempting to transform Liebknecht and Luxemburg on which the first Congress of Workers into social-democratic reformists. But the co-founders of the Communist Party of and Soldiers Councils meets is of historic Germany were murdered because they stood with Lenin for workers soviet power rather importance. The first task of this Con­ than bourgeois parliamentarism, as the following quotes show: gress is to defend the revolution, to put down the counterrevolution. Disarming of all generals and officers, Dietz Verlag Berlin the dissolution of the previous command, ~.I. Lenin the founding of a Red Guard to carry out regime, which has become the represen­ tative ofcapitalism. We demand from the The revolution in Germany-which is the social revolution. The conscription of the remnants of the counterrevolution, Congress that it take full political power particularly important and characteristic into its hands for the purpose of carrying as one of the most advanced capitalist and that includes-I say this even though it may anger misled proletarians-a-the out socialism, and that it not transfer countries-at once assumed "Soviet" power to a National Assembly which forms. The whole course of the German Ebert-Scheidemann government. (Stormy calls: Down with the Scheidemannsl) cannot be an organ of the revolution. We revolution, and particularly the struggle demand of the Congress of the [workers of the Spartacists, i.e., the true and only Because documentary evidence shows that all the threads of counterrevolution and soldiers] councils that it extend its representatives ofthe proletariat, against hand to our Russian brothers and request the alliance of those treacherous scoun­ come together in the Ebert-Scheidemann regime. Yesterday Ebert demanded that delegates from the Russians. We seek drels, the Scheidemanns and Stidekums, world revolution and the unity of prole­ with the bourgeoisie-all this clearly his powers be further expanded. (Vigor­ ous protests againstEbert.) Presently we tarians ofall countries under workers and shows how history has formulated the soldiers councils. question in relation to Germany: have in Germany not a socialist but a "Soviet power" or the bourgeois par­ capitalist republic. Thesocialist republic -"To the All-German Soviet liament, no matter under what signboard must first be brought forth by the prole­ Congress," Die Rote Fahne, tariat through struggle against the current 17 December 1918 (such as "National" or "Constituent" As­ ., .... sembly) it may appear. Progress Publishers That is how world history has formu­ lated the question. Now, this can and by another. The proletarian state is a Rosa Luxemburg • Build a proletarian Red Guard for must be said without any exaggeration. machine for tlfe suppression of the bour­ ongoing defense of the revolution and "Soviet power" is the second historical geoisie by the proletariat. Such suppres­ Abolition of capital's domination and train a workers' militia in order to organ­ step, or stage, in the development of the sion is necessary because of the furious, achievement of a socialist order: that and ize the entire proletariat to be on guard proletarian dictatorship. The first step .desperate resistance put up by the land­ nothing less is the historic theme of the at all times ...
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