No 101 October 1988 20p Monthly paper of the Spartacist League Armenia at the flash -~oint Soviet Union: Perestroika fuels nationalist turmoil

Der Spiegel Yerevan, Armenia: mass demonstration for autonomy on 26 March (above); police move against demonstrators (rightl. Decades of Stalinist bureaucratic misrule plus nmarket socialism" perestroika equal petty-bourgeois-Ied nationalist upheavals across Gorbachev's USSR.

In mid-September Soviet leader get a bigger piece of the economic gion of Nagorno-Karabakh be re­ in fear of their lives to Azerbaijan, Gorbachev, appearing in public for pie and political power at someone moved from the Azerbaijani republic and vice versa. At the time of the the first time in six weeks, was con­ else's expense. The turmoil in Soviet and ceded to Armenia. Up to half a October Revolution, the fate of the fronted by angry working people in society is reflected in the upheaval million people thronged the centre of Caucasian peoples was closely linked the Siberian town of Krasnoyarsk. in the upper echelons of the Kremlin Yerevan in July to protest the USSR to each other and with the working "Go to our stores, Mikhail Sergeye­ oligarchy. In a dramatic move last Supreme Soviet's decision maintain­ class of Petrograd and Moscow. The vich", they shouted at him, "there is week Gorbachev purged or down- ing the status quo. The capital of Ka­ Baku Soviet of 1918 was led by Arme­ nothing there!" "Lines everywhere! . graded his conservative critics in the rabakh, Stepanakert, has been grip­ nian, Azeri and Russian Communists. For meat, for sausage, for every­ Politburo. Yegor Ligachev was ousted ped by an off-and-on general strike Prodigious economic growth bascd on thing!" A few days later the Soviet as ideological overseer, Andrei Gro­ since the spring. In late September, socialist economic relations led to an news agency TASS reported that in myko as Chairman of the Supreme an Armenian rally (called by local bu­ increasing interpenetration of peo­ the southern Caucasus mountain re­ Soviet and Viktor Chebrikov as head reaucrats) degenerated into a riot. ples. But now the net result of more publics "mass-scale fighting" had bro­ of the KGB. Supposedly Gorbachev After reports that Azeris had am­ than six decades of Stalinist bureau­ ken out between Armenians and Azer­ now has a more effective, perestroi­ bushed a bus filled with Armenians, cratic rule is forced population trans­ baijanis in the disputed region of Na­ ka-minded team. But it will take mobs left the Armenian rally and fers whose ultimate logic is genocide. gorno-Karabakh, this time with guns more than a shake-up at the top of the attacked Azeris in the nearby town Several days after the outburst of and knives. Faced with communal bureaucracy to overcome the food of Khadzaly; in the fighting nearly Armenian chauvinism, on 28 Sept­ rioting and general strikes, virtual shortages or resolve the festering 50 people were wounded, one of ember riot police with truncheons martial law was declared in Kara­ national conflicts such as the Arme­ whom later died. In Stepanakert, Ar­ broke up a demonstration in the cap­ bakh while Soviet troops cordoned nia crisis. menians roamed the streets for two ital of Lithuania, Vilnius. Protesters off streets in the Armenian capital It will take a proletarian political days setting fire to homes abandoned reportedly shouted at the police, of Yerevan. Now in the Baltic repub­ revolution to return the Soviet Union by Azeris. "Occupiers, get out of here!" The Bal­ lic of Estonia, anti-Russian national­ to the road of workers democracy A deadly cycle of nationalist retri­ tic republics of Estonia, Latvia and ist forces have founded a "popular and revolutionary internationalism, bution has been set in motion that Lithuania have been rocked by an ex­ front" aiming ever more openly at the road of Lenin ana Trotsky. threatens the internationalist foun­ plosion of anti-Soviet nationalism secession from the USSR. Such are In the last few weeks and days the dations of the Soviet state. Khadzaly which, unlike the communalist feuds the bitter fruits of perestroika. scale of nationalist turmoil in the came after the heinous .inti-Arme­ in the Caucasus, is more or less ex­ Perestroika (restructuring) was sup­ Caucasus and the Baltic region has nian pogrom in the AzeJ'baijani city plicitly directed against the Soviet posed to spur economic productivity, escalated dramatically. For months of Sumgait in February in which central power. On the occasion of leading to more harmonious socialist the Armenian capital of Yerevan has Azeri mobs brutally murdered at the anniversary of the Hitler-Stalin development. Instead it has produced witnessed mass demonstrations num­ least 26 Armenians and six Azeris. As pact in August, tens of thousands intensified social and national con­ bering in the hundreds of thousands communalist violence escalates, Aze­ marched in Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius. flict as various groupings are out to demanding that the autonomous re- ris long resident in Armenia have fled continued on page 8 Return to the road of Lenin and Trotsky! "All out to stop the KKK" - Philadelphia 5 November US anti -fascist demo call The November 5 Mobilization to zation of 5000 which stopped the Ku Stop the KKK has announced a mass Klux Klan from marching in the labour-centred rally in the American streets of Washington, DC. That dem­ city of Philadelphia in response to a onstration was one of several labour­ threatened Ku Klux Klan/skinhead centred anti-fascist mobilisations provocation on that date. As we go to which our comrades of the SL/US have press, already scores of endorsements helped to initiate in order to prevent for the anti-fascist rally have been the Klan and Nazi filth from estab­ received from labour officials and lishing beachheads in major urban union branches in Philadelphia and centres. Key to success is the deter­ elsewhere; a number of city council mination of the unions and minorities members; black, civil rights and mi­ to organise their forces in a display of nority groups; gay and lesbian organ­ strength on the streets. The threat­ isations and prominent individuals, ened provocation by the Klan and its including Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), racist skinhead allies in Philadelphia­ former Black Panther leader impris­ a city with a huge black and minority oned in San Quentin, California and population as well as combative trade James McPherson, author of the ac­ unions - must be stopped! claimed history of the American Civil We print below the call issued by War, Battle Cry of Freedom. the PDC: The November 5 Mobilization was initiated by the Partisan Defense The KKK lynchers and the violent Committee (PDC), a nationwide class­ skinhead filth are threatening to Washington, DC, 27 November 1982: SL-initiated Labor/Black Mobilization struggle legal defence organisation. strut into the heart of Philadelphia at stops fascist Ku Klux Klan. The PDC worked with the Spartacist Independence Mall on November 5. blacks, Jews, Hispanics, gays, Catho­ job - and one step toward that can be League/US in building the successful With their burning crosses and their lics, unions - all of us. by stopping the KKK/skinheads now. November 1982 Labor/Black Mobili- swastikas, they are a deadly threat to The Klan and skinheads have already The unions were built against the marched in Valley Forge, and Parkside violent opposition of the KKK, and if where they got a hot reception. Now the unions' power is unleashed we can For the rebirth of the they're bringing their deadly provo­ make the streets of Philly safe from Fourth International! cation to Philly. There must be a mas­ these racist criminals. sive, defiant display of labor/black We will be at Independence Mall, The Fourth International was founded power, together with minorities and Saturday, November 5 to honor the 50 years ago last month, in a Europe all intended victims of the lynchers, working people who built this country threatened by war and fascism. Its on Independence Mall on November 5 and have been denied the fruits of founding document was the Transi­ to stop these fascist terrorists. their labor. Today as black America tional Programme, written by Leon Make no mistake - the KKK are is under the gun, all of labor is facing Trotsky, from which the following .' sadistic' killers, in and out of their a union-busting offensive to roll back excerpt is taken. Its cadres ravaged white sheets. Their idea of "free hard-won gains: remember the P ATCO TROTSKY by murderous Hitlerite and Stalinist LENIN speech" is what the government did to air controllers who were dragged away repression, the Fourth International MOVE - burning alive eleven black in chains! The Klan and skinheads are emerged from World War II politically disoriented. By the early 1950s it had people, including five children. And a threat to our livelihoOds and our succumbed to a liquidationist current which denied the need for an indepen­ the MOVE mothers are still locked up lives. The power to stop them lies with dent proletarian vanguard. It is our task to reforge Trotsky'S Fourth Inter­ in jail! the integrated, combative unions in national, whose banner and programme remain intact, as the world party of We do not forget the Birmingham this city - transit, sanitation, Team­ socialist revolution. church bombings, the Greensboro mas­ sters, teachers, longshoremen. sacre and now the torching of syna­ When the KKK tried to march "People's Fronts" on the one hand - fascism on the other; these are the last against immigrants in Washington, political resources of imperialism in the struggle against the proletarian rev­ gogues in NYC. And the degenerate skinheads with their Nazi regalia and D.C. in November 1982, the integrated olution. From the historical point of view, however, both these resources are power of 5,000 workers and minorities, stopgaps .... Nothing short of the overthrow of the bourgeoisie can open a jackboots want to act out their mur­ derous Hitlerite fantasies. If we don't backed by over 70 unions and union road out. officials from Norfolk to Boston, sent The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions stop them here, who will be next to pay with their lives? them packing. The fascists must be of decaying capitalism, and second, by the treacherous politics of the old stopped - and we can stop them here. workers' organizations. Of these factors, the first of course is the decisive These labor-hating racists say they are going to bring their lynch ropes All out to stop the KKK and skinhead one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus. No thugs on November 5! Be there! matter how the methods of the social betrayers differ - from the "social" and Nazi salutes to the Liberty Bell, legislation of Blum to the judicial frame-ups of Stalin - they will never suc­ in the "cradle of liberty." For millions Initiated by the Partisan Defense ceed in breaking the revolutionary will of the proletariat. As time goes on, that "liberty" meant being born into Committee their desperate efforts to hold back the wheel of history will demonstrate slavery. The Civil War took care of 1530 Locust St.,Suite 92, Philadelphia, more clearly to the masses that the crisis of the proletarian leadership, having chattel slavery. We need to finish the PA 19102-(215) 790-1822 become the crisis in mankind's culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International.-, - Leon Trotsky, "The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International" (September 1938)

NOAPAR~, WORKERS1lAMMER ~ • No Apartheid Executions! SAVE THE SHARPEv/~ Save the Sharpeville 6! ~AlSoufI'IAtrtc:."cr.. ...PI'1aonen Papt:J Monthly newspaper of the Spartacist League, British section of the international • Free All South Africa's ~-' Spartacist tendency. Class-War Prisoners EDITORIAL BOARD: Bonnie Bradley (editor), Jon Branche, Alec Gilchrist, John Masters, Eibhlin McDonald, Len Michelson, Fred Purdy, Ellen Rawlings, • Save Mumia Abu-Jamal! Michael Riaz, David Strachan. • S.F. Demo Demands: T~ PRODUCTION MANAGER: Michael Riaz Freedom Now for ~ CIRCULATION MANAGER: Ralf Eades Geronimo Pratt I ~ Published nine times a year by Spartacist Publications, PO Box 1041, London NW5 3EU. Subscription: 9 issues for £2.00 $1 for a single copy: overseas airmail £5.00. Opinions expressed in signed articles or letters do not Order from/make cheques payable to: necessarily express the editorial viewpoint. Partisan Defense Committee, Printed by Slough Newspaper Printers Ltd (TU). ISSN 0267-8721. P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013

2 WORKERS HAMMER workers movement drew the demoral­ ising and false conclusion that "any­ thing" (ie, the Labour Party or even ~p-artacist League: the Alliance) is better than Thatch­ er. This was encapsulated in Arthur Scargill's campaigning for arch scab-­ herder Neil Kinnock in the general election. The fake left overwhelming­ ly followed suit, and then supported London consolidation, Tony Benn's hapless Labour Party leadership campaign. While the SL correctly refused to be sucked into this social-democratic vortex, our organisation has not been immune to the gravitational pull of Labourism. Scottish beachhead Thus, we energetically distributed a special Workers Hammer supplement with our anti-Kinnock line and found At a series of Central Committee to triviality. As was noted, this is par­ "lefts" as well as the Cold War "rights" wide interest from those outside and meetings held last spring to discuss ticularly true given that there is no ob­ abandoned the miners to fight alone. to the left of the Labour Party. At the perspectives and state of the vious second political centre as such. The strike was the occasion for a num­ the same time, an opportunity was Spartacist League/Britain, it was By far the most significant domestic ber of former "lefts" to make their let slip to run a couple of parlia­ decided to reorganise the existing peace with Kinnock. Internal differ­ struggle in shaping the British workers mentary candidates in the 1987 gen­ branches. A motion was passed to movement of today was the year-long ences in the Labour Party between a eral election, which could have posed dissolve the existing locals in Shef­ miners strike of 1984-85 - a massive NA TO-CIA loyal right wing and little­ in an exemplary fashion the need for field and Birmingham, to reinforce class battle that confirmed in the England, unilateralist "left" reform­ a communist alternative to Labour­ the centre in London and to estab­ negative the need for a fighting Bol­ ists, which had reached deep propor­ ite social betrayal. lish a beachhead in Scotland centred shevik party on these islands. The tions in the early part of the decade, A critical review of the protracted in Glasgow. strike demonstrated the fundamental were thus subordinated to the funda- A major theme of the discussion was the need to reorient the SL/B as a fighting propaganda group, seeking regroupment, splits and fusions among ostensible revolutionary org­ ~. anisations. The disarray of the ostens­ ~ ~--JI!:e-hIb!r.IIIti_~ scab ible British left is evident, ranging from the spectacular implosion of Down with Judas the Healyites to the discomfiture of numerous reformist and centrist Kinnoek! groups whose strategy of pressuring ::1:-,§;fu'"f@ the Labour Party via supporting the Bennites is palpably bankrupt. In addition, the Communist Party con­ tinues to decompose, while Gorba­ chev's attempts to conciliate imperi­ --~-- ...... ;..~,.. .f'S,~~,-"-"'-""--._- <~...i.._~ alism have left in the lurch those §~?~~ g~~g~ --§;1~€ !f£~i~:;;~. left Stalinists who looked towards ~:-~~----~--~--~~~ closer association with Moscow to Th ....heri Poodle tol reform the CPo Thus, the SL's programme ought to .::...~~-".--11"14'"..- be attractive to militants breaking from anti-Sovietism, Labourism and Stalinist reformism. A major aim of Workers Hammer our organisational consolidation is to Spartacist League struggles for Leninism against the dross of social concentrate the forces necessary to democracy: SL at miners lobby of 1984 TUC (left); .Yillsupplement (right). carry out effective propaganda work both energetically and thoughtfully. identity of all wings of reformism in mental goal of safeguarding British anti-fascist campaign in Sheffield Failure to maintain a functioning, their antagonism to proletarian revo­ capitalism. was also conducted in the Central effective branch in London, the capi­ lution. Precisely because SUbstantial The miners were defeated but not Committee discussion. The SL had tal of British imperialism as well as industrial solidarity with the miners crushed, reflected in the fact that correctly pointed to the need to the largest concentration of left org­ would have threatened to shut down today there is significant restless­ mobilise against the fascists and anisations including a significant the country, posing the question of ness in the unions. But the bureau­ racist skinhead scum who gathered exile milieu, would doom the SL/B which class shall rule, the trade union cratic misleaders of the organised continued on page 11

Stalinist bureaucracy, nor to change your line when Moscow changes course. Defence of the Soviet Union Glasgow: letter of application begins with "unconditional military defence of the Soviet Union", but it We are pleased to reprint below a ysis of the dual nature of Stalinism is into the open arms of the CIA and also means political revolution inside letter of application for membership that it rests atop of the gains of Oct­ counterrevolution? Again how could the deformed workers states to oust submitted by Sean, a young Glasweg­ ober which its existence depends upon, the centre of world revolution betray the bureaucratic caste to return them ian, who after subscribing to our press however it defends these gains through the people of Kampuchea, Angola, to the road of Lenin and Trotsky, for nearly a year and discussing with peaceful co-existence and betrayal of Namibia and Afghanistan? And fur­ central planning through workers comrades was won to the programme revolution abroad to placate imperi­ ther repress the revolution in China democracy. of revolutionary Trotskyism. alism which only further undermines in 1925-27, Spain 1936, and then crush The principled Bolshevik programme the "dictatorship of the proletariat". the "workers councils" of Hungary in of the iSt which further embodies the I am writing to apply for member­ In putting this into practice the "iSt" 1956. These issues meant I had to re­ programme of Marxist-Leninist inter­ ship of the "Spartacist League of had the slogan "Hail the Red Army" in examine old ideas, I came to realise nationalism is like a breath of fresh Britain". In applying for membership Afghanistan, this slogan contrasts Bol­ "two stage" revolution was Men­ air. The politics of the iSt are always I make it clear that I have come to shevik principles with most of the left shevik, and that it tied the rev­ to be found on the right side of the political agreement on all major points who capitulated to imperialism and olutionary proletariat to the bour­ class line, from defence of the Soviet discussed with members of the SL/B. ended up on the wrong side of the geoisie in times of critical revolu­ Union to non-capitulation to social In coming from a Stalinist back­ barricades. Again over "Solidarnosc" tionary potential. I came to realise democracy, to defence of class war ground, where from my early 'teens I when the rest of the left was gloating that Eurocommunism was not a funda­ prisoners ranging from Geronimo Pratt have had a deep interest in politics, over the "pope's shop steward" the mental break from Stalinism, as to Russell Shankland and Dean the defence of the Soviet Union to "iSt" firmly called "Solidarnosc" coun­ "Socialism in One Country" will de­ Hancock. The iSt embodies the Lenin­ myself was paramount. However terrevolutionaries, who wanted to re­ generate all good "communists" from ist vanguard party, the tribune of all through my political evolution and store capitalism to Poland, and hailed being border guards of the Soviet oppressed people based on the revolu­ particularly at the point at which General Pilsudski, a fascistic dictator Union to being agents of their own tionary potential of the proletariat. ... I started to read Trotsky, I came to of interwar Poland. bourgeoisie. However more impor­ In conclusion I would like to say realise that what needed to be defend­ These two events signify for myself tantly I came to realise the worst that if accepted for membership I will ed was not the parasitic Stalinist bu­ a break with Stalinism in the following crime of "Stalinism" was neglecting come under the full discipline of the reaucracy, but the gains of "October" way. How could a socialist society in to give the international proletariat party and financial stipulations of the still to be found in the Soviet Union, Poland [lead] to workers organising "international and revolutionary party .... Communist politics are not a ie collectivised property forms and massive strikes over discontentment leadership". In discussions wi th the game but a serious choice people planned economy, which is the basis with a socialist SOCiety? How could a SL/B I have realised that defence of have to make in their lives, I hope of a socialist society. Trotsky's anal- socialist "state" throw the workers the Soviet Union is not defence of the that I have made that choice. -

OCTOBER 1988 3 Russian Nazis raise their heads Soviet workers must crush Pamyat

Recent statements in Soviet news­ tary service who would eagerly come papers report an ominous develop­ out to the Rumyantsevsky Garden on ment. An outfit calling itself the a Thursday to teach the Russian Nazis "Russian National-Patriotic Front a lesson. Who can doubt that a single Pamyat" has been staging weekly militant demonstration of 50,000 out­ demonstrations in the city of Lenin­ raged Leningraders, suitably prepared grad. An Italian tourist who wit­ to defend themselves, coming out to nessed a Pamyat demonstration bum Nazi swastika flags in Pamyat's wrote to Moscow News (14 August), face, ready to chase these Nazis to "A week has passed, and I'm still the nearby Neva River or drive them horrified. I felt as if I'd attended a into the canals, would put an end to real fascist meeting of the 1930s." Pamyat? The Pamyat Nazis must be "Surrounded by bodyguards in black crushed before this festering sore shirts", Pamyat leader Dmitri Vassi­ becomes a gangrenous cancer threat­ liev rails against Jews while his co­ ening the Soviet state and its multi­ horts blame the Chernobyl nuclear national people. disaster on "enemy forces". The blood of every decent Soviet citizen WHY HAS PAMYAT BEEN boils over Pamyat's racist outrages. TOLERATED? Leningrad must be cleansed of this Writer Voskoboinikov bitterly re­ fascist filth! lates how at one of the weekly Pam­ There is scarcely a street in Lenin­ yat rallies: grad which does not evoke mem­ "One scene was particularly out­ rageous, when one of the Lenin­ ories of this hero city's 900-day stand Der Spiegel against the Nazi invaders and of the graders raised a poster with the Pamyat fascists march in Moscow, May 1987. million or more who died to defend words: 'Workers of all lands, unite!' last year, arch-perestroika advocate times dangerously overlaps with out­ this western gateway to the Soviet Before the eyes of both militia and 'commissars' this poster was Boris Yeltsin granted a two-hour right Great Russian reactionaries. In homeland. From the sombre mass audience to a Pamyat delegation. his murderous campaign to smash the graves of the Piskarevskoye Memo­ snatched out of his hands and torn up, and he himself was immedi­ Both Raisa Gorbachev and anti-Gor­ Bolshevik-Leninist Opposition led by rial Cemetery, burial place of more bachev "hardliner" Yegor Ligachev Leon Trotsky, Stalin resorted to vile than 500,000 Leningraders who died ately pushed back by Pamyat mili­ tants. Why did the militia officials heap praise on Russian artist Ilya anti-Semitism. The Russian fascist in the Nazi siege, it is but a few mi­ Glazunov, whose latest work com­ groups that flourished among the nutes' drive to the Rumyantsevsky so carefully 'safeguard' the interests of the sponsors of the meetings?" memorates the 1000th anniversary counterrevolutionary emigre commu­ Garden. Yet here, every Thursday, of the Russian Orthodox church by nities in the 1920s and '30s ultimately in this public park in the heart of It is an open secret that Pamyat has depicting Stalin, Trotsky and Lenin came to praise Stalin because he "had Leningrad - the city of Lenin, the its protectors within the bureaucracy. leading a Bolshevik mob over a road killed more Communists than Musso­ birthplace of the internationalist One of its Moscow leaders is Valery Yemelyanov, a professional anti­ of skulls, under the gaze of Russian lini, Hitler, and Chiang Kai-shek com­ October Revolution - Pamyat has tsars and saints! (The government's bined", as one historian of Russian staged its disgusting spectacle. The Semite attached to the Soviet dip­ lomatic corps in the 1950s, who was official celebration of the millenium fascism observed. proud people of Leningrad can't allow in June swelled Russian nationalist this to continue. convicted of the grisly murder and obscurantism - and seems to have dismemberment of his wife in 1980. IS THIS WHERE GORBACHEV'S Leningrad writer Valery Voskoboi­ He was let off ~ith a short term in provided the occasion for Pamyat to nikov described one of the Pamyat initiate its weekly rallies.) Most re­ RUSSIA IS HEADING? TO PAMYAT? a psychiatric hospital, only to re­ IT HAD BETTER NOT BE! rallies (Moscow News, 14 August): emerge in Moscow when Pamyat be­ cently, tsar-lover Alexander Solzhe­ "One speaker demanded that it came active. As we wrote last year, nitsyn (who blames the gulags on Describing the dual character of the st,)uld be forbidden for Russian "With the advent of Gorbachev's Lenin) was invited to participate in nationalist bureaucratic caste, resting men and women to marry members glasnost (openness), everything from an official committee appointed to atop the internationalist foundations of definite alien races. Another leftist currents to sinister ultra­ erect a monument to the victims of of the workers state created by the called for the immediate deport­ nationalists are coming out of the Stalin's crimes. October Revolution, Trotsky wrote: ation of Jews and members of closet" ("Pamyat: Russian Fascists With its conservative programme "If it were possible to X-ray politi­ other 'alien races' to 'their his­ Raise Their Heads", Workers Van­ of "socialism in one country", its re­ cally the whole Soviet apparatus, torical motherland.' Still another guard no 434, 7 August 1987). Ob­ pudiation of Leninist international­ we would find in it: concealed Bol­ suggested declaring a ruthless war scenely declaring itself the guardian ism, its embrace of the hoary tradi­ sheviks, confused but honest revol­ on those who 'concealed their eth­ of Russia's "memory" (pamyat in tions of Russian nationalism, the Sta­ utionaries, bourgeois democrats, nic origin under a Russian name'.J' Russian), Pamyat crawled to the sur­ linist bureaucracy at best politically and finally, candidates for fascism." In recent months, leaflets have ap­ face and started organising. disarms the Soviet masses in the face - "N ew Defectors" (March 1938) peared on walls demanding, "Russia While still party chief in Moscow of nativist fascist reaction and at continued on page 10 is for Russians- Death to Yids!" Jew­ ish gravestones in cemeteries in Mos­ cow and elsewhere have been de­ facee. At a poetry reading by Andrei Vozr:clsensky, who recently published a poem denouncing these acts, anony­ mous notes were sent to the stage reading, "All of you are Jews or sold out to Jews," "We will kill you." With their appeals for an anti-Semitic "Final Solution", with their ostenta­ tious black shirts, with their racist diatribes against all non-Russian natimalities, these Great Russian "pa\ 'iots" are more than extreme natlvnalists or latter-day Black Hun­ dreds tsarist pogromists. They are dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, the Great Russian offspring of Hitler. Pamyat should be made to feel the wrath of the survivors of the 20 mil­ lion Soviet citizens of all national­ ities who died fighting the Hitlerite , , ~" invaders. For everyone of these Pam­ Art Publishers yat fascists, there are tens and hun­ Victorious Red Army (left) tramples Nazi swastika, Austria, 1945. Twenty million Soviet citizens died to drive Nazi dreds of fascist-hating workers, scourge from USSR. Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery CrightJ, burial place of over 500,000 of the one million Lenin­ students, veterans and youth in mili- graders who died in the 90G-day siege of the city.

4 WORKERS HAMMER As "Leninist" conciliates Russian Nazis TKP "rehabilitates" Stalin

The dramatic social upheavals in 'Uncle Joe' in World War II know the Soviet Union since the accession nothing." (our translation) of Mikhail Gorbachev to leadership Iscinin Sesi has not formally re- three years ago, have further exacer­ tracted its earlier statements on bated the disarray of the crisis-torn political revolution but its fulsome Communist parties internationally. praise for Stalin at this point indi­ Gorbachev's policies - the highly con­ cates a retreat to the perspective of tradictory and combustible combi­ pressuring hardliners within the bu­ nation of perestroika, glasnost and reaucracy. The TKP's coverage of "peaceful coexistence" with the war­ the CPSU conference was heavily crazy anti-Soviet NATO imperialists­ tilted in favour of support to Yegor have caused particular consternation Ligachev, Gorbachev's main ideo­ among those Stalinist groupings which, logical opponent within the Kremlin in opposition to the "Eurocommu­ oligarchy. Crazed Rumanian strong­ nists", solidarised with the Red Army man Ceausescu, who is resisting the intervention in Afghanistan and the drive toward perestroika in Eastern Polish army's suppression of Soli dar­ Europe and ordering thousands of nosc' counterrevolutionary bid for Hungarian villages in Transylvania power. to be razed from the face of the Gorbachev's·withdrawal of Soviet earth as his "solution" to national troops from Afghanistan has opened antagonisms is another recent - with the way for a horrible bloodbath of criticisms to be sure - favourite of the Afghan peoples - particularly the Iscinin Sesi. women who have shed the veil in ress To offer Stalin, the grave-digger of their fight for liberation against the Armed Spanish workers (left) were ready to fight for socialism, but Stalin revolution, as an alternative for the CIA-backed Islamic fundamentalist strangled revolution to appease imperialist bourgeoisie. people of the USSR today is gro­ cut-throats. Today the "Eurocommu­ tesque. The TKP's "rehabilitation" of nists" see a kindred spirit in the Krem­ communist movement as a whole the TKP's Iscinin Sesi (Workers Voice), Stalin comes at a time when the lin (as do the "tankie" Morning Star takes up a centrist position today". however, have taken to eulogising •.• Soviet masses are critically examin­ group, which now supports the pull­ The TKP has maintained a critical Joseph Stalin. In an article entitled ing their own history and topics for­ out of the Red Army). But other posture towards Gorbachev's inter­ "Kulaks reincarnated with the Gor­ merly taboo are now the subject of more critical "pro-Soviet" Stalinist national policies and market-oriented bachev line" (Iscinin Sesi no 358, 25 public debate. Even Trotsky and the groups have found themselves out in reforms of the Soviet economy. On July) the TKP writes: Left Opposition have been taken out the cold. One such current is the occasion, it has even used formula­ "Y ou erase from the history books of the realm of demonology. Indeed, Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), tions traditionally associated with the name of the communist who the one thing Gorbachev praises Stalin formerly the TKP Leninists who broke Trotskyism, including the call for has the honour of having saved a for is his defeat of the Left Opposi­ from the "opportunist wing" of Turk­ political revolution in the Soviet great socialist country from liquida­ tion. But glasnost has in effect sanc­ ish Stalinism in 1979, opposing the Union. This demand, while vague and tion, by seeing the advent of the tioned an intense debate on the role latter's slavish tailing of the bour­ confused when not explicitly-linked war, better than others and before of Stalin and the fate of the Old Bol­ geois Republican People's Party of to the need to forge a Trotskyist anyone else, and through having sheviks. Iscinin Sesi wants to paint Bulent Ecevit. When the Kremlin party to lead such an anti-bureau­ argued for the primacy of heavy "Uncle Joe" as some "hard" Bolshevik leadership sided with the "opportun­ cratic struggle, nonetheless flies in -industry over light industry. As if against Gorbachev today. Stalin was ists" the TKP Leninists were forced the face of the TKP's declared in­ the millions'of workers and the hard enough on Lenin's party, a man to revise their assessment of the tent of reforming the Soviet Stalin­ labouring masses who buried the who killed more communists than Soviet bureaucracy and Communist ist bureaucracy and the "world com­ fascists in the ground under the de­ Mussolini, Hitler and Chiang Kaj-shek parties, concluding that "the world munist movement". Recent issues of cisive and dedicated command of continued on page 11

"Family values" hlsteria targets U@y.! Smash Section 28! The intersection of disease with sex 'gay-bashing' and vicious discrim­ can create the conditions for severe ination against homosexuals flows repression or even worse under capi­ not only from the rise of AIDS hys­ talism in its decay. The terrifying teria, but from the general reac­ disease AIDS·has called out every tionary climate engendered by a hatred, every prejudice in this sick bourgeoisie triumphant in its 'roll­ society against "sex deviants", "drug back' against the union movement addicts", the poor, the sick: its vic­ and assaults on the working people Manchester: tims. The Thatcher government has and minorities." 20,000 demon­ whipped up and used the hysteria On 24 May, Section 28 (formerly strate against surrounding AIDS to regiment the known as Clause 28 of the local gov­ Clause 28 in entire population with its "moral" ernment bill) became law. Section February. campaign for a return to "family val­ 28 baldly states, "a local authority ues". Homosexuals, whose oppression shall not intentionally promote homo­ is rooted in the institution of the pa­ sexuality". This vilely homophobic triarchal nuclear family, have become law, with its deliberately vague lan­ a particular target of this vicious guage of "intentionally promote", is Britain alone. Protest demonstrations where she went. Pointing to the bru­ government. As we wrote in the art­ designed to give the reactionary occurred throughout Europe as well tal mass murder of homosexuals in icle "Criminal State Neglect as Epi­ Thatcher government maximum flex­ as in Australia and the United States. Nazi Germany, the World Congress demic Rages: The Agony of Aids", a ibility in its witchhunt of the vulner­ In her recent tour of Australia, of Gay and Lesbian Organisations has review of Randy Shilts' book And the able homosexual community. Thatcher was confronted with large coordinated anti-Clause demonstra­ Band Played On, in Women and Rev­ Prior to the passage of Clause 28, demonstrations of protest against tions at the British Embassy in Wash­ olution (Summer 1988): Britain witnessed the largest demon­ this vile law. The queen has not es­ ington and in other US cities. Most "The fate of homosexuals -like strations in defence of basic demo­ caped unscathed either. In her visit recently, the Mayor of Amsterdam that of any other oppressed group­ cratic rights for homosexuals in this to Holland this summer to celebrate has launched a bus to travel through­ is determined by the course of the country's history. And the outrage the "Glorious Revolution", protesters out Europe to organise against Sec- class struggle. Today the rise of against the bill was not confined to lined the street practically every- . continued on page 10

OCTOBER 1988 5 The deadly menace of the Hitler­ skinheads staged a Europe-wide "ac­ light (February 1988) explained how Skinheads ... loving bands in West Germany has tion", converging on Normandy for the fascists started organising skin­ been documented in the book Nazis, heads around "Oi" music: "The NF (Continued from page 12) a "N azi rock concert". In Rouen and Skins und alte Kameraden (1986), Brest this turned into a nightmare saw the huge success of the rock edited by Georg Biemann and Joachim of racist violence as they attacked against racism movement of the mid Klan and White Aryan Resistance in Krischka. In December 1985, Turkish North Africans, Asians and blacks to late 197 Os and decided to try and the US as well as the South African immigrant Ramazan Avci was mur­ from the Antilles. Our comrades of attract young street fighting skins Afrikaans Resistance Movement. dered by a gang of some 30 skins the Ligue Trotskyste de France re­ into the NF by offering them gigs Other "Oi" bands feature names like screaming "Turks out!" Then a black sponded with a protest demonstra­ that would be heavily racist and anti­ No Remorse, Brutal Attack and Sud­ man was beaten at night at an under­ tion the next day at Sotteville, near Jewish .... " den Impact. Their "concerts", in ground station by skins who smeared Rouen, where a Moroccan-owned bar "Rock against Racism" was the reality fascist rallies, are orgies of him with swastikas and the slogan was assaulted by the fascists. LTF youth corollary C)f the popular-frontist racist insults against blacks and Jews, "Nigger out- White Power!" Earlier, with "a brisk trade selling fascist in July 1983, a woman was stabbed literature, badges and records". by a skin after replying that she was In Liverpool, a city with a black Turkish. population going back several cen­ These deadly racist assaults are not turies, NF scum have stepped up at­ just the work of some deranged fringe tacks on integrated couples and fam­ elements. While neo-Nazi bands yell­ ilies. In London, skinheads recently ing "Heil Hitler!" and sporting SS attacked a lesbian bar, slashing wom­ symbols or the Prussian eagle beat en with broken glass. leaving more up Turks, the respectable politicians than 20 battered. The fascists have in Bonn, both rightist Christian Dem­ particularly targeted football, the ocrats and Social Democrats, pass plebeian sport of Britain, for their legislation to force out immigrants recruitment campaigns. "To spend and set up concentration camps for nearly a week with the tough-nut Tamils seeking asylum. core of English soccer is to start to But the fascist punks have also met doubt the location of the boundaries with opposition. In October 1983, of civilisation," observed a Sunday when the West German football team Telegraph (17 July) magazine re­ played Turkey in the Olympia Stadi­ porter. um in Berlin, neo-Nazi gangs threat­ "The reason that television broad­ ened to assault Turks in the heavily casts of international football immigrant Kreuzberg neighbourhood. games never show the English fans "Sports" clubs with names like Zyklon­ while the pre-match national anthem B (the gas used by the Nazis in their is being played is that the English death camps) and skinheads with pens are a solid mass of Nazi sal­ bomber jackets proclaiming "Proud utes .... A chorus of gorilla-like to Be a German" vowed "Kreuzberg grunts or a barrage of bananas from must burn". West Berlin unions re­ the English terraces greet opposing sponded to the planned orgy of racist black players." terror with a 3000-strong "friend­ Brussels, May 1985: Crushed bodies of Italian football fans after eruption of ship walk" and attempts to drown out bloody chauvinist frenzy. SKINHEAD TERROR SPREADS the fascist chants during the game. More recently, skinheads attacked a The skinhead phenomenon has been signs called for "Worker/Immigrant Anti Nazi League (ANL) organised dormitory in Schriesheim for refugees spreading its poison through Europe. Self-Defence Groups" and for "Full seeking asylum on 30 January, the by Tony Cliff's Socialist Workers In Britain, they feed off pervasive Citizenship Rights for Immigrants". Party. The SWP sought to compete anniversary of Hitler's seizure of depression and despair; on the con­ with the fascists by vying for their power. When Kuhnen's ANS thugs NOT "A MATTER OF TASTE" tinent they have appeared together base of support among youth with called for a pogrom against a with the mass unemployment of the It rock concerts. The Cliffites tried to Hamburg refugee dormitory on 20 is only in the absence of a class­ '80s. As well the "skins" have become struggle leadership of the labour organise skinheads against the Nazis, February, several hundred leftists fashionable among petty-bourgeois movement that the barbaric skin­ with explicit appeals to this lowlife head scum can fester and grow. Yet scum: "Skins hate authority and the while the British population at large Nazis represent authority" (Socialist rightly loathes and fears these killers, Worker,1 July 1978). When the much of the left denies any identi­ National Front staged a mass demon­ fication of the skinheads and fascism, stration in the substantially Asian and even invites them into its midst. East End of London in 1978, the ANL An article in the anti-fascist journal deliberately diverted tens of thou­ Searchlight (September 1986) exposed sands of anti-fascist militants away a nest of fascists with histories of from confronting the Nazis -with its violent racist attil;cks being hired as "Carnival 2" rockfest. These days, Miners strike stewards by gay pride, CND (Cam­ the SWP does not even pay lip service inspired support paign for Nuclear Disarmament) and to the need to fight fascism. Mean­ from blacks, anti-apartheid events. Denouncing while, it has sponsored a rock group Asians, women, the "complacency of many progress­ called the Redskins, whose album is lesbian and gay ive organisations towards this nazi entitled "Neither Washington Nor activists, as infiltration", the article concluded: Moscow". well as support "By their lack of political and moral An increasingly dubious group called from workers sense the labour and gay movements the Revolutionary Communist Party, around the have allowed a very large Trojan which originated in a split from the world. horse into their midst which may Cliffites in the 1970s, has gone even well turn out to be a tiger that will further. Specialising in classless ap­ devour them." peals to lumpen and petty-bourgeois A subsequent article in Search- outrage, emphasising the "politics elements who want to get their kicks counter mobilised to stop them. While by kicking the shit out of "foreign­ various reformists called on the West ers". While Britain reportedly has German imperialist state to ban the several tens of thousands of skin­ fascists, contingents of the Trotz­ heads, there are now some 2000 in kistischen Liga Deutschlands, German Spartacist League public meeting West Germany and several hundred section of the international Sparta­ in France as well (Le Nouvel Ob­ cist tendency, called for mass worker/ servateur, 19 August). immigrant mobilisations to smash In the Fourth Reich of German im­ the fascists. perialism, skinheads and other fas­ The skinhead "phenomenon" has cists have also targeted football now spread to France as well, where fan clubs as a prime recruiting ground. Le Pen's National Front fascists won Every Saturday shouts of "Sieg Heil!" 10 per cent at the polls last April. and "Deutschland, Deutschland uber On May Day, squads of shaved-head aZZes" are bellowed out in the stadi­ thugs formed up on the Champs ums. The National Socialist Action Elysees in a Le Pen provocation Front of Michael Kuhnen dominates against the international workers the Hamburg "Lions" club, while the day. And recently a homeless man LONDON DATE: Tuesday, 1 November ~ Eagle Front in Frankfurt includes was murdered outside Lille, his head TIME: 7'30 pm ' former members of the "Hoffmann kicked in by a skinhead. Hundreds Defence Sport Group", the murder­ outraged by this atrocity marched VENUE: Conway Hall, Red Lion Sq. WC2 .," ~ ous Nazis who set off a bomb at the through the city under a banner read­ ~or more informa~o~~ontactthe Spartacist League: . . . 1980 Munich Oktoberfest, killing 13 ing "Skinheads, Nazis, Vermin". PO Box 1041, London NWS 3EU-Phone: (01)4851396 and seriously injuring over 200. Last May, for the first time the

6 WORKERS HAMMER I

of power", vying with Radio Free On 20 August one of the "red skins" troops and the rhetoric of "national labour movement against advocates Europe in the stridency of its anti­ declared that "Uli is my friend". No socialism". In the "night of the long of all persuasions of class conabora­ Soviet propaganda, disavowing the doubt! knives" in June 1934, following an tion, from the Labour Party to the organised labour movement (even There is nothing surprising about the ultimatum by the German general chauvinist French Communist Party openly organising scabs during the existence of such "red skins". F as­ staff, Hitler carried out a "blood to the Cliffite SWP. At the time of miners strike), the RCP not only has cist gangs are drawn from lumpenised numerous skinhead toughs in its or­ youth who hate established authority. ganisation but has even recruited a Divorced from the working class and "former" fascist organiser. It is a socially nihilistic, they easily swing telling indictment of the rest of the from the extreme left to the extreme British left that the Spartacist League right. Not a few of Hitler's storm was virtually the only organisation to troopers had at one point or another raise the alarm over the RCP's invi­ supported the Communists. In West tation for fascist infiltration into the Germany today there is a large lump­ left and labour movement. enised milieu of the "no future" gen­ The "red skins" phenomenon has eration - from squatters and Auto­ meanwhile spread to other European nomen anarchists to the various skin­ countries, particularly West Ger­ head gangs - in which the lines be­ many. An anti-fascist demonstration tween left and right are totally in West Berlin on 20 August allowed blurred. the presence of a contingent of "left" The key is revolutionary leader­ skinheads, who distributed a Maoist ship - a workers movement which pamphlet railing against the "super- is not afraid to draw clear class :::l lines, which is willing to organise a ~ fight for workers power to resolve hi itler's notorious lumpen SA killers rounding up K PO members in 193~. ;;; the crisis of bourgeois society. A ~ revolutionary leadership of labour purge" of the lumpen SA Brownshirts. the Brussels massacre, which followed could draw to its side in the anti­ The skinhead rabble must be crushed on the heels of the defeat of the bit­ capitalist struggle many layers of in the egg before they become the ter 12-month miners strike, we noted: the most oppressed including des­ shock troops for another triumphant "It was the heroic miners whom perate youth, but instead the bank­ fascist movement. Thatcher tried to crush in blood ruptcy of the cringing reformists On the other side of the Atlantic, who pointed the road out of the leaves a vacuum which the fascists the nativist fascists of the Ku Klux barbarism witnessed in Brussels. are eager to fill, while others to the Klan along with groups like Tom Instead of fences to separate rival left seek to compete with the fas­ Metzger's White Aryan Resistance gangs competing in bloodthirsty cists on the latter's terrain. (WAR) h&ve recently allied with skin­ patriotism, we saw French and Eng­ In the 1920s and '30s the German heads in staging racist provocations lish miners shoulder-to-shoulder Stalinists at times appealed to Nazi from Orange County in southern Cal­ singing the 'Internationale' .... militants on the basis of "national ifornia to Chicago's Marquette Park "Had the miners defeated Thatcher Bolshevism", ie, championing imperi­ to Atlanta during the Democratic and opened up an intensified work­ Fascist NF scum peddling his filth. alist Germany's national cause a­ convention (see "Fascist Metzger and ing-class offensive against capital­ gainst Britain and France and helping His Deadly Skinhead Thugs", Workers ist oppression and unemployment, powers" of the US and USSR, a chem­ fuel the nationalist hysteria which Vanguard no 462, 7 October). Now it would have given the masses of ically pure expression of resurgent paved the Nazis' way to power. Like­ the skinhead cut-throats and KKK despairing and lumpenised youth German nationalism. Opening the wise today it is resurgent German lynchers are threatening to stage a something positive to look to. But door to these "red" skinheads is play­ nationalism which links the reform­ racist rally in Philadelphia, Novem­ the labour misleaders who in the ing with fire, as our German com­ ist left with the "red skins" with their ber 5. In response, the Partisan De­ aftermath of Brussels mutter about rades warned after the Berlin demo: "Neither Washington Nor Moscow" fense Committee has initiated a mass unemployment and underlying so­ "The TLD had to learn the hard way slogan - a slogan also claimed by the labour-centred mobilisation to keep cial causes were the very same how the 'new German nationalism' outright fascist skinheads since it the streets safe from the race­ gentlemen who stabbed the miners is a transmission belt to punk-fas­ captures nationalist resentment and terrorists. (See article, p2) strike in the back ..•. " cism. One Uli Sandhaus was ex­ anti-Communism. The Spartacist League/US, whose - Workers Hammer no 70, June pelled from our organisation in In France, some of the skinhead class-struggle defence strategy the 1985 1982, after developing an enthusi­ groups call themselves the "neigh­ PDC embraces, has a record of inter­ The fascists and their skinhead dogs asm for 'Oi! Oi!' music and exhibit­ bourhood SA". The Nazi SA Brown­ dicting fascist incursions into north­ of war are a deadly danger to minor­ ing the swastika in his apartment. ••. shirts were recruited from the so­ ern US cities, including a 5000-strong ities, to the workers movement, to "In 1984, Sandhaus translated these cially pathological, criminal dregs labour/black mobilisation which all decent people. This human dust 'proclivities' into direct action and of crisis-racked German society, stopped a KKK race-hate provoca­ can and will be swept away by the led a bloody attack on our support­ used to terrorise the labour move­ tion in predominantly black Wash­ power of the proletariat organised er, Gisela Borowski, whom he had ment and Jews and then discarded ington, DC in November 1982. Such in sharp class struggle against the previously sent postcards with 'Oi! after Hitler took power. The Nazis a class-struggle strategy is urgently racist terrorists, on the road to the Oi!' threats." rose to power in the service of Ger­ needed today in Britain and through­ revolutionary overthrow of the rot­ - Spartakist no 58, September/ man capitalism. Once there, they out Western Europe, necessarily en­ ting system that spawns this racist October 1988 had to discard their plebeian shock tailing a political struggle within the filth .• A whole town sentenced Down with the death sentences in Turkey!

The following article has been to build the "Model Fatsa". They tally tortured to death in prison in butcher Evren, Turkey'S Pinochet, adapted from Spartakist (no 58, formed citizen committees to demo­ 1985 as were many others. this is an urgent responsibility. The September/October 1988), newspaper cratically control the finances and Through such "trials" as that Turkish junta, seeking "respectabil­ of the Trotzkistischen Liga Deutsch­ administration of the town and tried against Dev Yol in Fatsa and against ity" among the imperialist "democ­ lands, German section of the inter­ to break the state purchasing mon­ the TBKP (United Communist Party racies" also hosted a visit by Thatcher national Spartacist tendency. opoly of nuts. This small town became of Turkey) leaders Haydar Kutlu and where she made a point of visiting a symbol of political resistance and Dr Nihat Sargm the junta wants to the Istanbul army headquarters. At 24 August, Erzincan - Eight death the wish of the population for hu­ drown in blood the struggle for human one point in this trip she declared: penalty sentences, 14 life sentences, mane, socialistic living and working dignity (see Workers Hammer no 98, "Whether it is described as Ozalite 313 prison sentences from one to 20 conditions. May/June 1988). Given that, the sec­ [the Turkish prime minister] or years. This was the judgement of war In July, 1980 the army together tarianism of the Turkish left organi­ Thatcherite, the goal is the same." court no 3 in its unprecedented mass with the fascists devastated Fatsa: sations which fail to differentiate The brutal Turkish regime has im­ trial against almost one half of the the herald of the NATO putsch of 12 between defence against state re­ prisoned hundreds of thousands of adult inhabitants of the east Turkish September. After the putsch one­ pression and political/programmatic trade unionists, leftists and Kurds. town of Fatsa. The trial lasted eight third of the inhabitants were impris­ solidarity is clearly suicidal. The Defend the accused - from Dev Yol years in which altogether 811 inhab­ oned and hundreds were tortured. It terror against Fatsa cries out for to the TBKP! Down with the death itants were accused. sufficed to be a member or a sympa­ defence action from the internation­ sentences! Free all class war pris­ The campaign of extermination thiser of the left organisation Devr­ al working class movement. Particu­ oners! For the Kurdish right of self­ against the whole village began in imci Yo!. Charges were based on larly in Britain, where a large number determination - For a Socialist Re­ 1979. The reason: the inhabitants had Articles 146 and 168, copied from the of immigrant Turkish workers reside public of United Kurdistan! Smash the elected the master tailor Fikri Son­ fascist Mussolini constitution. The and where Margaret Thatcher has NATO military bonapartist regime­ mez as mayor, and with that began main defendant, Sonmez, was bru- rolled out the red carpet for the For workers revolution!

OCTOBER 1988 7 Perestroika ... 6 Miles 600 (Continued from page 1) Marching under the flags of the inter­ USSR war bourgeois states, notorious for their persecution of Jews and Com­ munists, many of the protesters carried placards which obscenely showed a hammer and sickle joined to the Nazi swastika. This is the lan­ guage of the CIA's "Captive Nations" crowd. What the Baltic republics and Ar­ menia have in common is that they are among the most advanced parts of the Soviet Union, and they are playing out the dog-eat-dog logic of perestroika with its market-oriented reforms. A recent article in the San rd Maps Francisco Chronicle (31 August) National conflict erupts in Soviet Caucasus (at right) over demands for transfer of Nagorno-K arabakh Autonomous Region made the perceptive observation: from the Azerbaijani to the Armenian republic. "In addition to this political tur­ moil, Gorbachev's economic re­ cisive signal that there is no place sian general Denikin. Yet even then who, he declares, 'breed like cock­ forms are likely to exacerbate the for nationalist chauvinism in the a majority of Armenians regarded roaches'." ethnic crisis. Perestroika is already homeland of the October Revolution. unity with Russia as the only perma­ The Armenians, a few hotheads not­ producing unemployment, inflation, What's needed is the Marxist pro­ nent basis for military security and withstanding, do not want to separate and recession .... gramme which animated the Bolshe­ economic stability. To save them­ from Russia. They know that as a "But its most worrying legacy may vik Party of Lenin and Trotsky. It is selves from an invading Turkish army, small, independent state of some be regional economic disparity. necessary to reforge in the Soviet in late 1920 the Dashnaks negotiated three million people in the Near East Variations in regional patterns of Union an authentically Bolshevik an agreement with the Bolsheviks they would be easy prey for stronger employment- will produce economic party committed to central planning which de facto incorporated Armenia Islamic neighbours, especially Turkey. inequalities between ethnic groups. under workers democracy, social into the Soviet state. Traditionally they have appealed to Machine tool builders in Russia will egalitarianism and equality between Armenia has subsequently become the Russians as a fellow "Christian soon race ahead of cotton growers peoples, and proletarian internation­ one of the most prosperous regions people" to unite against the Muslim in Central Asia. These differences alism. Only such a programme can in the Soviet Union. With its well­ infidel. Armenian bureaucrats, intel­ are certain to create resentments." liberate the creative energies of all educated working class and large in­ lectuals and petty-capitalist entre­ Decades of mismanagement by the Soviet peoples, overcoming the po­ telligentsia, it is a centre of high­ preneurs also understand their rela­ Kremlin bureaucracy have under­ tentially fratricidal national con­ tech industry and scientific research tive prosperity stems from being a mined the belief that there can be flicts which loom ever more omin­ in the USSR. Under Gorbachev's pere­ culturally and technologically ad­ equality between the Soviet peoples ously in Gorbachev's Russia. stroika, with its emphasis on reward­ vanced section of the Soviet econ­ on an increasing plane of material ing competitive superiority, the Ar­ omy. They just wanted a better deal well-being. Much of the intelligent­ BEHIND RESURGENT menian bureaucrats and intellectuals in partnership with the Russians. But sia throughout the USSR identifies ARMENIAN NATIONALISM had expected to gain even more, par­ when Moscow didn't give them what social and national equality with econ­ The intense nationalist agitation in ticularly at the expense of less de­ they wanted, the mood turned dra­ omic stagnation and levelling down. Armenia and the Baltic republics un­ veloped Azerbaijan. Thus Armenians matically against the central govern­ So they're going for increasing mate­ derscores the historic bankruptcy of are in the vanguard of "market social­ ment. Back in February-March dem­ rial well-being by the inequality route Stalinist bureaucratic rule and the ism" in the Soviet Union. The idea of onstrators in Yerevan carried - decentralisation and market com­ dangerous effects of Gorbachev's perestroika in Yerevan is that Arme­ portraits of Gorbachev and hailed petition. efforts to "reform" it. For the Arme­ nians will be the factory managers, glasnost. No longer. Stalinism has been synonymous nians have traditionally been the Russians the production workers and Gorbachev's perestroika has un­ with national oppression of non-Rus­ most pro-Russian of Soviet national­ Azeris the janitors. leashed a new round of communalist sian peoples in the Soviet Union. ities, while in the era of the October Beginning last year, Armenian in­ blood-letting in the Caucasus. Yet Under Stalin (himself a Georgian) Revolution Latvia and, to a lesser tellectuals launched a campaign to the Stalinist regime cannot resolve this meant Russification of the non­ degree, Estonia were strongholds of transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh the myriad national disputes, claims Russian republics of the USSR, the Bolshevism. Autonomous Region, a mountainous or aspirations in a democratic and state which had been conceived by As a small Christian people in the enclave of 150,000 inhabitants, from equitable manner. Under a regime of the Bolsheviks as a genuinely free Near East, the Armenians have long the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan to Ar­ workers democracy the borders of union of peoples. (A contemporary looked to Russia as a protector menia. As we wrote last spring, the various republics and autonomous "Since a majority of inhabitants of regions could be adjusted according Nagorno-Karabakh are Armenians to the will of the peoples involved. who want to be part of the Armenian Moreover, if the Soviet Union were republic, that is their democratic carrying out a programme of revol­ right" ("Behind the Armenia Crisis", utionary internationalism, smashing Workers Vanguard no 450, 8 April). the reactionary CIA-backed mullahs But the Karabakh movement is only in Afghanistan instead of tempor­ part of an irredentist programme for ising and then pulling Soviet troops consolidating Greater Armenia. Next out, if the USSR were promoting the on their agenda is the Autonomous Re­ programme of proletarian revolution public of Nakhichevan, once part of in Iran, which would extend the gains Armenia but now with a majority of October for example to Iranian Azeri population. The demand to Azerbaijan, rather than capitulating transfer Karabakh has been rejected before the anti-Communist Khom­ by the Kremlin bureaucracy for fear eini - then the Soviet peoples would of opening the door to endless terri­ not be consumed by feuding over age­ torial claims and counter-claims by old national grievances at home. , the various Soviet nationalities. Lenin's last struggle was directed against Stalin (third from left) and his lieuten­ Frustration over Nagorno-Karabakh ESTONIA AND LATVIA WERE ant Ordzhonikidze (at right), over their Great Russian chauvinism against has produced a wave of rabid chauvin­ BASTIONS OF BOLSHEVISM Georgian Communists. Photo from 1925. ism in Armenia. The Washington Post In the Western media the Soviet (12 September) quotes as typical an Baltic republics are presented as hot­ analogue to Stalin is the "solution" against their hostile Islamic neigh­ Armenian fruit merchant: beds of anti-Communist nationalism. to the national question in Romania bours, especially Turkey. The Arme­ "Azerbaijanis are just Turks, the In recent months mass demonstra­ by the ultra-Stalinist Ceausescu, who nian Dashnaks were the only national­ same lot, and if I see a Turk, I'll tions have taken place in Riga and has ordered thousands of Hungarian ist party in the Russian empire to sup­ kill him. They killed our grand­ Tallinn and Vilnius, under the flags villages in Transylvania razed from port the tsarist autocracy. At the out­ parents, and now they want to kill of the independent bourgeois Latvian, the face of the earth.) But once the break of World War I, the Dashnaks us. We could live with them if they Estonian and Lithuanian states of the iron lid of repression has been lifted formed volunteer regiments to fight were only human beings. But they interwar years. Yet these "indepen­ by Gorbachev, you get the flourish­ for Russia against Ottoman Turkey. act like animals." dent" states were created through ing of national particularism and Partly in response, the Turks mass­ the direct intervention of Western Chauvinism as the result. And the acred over a million Armenians the A New York Times report from Yere­ imperialism after crushing the pro­ most dangerous of these is the emer­ following year. van cites a prominent Armenian in­ Soviet, revolutionary workers of Es­ gence of the black-shirted Great Rus­ Amid the ,anarchic conditions in the tellectual offhandedly commenting tonia and Latvia. Historically, this sian Nazis of Pamyat, which has been Caucasus created by the Bolshevik "we are a nation surrounded by bar­ region was a stronghold of Bolshev­ staging weekly provocations in Lenin­ Revolution and ensuing civil war, Ar­ barians", while in • ;1e streets an agi­ ism. grad. A massive, organised demon­ menia achieved a short-lived indepen­ tator "loudly cal.~d for Christian From its formation just prior to the stration of Leningrad workers and dence under the Dashnaks, who col­ nations to band together against the Revolution of 1905, the Latvian So­ youth to crush Pamyat would be a de- laborated closely with the White Rus- predominantly Moslem Azerbaijanis, cial Democrat Workers Party was

8 WORKERS HAMMER closely linked to Lenin's Bolsheviks. Both the rising working-class anger This reflected the exceptionally high and growing national hostilities were level of class consciousness - scarcely dramatically demonstrat~d in a rally contaminated by nationalism - of Lat­ of 70,000 in the central Serbian town vian workers, including many farm of Kraljevo a few weeks ago. Of­ labourers, who hated not only the Ger­ ficially, the rally was to be a Serbian man-speaking Baltic barons and Rus­ nationalist protest over the exodus sian bureaucrats, but also the Latvian of Serbs from the predominantly Al­ bourgeoisie and rich peasants. Until banian region of Kosovo. However, 1917 the Latvian party was the lar­ the rally turned into a bitter attack gest component of the Russian social on bureaucratic parasitism. A union democracy. "Menshevism was an un­ leader at a railroad car factory ex­ wanted child in the Latvian SD", claimed: writes Andrew Ezergailis in his work, "Return all you have taken from The 1917 Revolution in Latvia (1974), the working class! You with your and in the year of the revolution "Bol­ privileged pensions, which are big­ shevik dominance was assured in the ger than the pay of entire brig­ Soviets from the very beginning" un­ ades of steelworkers, do you ever like the rest of the empire. blush when you collect them? At the outbreak of the 1917 Rus­ "We demand the right to dispose of sian Revolution all eight Latvian regi­ the proceeds of our work" (New ments in the tsarist army went over York Times, 23 September). to the soviets. The Lettish Rifles­ Such sentiments could lay the basis whose heroism in the Civil War was for a struggle against the parasitic legendary - were the only regiments bureaucracy uniting the proletarians from the old tsarist army to be in­ ege of all the diverse nationalities. But corporated intact into Trotsky's Red Soviet troops leave Afghanistan. Kreml1n Stalinists appease imperialism, aban­ that requires an internationalist com­ Army. In the November 1917 elec­ don Afghan leftists, women to CIA-backed Islamic slaughter. munist leadership. tions to the Constituent Assembly, Yugoslavia has experienced "mar­ the Bolsheviks received 70 per cent Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa the October Revolution, a pro­ ket socialism" for four decades. In of the total vote in Latvia, 40 per against Russia in June 1941, the Bal­ gramme of consistent democracy the Soviet Union, the very introduc­ cent in Estonia - far higher than in tic countries were again overrun by among the mosaic of nationalities tion of perestroika has produced a Russia where much of the peasantry the German army. The Nazi occu­ under the tsarist empire could only deepening economic and political still supported the petty-bourgeois piers and their local allies extermi­ be implemented through the prolet­ crisis. There exists among Soviet populist Social Revolutionaries. How­ nated not only Jews but anyone sus­ arian seizure of power and the cre­ working people a deep reservoir of ever, the fledgling soviet republics pected of Communist sympathies. ation of a centrally planned, collec­ egalitarian and collectivist values, of Latvia and Estonia were crushed When the Red Army liberated the tivised economy. the belief that what is produced in when the German imperialists over­ Baltic republics in 1944, the Esto­ And only on a thoroughly internat­ society should be available to all of ran and occupied the region in late nian, Latvian and Lithuanian collab­ ionalist programme could the working its members more or less equally. 1917. orators retreated with the Wehr­ masses seize power. It was under Soviet workers have been told for With the collapse of Kaiser Wil­ macht, becoming the first of the Cap­ Stalin and the nationalist dogma of decades, and they believe, that the helm's Germany in November 1918, tive Nations Cold Warriors in Bonn "socialism in one country" that Bol­ productive resources of their country the Latvian and Estonian workers and Washington. shevik internationalism was reversed belong to them. Thus perestroika is again moved to take power into their Today, Latvia and Estonia are the and Great Russian chauvinism and bound to produce massive popular re­ hands. Proletarian uprisings from most economically advanced, West­ anti-Semitism again reared their sistance which can open the road to within and support of the Red Army ernised parts of the USSR. The heads in the Kremlin. Lenin's last pol­ proletarian political revolution to from without led to the formation of nationalist bureaucrats and intellec­ itical struggle, in 1922-early '23, was shatter the Stalinist bureaucracy. the Latvian Soviet Republic in early tuals now want to retain control over against Stalin's drive to impose on After coming to power in 1985, 1919. The American bourgeois his­ every rouble generated in these re­ the Union of Soviet Socialist Repub­ Mikhail Gorbachev enjoyed what in torian Stanley Page in his study on publics. Activists in the Latvian and lics the old tsarist principle of "Rus­ American parlance would be called The Formation of the Baltic States Estonian Popular Fronts - supposedly sia, one and indivisible". Lenin in­ a "political honeymoon". The confron­ (1959) acknowledges: "In Latvia'S formed to promote Gorbachev's "re­ sisted that "freedom to secede from tation over food lines in Krasnoyarsk working class, Soviet rule did find form" programme - are demanding the union" was fundamental, not a last month and the nationalist uproar some basis for the establishment of a that self-financing be applied not paper clause to cover the Russifying in Armenia and the Baltic republics government able to call upon a sub­ only to individual enterprises, but bureaucracy. At the same time, class­ indicate that Gorbachev's "honey­ stantial percentage of the population also want full control of all foreign conscious Soviet workers of all nation­ moon" with Soviet working people is for support. A workers' rebellion her­ trade in the hands of the republics, alities must oppose movements for over. For Soviet workers to take back alded the coming of the Red Army including trade with other parts of secession which are in reality a cover political power requires the leader­ into Riga, and similar risings also the Soviet Union. A petty-capitalist for bourgeois counterrevolution. ship of a revolutionary Marxist party, anticipated the Reds' capture of Jel­ entrepreneur in Estonia quipped: While the Latvian Soviet Republic of a new Bolshevik party. And like the gava and Ventspils." In Estonia, like­ "We'll have our own currency. The 1919 was an independent workers Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, wise, the advance of the Red Army rate'll be -three Soviet roubles for an state closely allied with Soviet Rus­ it would be based on the inextricable was greeted by working-class up­ Estonian rouble." sia, the forces now pushing for an in­ link between the struggle for authen­ risings. On 1 October the Popular Front dependent Latvia and Estonia are in­ tic workers rule in the Soviet Union However, Soviet power in Latvia of Estonia held its first national con­ creasingly anti-Soviet and anti-Com­ and the fight for world socialist and Estonia was crushed by an unholy gress in the Lenin Palace of Culture munist. Thus Western imperialism wel­ revolution. alliance of British and German im­ in Tallinn. Reportedly, a quarter of comes and foments Baltic national­ perialism, White Russian forces and its leaders are members of the Com­ ism as a hoped-for first step towards Reprinted from Workers Vanguard native bourgeois nationalists. The munist Party. But CP approval or no, the disintegration of the Soviet Union. no 462, 7 October 1988. principal architect of counterrevol­ where this is headed is towards the break up of the USSR. "Naturally, ution in the Baltic was Britain, whose FOR SOCIAL AND independent Estonia is the aim of fleet proved an effective weapon in NATIONAL EQUALITY the battles for the coastal cities. Tal­ each Estonian," said one Popular linn fell to the counterrevolution at Front organiser. Among other things, The roots of the present Soviet ORDER NOW! the end of 1918, Riga held out for they are demanding the power to stop crisis lie deep in decades of Stalinist another five months. Following the immigration of non-Estonians (some bureaucratic misrule, now aggra­ birth of the "independent" Baltic 40 per cent of the population and vated by Gorbachev's perestroika. states, their bourgeois rulers, pup­ half of Tallinn is now Russian), and Wherever "market socialism" has pets of Western imperialism, un­ call for the exclusive use of Estonian been introduced, it has generated leashed a white terror that deci­ as the official language. widening social, regional and national mated the Communists. An attempt­ These demands amount to an attack inequalities. These tendencies have ed uprising in Tallinn in 1924, engin­ on the very foundations of the Soviet reached an extreme point in the eered by Zinoviev, was a failed Union. The language question in par­ country which originated "self-man­ putsch. In the following decades the ticular was seen by Lenin and the Bol­ agement" and "self-financing" 40 once powerful socialist proletariat sheviks as a key aspect of the strug­ years ago, namely, Yugoslavia. Today, Hungary: of Latvia and Estonia was progres­ gle for national equality in the tsar­ Yugoslavia is wracked by a 200 per "Goulash Communism" Goes Bust sively weakened. ist prison house of peoples. The Bol­ cent inflation rate, mass lay-offs, a ------'------In the '30s the right-wing regimes sheviks fought against the imposition savage austerity programme imposed For Central Planning in Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius became of the Russian language on non-Rus­ by world bankers, and violent hostility Through Soviet Democracy increasingly repressive towards the sian nationalities, but they also op­ between the various national repub­ left and workers movement, insti­ posed the bourgeois and petty-bour­ lics and autonomous regions. None­ tuting a numerus clausus to restrict geois nationalists who demanded theless, practically all parts of Yugo­

Jewish enrolment in the universities, "national-cultural autonomy" and of­ slavia have seen militant workers JUlY'98/! _ .•• unleashing pogroms. Following the ficial sanction for their language. strikes and protests against the in­ Spa'Tac,>, PU~"'h,"~ Co So. 1371 GPQ """" Yor' N V 10116 193.9 Stalin-Hitler pact, Moscow in­ Lenin insisted: "The national pro­ creasingly desperate economic con­ corporated the Baltic states into the gramme of working-class democracy ditions. Make cheques payable/post to USSR as a strategic defensive meas­ is: absolutely no privileges for any On at least three occasions in the Spartacist Publications 75p ure. However, Stalin left the old one nation or anyone language .... " last several months workers have PO Box 1041 London NW5 3EU bourgeois order virtually intact. When As was proven in practice through stormed the parliament in Belgrade.

OCTOBER 1988 9 in public toilets, street beatings and of keeping or even getting a job are cop raids on lesbian and gay clubs. greatly reduced. Last May, an ac­ Pamyat .... Section 28 ... Not appeals to the cops but mobili­ counts clerk was dismissed for simply wearing a badge "Lesbians Ignite". (Continued from page 4) (Continued from page 5) sations of the working class and op­ pressed are the way to stop the mur­ For fear of their livelihood, gays and Under glasnost and perestroika, a tion 28. The protest tour is to culmin­ derous fascist thugs. The way to fight IV drug users are no longer necessar­ whole political spectrum which had ate in an anti-Section 28 conference these scum was shown on 27 June ily telling their GP if they have been lain dormant under decades of heavy­ in London at the end of this year. 1982 in Chicago when a Spartacist tested positive for HIV or even going League-initiated trade union-centred for a test at all. Insurance companies handed repression has come to the Here in Britain, the reactionary surface in Gorbachev's Russia. Pam­ mobilisation of 3000 stopped a Nazi continue to push for mandatory test­ ramifications of the act have been provocation against Chicago Gay ing in hospitals. It may well be the yat stands at one extreme - outright amply demonstrated in the brief fascist counterrevolution. Lopping Pride Day. case that AIDS is becoming in part months since its passage. In particu­ an underground disease. off that excrescence would open up lar, it has created a climate of fear. Homosexuals, at any time a vulner­ possibilities for a revolutionary trans­ able minority under capitalism, are As revolutionary Marxists we ap­ While the act has been barely tested proach the question of homosexual formation that would bring authentic up against all the forces of reaction in the courts, its vague language of oppression as the only consistent de­ socialism to the Soviet Union. in this decaying society. While fas­ "intentional" and "promote" mean fenders of democratic rights for all Having in the past suppressed every­ cist skins carry out their bigotry that every time it is evoked each the exploited and oppressed. These thing which was seen as a threat to with knives and gang attacks, more case must be tested separately. rights are indivisible and can be se­ its bureaucratic order, now that the "respectable" bigots do so by with­ Moreover, it is mainly used by local cured only with the proletariat in lid has been somewhat lifted, the Sta­ holding the billions needed for AIDS authorities, Tory and Labour-con­ power. The slogan "Full democratic linist regime allows Great Russian research and care for the victims of trolled councils alike, to target local rights for homosexuals" means a fascists to run loose in the streets. this horrific disease, at the same time 'homosexual groups in whatever way commitment not only to fight such We certainly do not look to the Sta­ scare mongering amongst the popula­ they please. Funding for gay and les­ abuses as job discrimination and legal linist regime, which won't recognise tion at large that AIDS is a "gay dis­ bian groups, counselling, centres has inequality, but also to mobilise the genuine fascists under its very nose, ease". Today, the Medical Research been slashed. Insidiously, teachers power of the working class in defence to now crush the Pamyat menace. and others are now even afraid of Council's directed research pro­ of homosexuals' democratic rights. It Many Soviet citizens may be fearful, gramme on AIDS is running at a tiny what they can say about homosexu­ is not a separate demand for homo­ with good reason, that any crack­ £5 million a year while the govern­ ality in sex education classes. Teach­ sexuals, but a demand in the interests down would be a signal for renewed ers and other local authority employ­ ment pours billions into the Trident all-sided repression. The Soviet peop­ of the entire working class. ees who have openly come out as missile programme in its attempt to While the Tories lead the resurgence le must reassert their right to mass homosexual remain in fear of opening have a first strike weapon with which political demonstrations. of anti-homosexual bigotry, Labour's their mouths, full stop. Self-censor­ to target the Soviet Union. Moreover, Neil Kinnock is quick to take the cue. What is necessary now is an ag­ ship is fast becoming the norm. the much vaunted new needle ex­ gressive mobilisation organised as In the last general election, this self­ And when self-censorship is not change programme to be implemented admitted "I am what people call a widely as possible - from below, inde­ on behalf of IV drug users in Liver­ pendently of the authorities - in Lenin­ enough, the real censors get into the reactionary" revelled in his own act. Lesbian and Gay Socialist (Au­ pool, Edinburgh and London, another­ anti-gay campaign. The only way out grad, to ensure the greatest prepon­ in the eyes of the bigots - "unsav­ derance in the relationship of forces tumn 1988) reports that Manchester of the murderous cycle of hatred, ig­ University Press has now axed a book oury" segment of the population to norance, bigotry and terror is through against the dangerous Pamyat fascist be hit hard by AIDS is but a drop in fanatics. People from many different by Mick Wallis and Simon Shepherd socialist revolution, liberating all the entitled Promoting Homosexuality­ the bucket compared to what is oppressed by sweeping away this de­ political persuasions can join together needed: free needles and decriminal­ in action to smash Pamyat. They will a collection of essays on the history caying imperialist society. Forward of gay politics in the 198 Os - because isation of drugs to remove the stigma to the building of a revolutionary undoubtedly attract many Lenin­ and get help for these victims fast. graders with embittered memories of concern about "opinion in the Tory Leninist/Trotskyist vanguard party who make up in zeal what they lack Party". Early this summer the De­ The level of hysteria is such that to act as a tribune for all the op­ in physical stamina. Massive and de­ partment of Education and Science if you are homosexual, an IV drug pressed and to lead the working class termined demonstrations must elim­ sent the packet "Teaching about HIV user or a haemophiliac your chances to power .• inate this nativist Hitlerite menace, and AIDS" back for a rewrite because presenting the authorities with an its message was not "moral enough", accomplished fact. eg lesbian and gay groups were cited as agencies from which to get advice It will take a Trotskyist party at the head of the Soviet working people on sexual relationships. An education­ to restore genuine soviet democracy. al pack for health professionals has The crushing of Pamyat as a necess­ also been stopped by the government ary measure of self-defence by the because its "moral" message was not Soviet people will be a step on that strong enough: "monogamy" was not road. touted as the answer to AIDS! And as Reporting on an attempted Nazi we go to press, the Independent demonstration in Moscow in 1982, Broadcasting Authority has just the New York Times (29 April 1982) banned Channel 4 from showing in a Week two of four totals commented: "Memories of the war late night s~ot a film on the life of the against Nazi Germany and its 20 artist David Hockney unless a "par­ million Soviet victims remain sacred ticularly explicit" homosexual love local Uuota Iin pointsl Wee~ two % in the Soviet. Union, and Muscovites scene is cut. who heard reports of the attempted Increased anti-homosexual violence l on~on 330 252 76 rally generally expressed shock that has become the jagged edge of the anyone would openly profess fascism." AIDS witchhunt. Monitoring groups When the handful of Russian Nazis have reported a significant rise in the Glasgow 130 90 69 showed up in Moscow's Pushkin past few months of physical attacks Square to "celebrate" Hitler's birth­ on homosexuals around the country, At large 100 24 24 day, they were immediately pounced particularly in Brighton, Leicester, on and given short shrift by hundreds Sheffield and London. In July more of students and youthful sports fans than 20 women were badly hurt when from the Spartak, Dynamo and Red fascist skinheads attacked a group of National Total 560 366 65 Army Clubs. lesbians meeting at a pub in Clerken­ The political climate which em­ well. On the same day, Highbury boldens Pamyat to show its face has magistrates dismissed a case against been enhanced by the Gorbachev re­ four fascists arrested for attacking gime's encouragement of capitalist a group of gays - stabbing one man in profiteering and its disavowal of even the neck - outside the Bell Pub in lip service to the cause of the inter­ Pentonville Road. Amongst those re­ SUBSCRIBE NOW! national class struggle. But there are leased by the cops was one Ian Stu­ many thousands of Red Army vets art/Donaldson, a member of the skin­ who remain proud of having fulfilled head fascist rock band "Skrewdriver" Marxist Newspaper of the Spartacist League their "internationalist duty" combat­ who has served time for a racist at­ ting CIA-backed reactionaries in Af­ tack on a black man. According to Name ______ghanistan, and are well trained in de­ Lesbian and Gay Socialist, "Islington Address ______fending themselves and the Soviet Anti-racist Anti-fascist Action has state against reactionary rabble. written in strong terms" to the local Postcode ______Telephone ______They are not about to let a ragtag police chief calling for "more action gang of Nazis muscle their way into from the police". o 9 issues of Workers Hammer for £2 the city of the October Revolution. But reliance on the capitalist state (Overseas Subscriptions: Airmail £5.00) The mullah-led child-murderers is suicidal. Two men were arrested o 9 issues of Workers Hammer PLUS 24 issues of Workers Vanguard, Marxist fortnightly should have been wiped out in Afgh­ recently outside the Bell Pub and of the Spartacist League/U.S. for £7 anistan; the Pamyat Nazis had better charged with "outraging public de­ (All above subs include Spartacist, organ of the international Spartacist tendency) be stamped out in Leningrad! cency" for kissing each other on the o 3 issues of Women & Revolution for £1.50 street. "Action" by Thatcher's boot­ Reprinted from Workers Vanguard boys means just that for gays and far Make cheques payable/post to: Spartaclst Publications, POBox 1041, London NW5 3EU no 461, 25 September 1988. worse; it means increased harassment

10 WORKERS HAMMER manders of army troops, 110 out sistent class collaboration in the ers' states, there would need to be TKP... of 135 commanders of divisions and name of an alliance with the "pro­ a counterrevolution. This is more (Continued from page 5) brigades, half of the commanders gressive" imperialist bourgeoisie? likely to be led by Pamyat .than by of regiments, and most of the pol­ Gorbachev's betrayal in Afghanistan the bureaucracy." itical commissars were executed. is not a new invention of the Stalin­ If the USSR is not socialist, is it combined. But not towards the The Red Army, bled white, was ist bureaucracy - sacrificing revol­ then capitalist? If Gorbachev says imperialists, for whom he constantly hardly an army at all now, and it ution on the altar of "peaceful something critical about Stalin, is betrayed proletarian revolution inter­ would not be again for years. The coexistence" and "socialism in one Stalin then nature's nobleman? Such nationally in the name of "socialism Germans exploited this situation country" was Stalin's particular is the maze in which these "critical" in one country". to the full .... " speciality. To grapple with this Stalinists are caught; many of the It is worth recalling that after Tukhachevsky had warned early on Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 denuncia­ of the danger of attack by the tion of Stalin's crimes some left Sta­ Germans. In 1941 Hitler launched linists decided that the way to "fight Operation Barbarossa and the Nazi Khrushchevism" was to rediscover troops invaded the Soviet Union. To the "virtues" of Stalin, in the service defeat them cost the lives of 20 of their position that the Soviet Union million Soviet citizens. Leopold had become "state capitalist". Some Trepper suffered the anguish of see­ decided Mao was the alternative and ing information about the Nazi in­ would later become Maoist apolo­ vasion plans squandered by Stalin, gists for the military alliance be­ criminally blinded by his pact with tween China and US imperialism, an Hitler. When German deserters tried alliance sealed in the blood of the to defect and warn the Soviets of Vietnamese and Angolan masses. the impending invasion, Stalin order­ Conveniently absent from the ed them shot. Due to his military TKP's paean to "Uncle Joe" is the idiocies, by the end of 1941 the fact that in a bloc with Bukharin, Germans had taken 3.3 million So­ Stalin resisted the Left Opposition's viet soldiers prisoner, most of whom programme for an industrial five­ died in Nazi concentration camps. year plan and the collectivisation of Summing up the reality of Stalin's agriculture. When he did adopt these "decisive and dedicated command", Hitler's Germany invades the Soviet Union, 1941. measures, belatedly, he did so in a the author of the devastating novel history, however, raises the spectre roads out lead in unsavoury directions. e deformed, brutal fashion. Another Children of the Arbat Anatoly Ryba­ of Trotsky's fight against the de­ Neither the TKP nor Leninist has "blank page" in the TKP's rendition kov said: "It was because of Stalin that generation of the October Revolution broken from the deformed world­ is Stalin's decapitation of the Red the Germans got as far as Moscow .... and for the internationalist road of view of Stalinism. Lacking a revol­ Army command on the eve of World We won the war despite Stalin." Lenin. utionary Marxist Cie Trotskyist) War II, his refusal to believe that The TKP admits that Stalin made The TKP's British associates in the understanding of the contradictory Hitler would invade the Soviet Union serious mistakes after World War II. Leninist group have taken a rather nature of the Soviet bureaucracy, despite the constant flow of reports But what of 1933 when Hitler's Nazis different direction. We haven't no­ the TKP and Leninist alternate be­ from Soviet agents. One such heroic came to power unopposed by the ticed any pictures of "Uncle Joe" tween seeking a wing of the bureauc­ Soviet spy Leopold Trepper, describ­ powerful German workers move­ gracing the pages of its paper. In­ racy to support and a neo-Kaut­ ed the purge that followed the ex­ ment, a crime generalised and under­ stead, the Leninist has taken its in­ skyite conception of "multiclass" ecution of Marshal Tukhachevsky in scored by the Stalin-Laval pact and fatuation with classless "multiparty democracy. Now the TKP, in em­ 1937: the adoption at the Comintern's democracy" so far as to advocate the bracing "hard Stalinism", is following "The blood of the Red Army Seventh World Congress of the "Peop­ freedom to organise for the vile one of these paths to its logical soldiers flowed: 13 out of 19 com- le's Front" line which sanctified con- Pamyat fascists. In our summer conclusion, while Leninist pursues issue, Workers Hammer warned that the other - a situation that may not this wretched line was a watershed bode well for their continued branch, it is desperately necessary position for the Leninist (see WH no association. Spartacist League ... to break out of the confines of the 99, July-August 1988). Apparently To defend the world's first workers (Continued from page 3) yuppie, Tory-dominated southeast. leading Leninist spokesman Jack state against imperialism and in­ The establishment of Ii beachhead in Conrad agrees - and has deepened ternal counterrevolution requires in the city centre market area to Scotland will be a challenge to the and extended the Pamyat line to the threaten left salesmen and minori­ both an understanding of the nature SL: running branches in two different domestic terrain as well. Says Conrad: of the bureaucratic caste that usurp­ ties. Despite the sabotage of the nations. As part of our commitment "It is necessary to take away the SWP, with its disgusting "ignore the ed political power from the Soviet to such a perspective, the importance social base that Pamyat enjoys. fascists" line, at one point a modest proletariat and a revolutionary of internal cadre education was This would not be done through internationalist programme. Against united front mobilisation was effect­ stressed, including the necessity to finding out the addresses of Pam­ ed, which included a local trade Gorbachev's dangerous policy of study in a Leninist way the current yat members and kicking their conciliating imperialism, we counter­ unionist grouping. However, frus­ national struggles. heads in. Terror has its place but trated by the inability to draw in the pose the road of Lenin and Trotsky. in the main we would seek out forces necessary to achieve a de­ It is almost a truism to assert that The struggle waged by the Left the peoples of the Celtic fringe have Pamyat members in order to argue Opposition against Stalinism is the cisive victory, we rathel' naively with them. Many people who voted appealed to the pro-Kinnock leader­ been among the most militant sec­ model for authentic communists to­ tions of the working class movement for the National Front in Britain day who must fight for a proletarian ship of the South Yorkshire NUM, did not understand its true nature, which in its current incarnation is of these isles. But beyond that, its political revolution in the USSR and best representatives, often less sat­ they were fooled. The same will socialist revolution throughout the about as hostile to communists as it be true of those who have joined is to fascists. With greater political urated with illusions in the imperi­ capitalist world. For the rebirth of alist monarchical "United Kingdom" Pamyat." (Leninist, 3 September) the Fourth International- the world maturity comes the recognition that Leninist stresses that "the battle sometimes particular campaigns, than their English counterparts, have party of revolution! _ been spokesmen for proletarian inter­ of ideas" is primary in the fight however well motivated, lack the against the fascists - in the Soviet necessary resources for their imple­ nationalism. Thus, shortly before the Union and Britain too. Pamyat is the AIO.75, 01112, so,.. 5FF, nUN, U'IO.71 mentation and therefore become a October Revolution Lenin linked the "Red Clydesider" John MacLean with Great Russian offspring of Hitler, diversion from other necessary party dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, nurtured by work. Karl Liebknecht as among "the best known of these isolated heroes who Stalinist nationalism (see article on GORIA(OV'UN Thatcherite Britain is character­ p4). They represent a deadly ised by the decline of the three great assumed the heavy task of precursors of the revolution." While still a pas­ threat to the multinational prolet­ SOVYETlER industrial ports - Belfast, Liverpool, ariat of the Soviet Union and must Glasgow - taken together with the sionate advocate of revolutionary liRliGi NEREYE Bolshevism, MacLean wrote power­ be crushed. Some of Leninist's per­ industrial decline in the Midlands. iphery has gagged on their Pamyat Capital investment, such as it exists, fully of the interrelation of the Brit­ GiDiYOR? ish and Russian proletarian revolu­ line, evidenced in a recent letter in is overwhelmingly concentrated in the 26 September issue: the southeast, centred upon London. tions: "The dictatorship in Britain "If the Soviet Union is socialist, Thus, while it is not self-evident will last as long as capitalism lasts: the dictatorship in Russia will end as how could anti-semitism survive where a small communist organisa­ and increase? Was Stalin anti­ tion should locate a viable second soon as every capitalist and landlord becomes an honest worker. Down semitic? ... Recently we have seen with the British dictatorship! Up the the emergence of Pamyat, which is fascistic, anti-semitic and Russian Contact the Spartacist League Russian dictatorship!" (The Call, 6 November 1919) chauvinist. When you call for a multi-party democracy, do you Birmingham (021) 4403283 Today the Scottish proletariat is really believe anti-socialist parties, saddled with Labourism and equally groups etc, should be allowed free Glasgow POBox 150 reformist Stalinism, with such "al­ rein? If you see the dangers in Glasgow G3 ?TN ternatives" as the Cliffite SWP, Gorbachev's policies (I agree with .. (041) 3390993 -~-, --. ~ which spits on the gains of the Rus­ your analysis) and where they can sian Revolution. We will struggle to Order from/make cheques payable to: London POBox 1041 lead, you must also realise the Spartacist Publications offer something better, as part of greater dangers of organisations London NW5 3EU PO Box 1041 50 (01) 4851396 the fight to forge a Leninist party on like Pamyat. To overthrow the London NW5 3EU P this island._ socialist system or deformed work-

OCTOBER 1988 11 WORKERSIlAMMER4!i Skinheads: psycho killers on the loose Several years ago, television audi­ were spawned in the squalor of cri­ ences around the world watched in sis-ridden British society, in the rem­ horror as the 1985 European Cup nants of a racist Empire. This is no Final football match in Brussels be­ youth "fad" of kids drunk on rock tween Liverpool and the Juventus of music, beer and glue-sniffing, ad­ Torino, Italy, exploded in bloody dicted to football and fighting, angry slaughter. Hundreds of people were at being stuck in grimy slums and maimed and 38 killed as British fans unemployment centres. Warped and attacked Italian spectators in the twisted by a capitalism in terminal terraces. This wasn't just if spontan­ decline, they are human garbage. English eous outburst of mindless football From their black combat-style "bov­ skinheads run violence. The sinister forces spear­ ver boots" to their shaven heads, they amok in heading this nationalist carnage were aim to intimidate, to terrorise, to Germany: the pathological fascistic killers maim and to murder. "exporting" known as "skinheads". In the past few years, the skinheads racist street For black and Asian people in have become that rarest of commodi­ violence during Britain's cities, this horror has be­ ties in Thatcher's Britain - an inter­ the finals of the come a daily fact of life and a deadly national export. From France to West European racist threat. For nearly two decades, Germany to the US these dregs of a Football skinheads have been on the scene, decaying system flaunt the regalia Championships terrorising especially the Asian pop­ of Hitler's Third Reich, giving the this spring. ulation. The firebombing of shops and Nazi stiff-arm salute, "rocking" to homes, the razor and knife mutila­ the racist beat of "Oi" music. And tions, the scrawled swastikas and wherever these fascist "bootboys" egrap "white power" slogans have reached appear, they leave a trail of sadistic, epidemic proportions. In heavily Asian senseless, racist violence. factories, dead docklands and closed lyon this basis. Factional struggle Newham in London's East End a ra­ mines, has created a generation of Now the organised fascists- the raged within the fascist movement, cist attack occurs once an hour. In enraged, hopeless, more-or-Iess per­ with one wing identifying itself as National Front in Britain, Le Pen's Southall a young Asian man was manently lumpenised youth. In his National Front (FN) in France, neo­ "Strasseri te", so-called after the found with the initials of the fascist book The National Front, Martin populist-demagogic spokesman of Nazis in West Germany - have moved Young National Front carved into his Walker wrote: the Hitlerite Brownshirts, the SA, in on this white youth "movement" stomach. Skinhead Anthony Carroll, "Britain of the early 1970s was the criminallumpen terror gangs of rac'e-hating despair. They are the tattooed with the swastika and Union being widely compared to the who were the shock troops for Hit­ raw material for the shock troops of Jack, was recently sentenced to a Weimar Republic of Germany in fascism. They are a deadly menace ler's rise to power. minimum of 15 years for the brutal the later 1920s. The imminent For decades, the desperate con­ to every racial minority everywhere, knifing murder of an Asian restaurant economic crisis, the permissive­ ditions of British society have pro­ to everything associated with civi­ worker, Abdus Sattar. Mr Sattar was ness of cultural life spilling over vided a culture medium for vari­ lised society. They must be stamped attacked on his way to prayers in into the sordid lasciviousness of ous violent youth gangs to spawn out and swept away. London, stabbed and left to die after Soho, the new blunt power of the and flourish. The decade of the turning over his eight cigarettes and trade unions, inflation, the impo­ 1960s was marked by bloody street empty wallet. The Asian Times caught THATCHER'S BRITAIN: SOCIAL tence of Government - there was battles between mods and rockers. the mood of grim satisfaction when ROT AND RACIST TERROR a sense of the brink, of instability The "skins" came out of this cul­ Carroll was sentenced: "Skinhead The social rot of de-industrialised and of fearsome, frightful collapse." ture medium, but from the very Gets Life". Britain, with its millions of unem­ Hitler's "National Socialists" ex­ start they were identified by their These violent white racist thugs ployed, the grim wasteland of empty ploited immiseration and unemploy­ proclivity to gratuitous, racist vi­ ment, channelling lumpen and petty­ olence. In "Oi" music, they found the bourgeois rage into their pogroms and "cultural" expression of their sadistic genocidal Holocaust against the Jew­ nihilism. Those youth who choose to ish people. Today the NF and skin­ become skinheads do so not as a heads strike out at Britain's immi- "matter of taste", but because they • grant population as the scapegoat want to become racist killers as their for Britain's economic decline. way of expressing outrage with In the late 1960s and '70s, Tories society. and Labour alike began pushing ever­ An insight into the sort of psycho­ tougher anti-immigration legisla­ pathic and degenerate creatures these tion. When Enoch Powell spewed his budding fascists see as their idols racist "rivers of blood" demagogy, he can be found in one Ian Stuart, for­ gave voice to the vicious racism be­ mer lead singer for the skinhead band hind the parliamentary measures and Skrewdriver, "a squat, powerfully­ legitimised fascist "direct action". built man with a Mussolini-style Blood flowed on the streets at the bonehead haircut and a taste for para­ hands of "Paki-bashing" white gangs. military clothes" (Observer, 4 Sep­ By the 1979 general election, the tember). Stuart proudly proclaims, National Front was fielding 300 can­ "I think Adolf Hitler was the great­ didates, but Margaret Thatcher won est man who ever lived". He became over much of their electoral base a card-carrying NFer in 1979. In with her own unrestrained anti­ 1986 he was sentenced to 12 months immigrant ravings. for a street attack on a Nigerian in The NF and other fascist outfits the King's Cross area of London. experienced a prolonged period of Stuart has been instrumental in the fracturing, turning more towards formation of a "musical organisa­ open street terror against Asians, tion" which calls itself Blood and r blacks and others. Not bound by the Honour, linking not only European Fascist National Front 1979 march targets boat people during anti-immigrant fetters of electoral campaigning, fascist groups but also the Ku Klux campaign. Racist skinhead filth are raw material for NF shock troops. the British MoVement recruited heavi- continued on page G

12 OCTOBER 1988