For Worker Power!

On February 28, members of the Chto Delat e-mail platform received the following message from Comrade X, the editor of the broadsheet For Worker Power:

The printing plant refused to run off this issue of our newspaper because:

“There is campaign material in it. We need payment made in the form of a bank transfer from the campaign fund of one of the presidential candidates.”

(I wonder: which of the candidates would finance the publication of a newspaper calling on people not to vote in the elections?)

“Twenty minutes after you start distributing the newspaper, they’ll come and shut down the plant.”

“They come nearly every day to sort through the scrap bin to find out what we’re printing.”

It smacks of self-censorship.

By the way, does anyone have access to an underground press in such cases?

We printed the issue on a risograph.

On March 4, Comrade X sent us a follow-up message:

Yesterday morning I was at the printing plant. In the morning, they told me they’d be able to run off the newspaper (I wanted to distribute it at the Dissenters March), but then they called back in the evening and said I could pick up it only today. I don’t know whether this was connected to the Dissenters March or not, but they probably know about everything that’s going on. (The newspaper New Petersburg newspaper was printed at this plant, and its editor-in-chief was arrested right there.)

To express solidarity with our comrades at For Worker Power, we are pleased to present readers with a full English-language version of the trouble-beset issue of the newspaper. You can download it as a .pdf file here:

For Worker Power