January 19 Committee: Call for Antifascist Demonstration, January 19, Moscow

http://19jan.ru/

Call for Antifascist Demonstration, January 19, 2011, Moscow

January 19, 2011 will mark the second anniversary of the murders of two antifascists, lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. They were murdered in Moscow in broad daylight, shot in the head by a gunman.

The murders were brazen and demonstrative. Although from the outset various explanations were given for the murders (as a lawyer, Markelov had handled cases in Chechnya, both against the federal forces who tortured and murdered Chechen civilians, and the Chechen leadership, who are suspected of kidnapping and murdering people; he had also represented journalist Mikhail Beketov, who was nearly beaten to death in autumn 2008, in his court battle with Khimki mayor Vladimir Strelchenko), Stas and Nastya’s comrades in the antifascist movement assumed that neo-Nazis had been involved. For it had been Stanislav Markelov who had pressured law enforcement authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the murder, in the spring of 2006, of the young antifascist Alexander Riukhin. It was thanks to Markelov’s efforts that the authorities were unable to sweep this case under the rug or drop it altogether. It was thanks to his persistence that police investigators not only came up with a list of suspects, but also brought the case to court. Half of the people involved in Alexander’s murder were arrested and convicted for the crime, while the rest were placed on the federal wanted list.

Today, we have almost no doubts that law enforcement authorities have Stas and Nastya’s real murderer in custody, along with his female accomplice. Their court trial should begin soon. These two people are neo-Nazis, and one of them is in fact one of the people who was involved in the fatal attack on Alexander Riukhin but was not found by the authorities after being placed on the wanted list.

The murderers have been apprehended, their trial will soon begin. Does that mean society can breathe a sigh of relief?

No, it does not.

Dozens of less publicized racist murders take place in our country every year. The victims of these murders are Russian citizens of non-Slavic appearance as well as immigrants from former Soviet republics and former Soviet allies. S0viet-era international solidarity (whether fictitious or real) has been replaced by ethnic intolerance, by hatred towards people who are different, who speak a different language, whose eyes are differently shaped, whose hair and skin are a different color.

As a rule, we don’t remember the names of these victims of neo-Nazi terror. Often we don’t even learn their names: the press merely informs us that someone has murdered a citizen of Uzbekistan, a citizen of Kyrgyzstan, an Azerbaijani, an Armenian, an immigrant from Vietnam, a refugee from Afghanistan. We do not see their faces or the faces of their grieving relatives. It as if they pass anonymous into nonexistence, inhabiting our consciousness for the several seconds it takes us to read this terrifying news on our computer screens or in the pages of a newspaper.

But in fact none of the people who have died at the hands of neo-Nazis murderers is nameless. None of these people was born in a test tube, bereft of pain, reason, love, attachments, and hope. All of these people were brought into this world by mothers. Each of them had families and friends, people whom they cared about and who cared about them.

This problem, which was long ignored both by Russian society and the Russian authorities, was raised only by the local ethnic communities of the murder victims and by young antifascists, the same people whom lawyer Stanislav Markelov had befriended and defended, the same people in whose ranks journalist Anastasia Baburova (who herself had immigrated from Simferopol, in the Crimea, to Moscow) had stood.

A year ago, on the eve of the first anniversary of Stas and Nastya’s murders, people who had known them united together in the January 19 Committee to commemorate their lives and deaths in a worthy manner, and say a decisive “no!” to neo-Nazi terror. The members of the committee belong to different parts of the Russian social movement, and they have different views of our country’s present and future. And yet on January 19, 2010, they joined around 1,500 other people in an antifascist demonstration in downtown Moscow, braving minus twenty degree weather and active interference on the part of the Moscow police. The demonstrators included both people who frequently protest against the authorities and people who might not have taken part in public protests since the perestroika era. These people were joined by folks who had never participated in a demonstration before: society had begun to recognize the problem of neo-Nazi terror, and caring people were moved to act whatever their age, social status, profession, sex, and so on. The march was joined by students and pensioners, confident middle-aged professionals and poor people who had lost hope of making it, members of the intelligentsia and young workers, all kinds of different people. What united them was a troubled conscience, an intolerance of neo-Nazi murders, and shame for their country and city, a city in which such medieval monstrosities have nearly become a norm of daily life.

As we see now, a year later, this protest was more than timely. It is possible that it happened too late. In any case, the events of December 11–15 in Moscow and other Russian cities have proven that neo-Nazism has not been cowed. Extreme right-wing ideas have struck a chord with large numbers of young people, and these masses of young people, who were badly educated and poorly brought up during the years of the Yeltsin-Putin stagnation, are willing to engage in violence. The half-forgotten, moth-balled Russian word pogrom was heard again: the crowd on Manezh Square was on the point of starting a genuine pogrom, and the crowd that gathered outside Kiev Station four days later was prepared to engage in fighting, stabbing, beating, and shooting.

During those same days, people also asked where the antifascists had been. Why hadn’t they tried to confront the raging neo-Nazis? There are several possible answers to this question. First, why don’t you try to stand in the way of a crowd like that yourself? Second, try organizing resistance to an aggressive crowd of neo-Nazis, people who think nothing about murdering and beating other people, when you have become the target of a harassment campaign (if not a witch hunt) on the part of the authorities. These were the conditions faced by Russia’s youth antifascist movement during the second half of 2010. Police searches, police dragnets at concerts, arrests, and violent interrogations by police who wanted to force testimony from them: this was what being antifa meant in 2010, not educational work amongst young people, cultural events, publishing literature, and even the martial arts and football tournaments that young antifascists had still been able to organize in 2009.

Sensing that the young antifascists were a rising force, the state has thrown the entire weight of its police apparatus against them. Meanwhile, neo-Nazis have been holding their legally sanctioned Russian Marches, convening round tables and posing for journalists in expensive hotels, and continuing to murder the defenseless – janitors, petty laborers, teenagers. While the state was unleashing its dragnet against the antifa, the neo-Nazis were trying to go respectable, to show the authorities and the business world that they could be a source of “order” during a complicated economic and political situation, that they were capable both of doing the dirty work and putting on a fashion show in well-ironed shirts and ties.

This fashion show crystallized on Manezh Square in early December. Judging by the absence of real measures to find and punish the people who organized that riot, certain high-ranking Kremlin officials found it to their liking.

Given this situation, the January 19 Committee declares the need for all people opposed to Russia’s slide into the abyss of nationalism to unite and organize solidarity actions. We live in a huge country, and we are all different. Our country is divided by contradictions, arguments, and discrepancies, and at the end of the day we aren’t obliged to like each other. But we are united on one point: Nazism, which in the twentieth century brought incalculable suffering to our country and other countries of Europe, Asia, and the Americas, is once again blazing a bloody trail. It is too late to say that it must not rise again. It is already rising again, and now we have to talk about how to stop it.

We call on all honest people, people who value the ideals of freedom and justice and just plain normal life in our country, people of different nationalities, religious confessions, convictions, and guiding principles, to join us in an antifascist demonstration in Moscow and other Russian cities.

This will not simply be a memorial action to remember the dead – Stas Markelov, Nastya Baburova, and many, many others. January 19, 2011 must become a day of determination, a day of protest, a day of struggle against the fascist threat in Russia.

Demonstrators in Moscow will gather at 7:00 p.m. on January 19, 2011, at the Timiryazev Monument (near the Nikitsky Gates at the beginning of Tverskaya Boulevard). We will have more information about the route of the demonstration and slogans in the coming days. Check for updates at the January 19 Committee web site:  http://19jan.ru.

Stop neo-Nazi terror! Save Russia from the ultra right-wing threat!

As long as we’re united we can never be defeated!

—The  January 19 Committee

Bring the Noise! (November 14, Moscow, Chistye Prudy)

Two years ago a wave of terror against social activists and journalists rolled over Russia. Newspaper editor and activist Mikhail Beketov was severely beaten in Khimki. In Moscow, persons unknown attacked sociologist and activist Carine Clément. In Vsevolozhsk (Leningrad Region), independent trade union leader Alexei Etmanov was also attacked by unknown assailants on multiple occasions. In Yakutia, trade union activist Valentin Urusov was framed by local police on a drugs charge, tried, and sentenced to several years in prison. In response to this terror, social activists held a demonstration at Chistye Prudy in Moscow that was attended by a few hundred people.

Two years have passed. Police have still not identified and arrested the people who assaulted Beketov, Clément, and Etmanov. Valentin Urusov is still serving time in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Today we are witnessing a repeat of the events of two years ago. Environmentalist Konstantin Fetisov has been severely beaten in Khimki. Unknown assailants have attacked and severely beaten journalist Oleg Kashin. The authorities are trying to frame antifascist activists for crimes they did not commit. In Zhukovsky, thugs beat up journalist Anatoly Adamchuk.

We believe that these new tragedies are the result of apathy in our society, which two years ago was unable to force authorities to find and punish the guilty parties in those dark events. The time has come to put an end to this, for if this time the criminals are not found, the atmosphere of impunity will untie the hands of all other scumbags once and for all. Instead of being shocking exceptions, these acts of terror will become a matter of everyday practice.

At 2:00 p.m. on November 14 we ask you to come join us at Chistye Prudy in Moscow. We realize that there is no point in long speeches. It is unlikely that anyone can learn something new, something that has not been published in the Internet. And so we suggest that you bring with you anything that can make a lot of noise as a symbol of your rage and indignation.

Silence and calm is exactly the reaction aimed for by those who jail, cripple, and murder people who disagree with the existing order.

http://khimkibattle.org/

http://www.ecmo.ru/

“In This Building They Decide Who Lives and For How Long”

Honoring the memory of the murdered lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist and anarchist Anastasia Baburova has very quickly become a matter of low-scale partisan warfare in Russia. The police have been quick to interfere with or altogether stamp out spontaneous (i.e., “unsanctioned”) collective expressions of grief and outrage. First, there was the antifa/anarchist march through downtown Moscow, where dozens were detained even before the procession could get under way. The following day (January 21), in Petersburg, mourners initially faced a police blockade; they were finally allowed to march to the Field of Mars only after they agreed to hide their memorial photos and candles. In Krasnodar on February 2—a day of international solidarity against the wave of terror unleashed Russian activists that saw rallies and memorials from Moscow to Paris and Rome—the police ordered activists to turn off a boom box that was playing a recording of Markelov’s speech at a November 30 rally against political terror in Moscow. 

Yesterday (February 8), after having been turned down by Moscow authorities when they applied for a permit, a group of about twenty or so human rights activists marched from the Garden Ring to the site of the murders on Prechistenka. As reported by Legal Team member Nikolai Zboroshenko on his LiveJournal, seven marchers were detained by police two hours after the event. The police intended to charge them with “disobeying the lawful demands of police officials.” Unfortunately, the police (in this case) picked the wrong group of people to mess with: the Legal Team, it is safe to say, knows the Russian criminal and civil codes better than the police themselves. After a few hours in custody, the marchers were released and a police official even issued an apology for the incident.

Meanwhile, in Petersburg, a group of anarchists carried out a lightning-strike action against the city’s most prominent symbol of state terror—the so-called Big House (local FSB headquarters), on Liteiny Prospect. They affixed a memorial plaque bearing the inscription “In This Building They Decide Who Lives and For How Long” to the façade of the building, and laid a memorial wreath and flowers under the plaque. As one of them wrote in his LiveJournal:

The FSB continues the traditions of the KGB-OGPU-NKVD. Why is there no plaque in memory of the victims of political repression during the Soviet period, in memory of the victims of the Great Terror of 1937–1938, on even one building of the former KGB? Why are part of the archives of the punitive organs still closed? The authorities declare [their adherence to] democracy and freedom, but in fact they continue the traditions of terror.

Yevgeny Vyshenkov, deputy director of the Agency for Investigative Journalism (AZhUR), the Petersburg media holding company that publishes the popular Fontanka.Ru website, was detained for nearly an hour after he noticed the memorial plaque and crossed the street to take pictures of it. The traffic police officers who detained him explained that closed circuit video recordings of the building would have to be checked to verify that he wasn’t in fact the person behind the action.

More photos can be found here.

 

Terror in Solnechnogorsk: The Beating of Yuri Grachev

At this point, we are not sure how we should title posts like the one you are about to read. Yes, you guessed it: another Russian social activist has been attacked by persons unknown and severely beaten. Unless you live in Solnechnogorsk, a town in the Moscow Region, or are a well-informed Russian social activist yourself, you have probably never heard of Yuri Grachev, editor of the oppositional newspaper Solnechnogorsk Forum and a deputy in the Solnechnogorsk City Council.

As reported on the website of the Institute for Collective Action (IKD), on February 3, this 72-year-old former officer was attacked by three men near the entrance to his house. The men pushed Grachev to the ground and began kicking him, landing most of their blows to his head. Grachev was taken to hospital, where he arrived unconscious, with an open wound on his head, a fractured nose, and a severe concussion. He regained consciousness only yesterday, and he is suffering from partial memory loss.

What did Grachev do to “deserve” this treatment? According to the IKD dispatch, Grachev is a well-known critic of the local authorities, in particular, Vladimir Nesterov, the head of the city and district of Solnechnogorsk. In 2006, Grachev was elected to the city council. There he focused on the municipal services sector, where he uncovered facts of corruption and inflated tariffs. He was also a member of the “Salvation Committee,” a coalition that was formed during the “anti-monetization” protests of 2005.

According to Elena Smirnova, another Salvation Committee member and a candidate in upcoming elections to the district council, the attack on Grachev should be linked not only to his active civic stance, but also to the ongoing election campaign. She also notes that the attack is yet one more sign of the “extremely abnormal situation” in her district and the region as a whole with regards to freedom of expression and criticism of the authorities. The  most well-known episode in this cold civil war was the savage beating of Mikhail Beketov, Khimki activist and newspaper editor, in November of last year. In this respect, it is telling that Grachev’s attackers not only beat the living daylights out of him, they also took his bag. It contained articles for the next issue of his newspaper, which was again to have focused on corruption in Solnechnogorsk.

If you follow the link to the original IKD dispatch (which we have mainly summarized here), you will find a sample letter (in Russian), addressed to Mr. Nesterov, which Grachev’s comrades have asked that anyone concerned about this case sign and fax to +7 (495) 9940537. Given the scope of the terror that has now been unleashed against oppositional social, trade union and human rights activists in Russia in the past few months, it might also be a good idea to follow the advice of Comrade Will, at the Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR website, and pen your own letter of protest and dismay to the Russian Federation consulate or embassy in your country. (You can find Will’s sample letter here.) In connection with the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, our comrades at dvizh.org have also suggested sending letters to the Russian Prosecutor General and Interior Minister. You can find the relevant addresses here. As you compose your letters or blog posts, please feel free to make liberal use of the translations and articles on this blog. God knows there have been too many of them in the past several months.

As you might guess from the sun-drenched seal of Solnechnogorsk (courtesy of IKD), reproduced at the top of this post, the name means “sunny hill” in Russian. But these are anything but sunny times in Solnechnogorsk or any other part of Russia. Despite the President’s recent clandestine tea party with Gorbachev and Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov (hailed as the beginning of a new “thaw” by the star-struck morons who pass for Kremlinologists these days), it has become clear as the sun over Solnechnogorsk that either the s0-called authorities have lost control of the so-called situation or vicious assaults like the one that Yuri Grachev was treated to the other day are, in fact, their way of dealing with the situation. In addition to having quiet little tea parties behind the high walls of the Kremlin, the authorities are also going into parallel-universe spin mode. Thus, an Interior Ministry spokesman has avowed that most killings of journalists in Russia are the result of “domestic” conflicts. 

Let’s be clear. Only a more or less mass protest movement within Russia can end this wave of terror. But since we have no way of making that happen, and many of our own national governments are little better (or much worse) than the criminal-capitalist junta ensconced in Russia—and thus their “condemnations” of human rights abuses in Russia sound a bit false—it is up to us to take some time away from our local cares and struggles and express solidarity with our Russian comrades any way we can. The only other alternative is to watch helplessly as the world’s largest country once again descends into the dark night of terror.

 

 

Reporters Without Borders: Markelov/Baburova Murder May Be Linked to Attack on Beketov

Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières) goes to Russia to attend the Markelov funeral and gather facts surrounding the murders of Markelov and Anastasia Baburova:

Fact-finding visit : Moscow double murder may have been linked to November attack on local newspaper editor

We should add one slight correction to RSF’s fact-finding report. Yevgenia Chirikova, a comrade of Mikhail Beketov in the Movement to Defend the Khimki Forest, will now apparently be allowed to run in the Khimki mayoral elections, scheduled for March 1. The Moscow Region Electoral Commission has reversed an earlier decision by the municipal electoral commission, which refused to register her candidacy.

Meanwhile, the rest of Russian officialdom continues its retreat into a parallel reality that bears little resemblance to the world most everyone else inhabits:

Russian Federation Interior Ministry: In Russia, journalists are most often killed as a result of domestic conflicts

The Russian Interior Ministry has identified the cause of most murders of Russian journalists. As quoted by ITAR-TASS, according to Valery Gribankin, head of the ministry’s public relations department, mass media employees are mainly killed during domestic conflicts. According to Gribankin, the number of attacks connected to the publications and investigations of journalists is not great. “When mass media correspondents become the victims of criminals, their journalist colleagues rush to conclusions and they push to the foreground as the principal theory [of why these crimes were committed] the professional activities of the victims,” the Interior Ministry spokesman underscored.

In fact, as reported by the Committee to Protect Journalists, during the period 1992–2008, 49 journalists were killed in Russia as a result of or in the course of their duties. This earned the country third place in the CPJ rankings. During this same period, only Iraq (136 killed) and Algeria (60 killed) were more dangerous places for journalists to work.

So why this odd official Russian disavowal of the problem, hot on the heels of the Markelov/Baburova murders? The reason is simple. Gribankin is carrying out a preventive strike in the run-up to this:

Russian human rights activists have prepared questions for UN Council

Russian human rights activists have submitted around a hundred questions for a meeting of the UN Human Rights Council, which today [February 4, 2009] will hear Russia’s report.

Russian justice minister Alexander Konovalov will address council members in Geneva.

As Oleg Orlov, head of the Memorial Human Rights Center, informed Interfax, he and his colleagues have seen a draft of the report and believe that it hushes up many problems.

In their reports, international human rights organizations declare that murders of politicians and journalists have become routine in Russia, and that, especially in Chechnya, an atmosphere of impunity reigns in the country.

The Letter

In the next day or so, we will have a report on yesterday’s actions (in Moscow, Paris, Rome, and elsewhere) in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova. In the meantime, if you are wondering what you can do, you might take this piece of good advice from Will, writing at the aptly (?) named Drink-Soaked Trotskyite Popinjays for WAR website:

Recommended action: send letters to Russian Embassies in your country, express indignation about political terrorism in Russia, demand the thorough investigation of the murder of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova and suitable punishment of the perpetrators be carried out.

Model Letter:

Mr. Ambassador, I am writing to express my concern about the Jan. 19 assassination of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and young anti-fascist journalist Anastasia Baburova in Moscow in an atmosphere of increasing nationalist violence and legal impunity for killers. Please urge your Government to take strong and effective measures to rein in fascist violence, bring the perpetrators to justice, and prevent future assaults on journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates—scandalous political crimes that seriously undermine the credibility of the Russian Federation in the international sphere. (signed, etc)

Yeah—I know. Fat chance. You could also publicise this story in whatever way you can in order to exert pressure on the Russian authorities. After all, they care about their ‘image’ if nothing else.

Our Silence = Complicity (Moscow & Elsewhere, February 1)

Here is a translation of the leaflet that will be handed out on Sunday, February 1, at the rally against political terror in Moscow at Chistye Prudy. The original text (in Russian) can be found here and here. Feel free to use and adapt this text for your own protest memorials in other parts of the world. Russian social activists and human rights advocates (and just plain ordinary people) need to see that the rest of the world cares.

 

Stop Political Murders in Russia!

Our Silence = Acquittal of the Murderers

Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova were murdered on January 19 in the center of Moscow.

Why do their murders concern each person who lives in Russia, each person who aspires to have the rights for which people like Markelov and Baburova fight? Why should we come together to share this pain and express our outrage?

Because our silence is tantamount to acquitting the people who terrorize us. It is tantamount to admitting that they are right. They terrorize us with these murders, which are the latest in a long series of violent acts against social and political activists. These terrorist acts have become the dangerously familiar backdrop to our daily lives.

After such outrageous murders, the time has come for us to decide: do we want this violence to continue in our country? Are we prepared to make our peace with the fact that criminal investigations into violent attacks against social and political activists never lead to convictions?

You lose your job. You lose your home. You lose your rights. The people who defend you are murdered. How far must this humiliation go before you stop putting up with it in silence?

People who say or think that such things are typical the world over are mistaken. Russia ranks third (after Iraq and Algeria) in numbers of murdered journalists. In every country that has gone through a similar phase in its history, people took to the streets in order to change their country.

It is enough for thousands of people to take to the streets in order to put an end to this “criminal immunity”—immunity for those people who terrorize free society. We need mass protests to reverse the direction our society is headed.

Come with your friends and family to share this pain, to cope with it, to express your outrage, to change the situation.

3:00 p.m., Sunday, February 1. The Griboedov Monument at Chistie Prudy (Moscow)

The demonstration will be attended by concerned citizens, anarchists, anti-fascists, The Institute for Collective Action, The Moscow and Mosow Region Dormitories Movement, The Council of Initiative Groups, The Movement to Defend the Khimki Forest, Left Front, The Council of Coordinating Councils, Vpered Socialist Movement, Socialist Resistance, The Revolutionary Workers Party, Leftist Socialist Action, Memorial Human Rights Center, The Anti-War Club, RKP-CPSS, For Human Rights Movement, and other civic organizations.

STANISLAV MARKELOV was no ordinary lawyer. He was one of a handful of lawyers who defended workers, railroad men, evicted dormitory residents, cheated apartment co-op members, anti-fascists, refugees, and victims of police abuse. He fought for the rights of Mikhail Beketov, editor-in-chief of the newspaper Khimki Pravda, who was viciously beaten this past autumn for criticizing the local administration. Markelov took on the cases of social activists, whose work is invaluable for our society. Markelov helped many of them pro bono.

Stanislav represented the victims in the trial of Colonel Yuri Budanov; the Nord-Ost hostage tragedy; neofascist attacks on anti-fascists and migrants; and the massive police pogrom against the residents of Blagoveshchensk. He worked with Anna Politkovskaya, traveled to Chechnya on many occasions, wrote critical articles, and participated in environmental protest camps.

He understood that society is something you have to build yourself, and so he organized the Rule of Law Institute, which gives legal assistance to journalists, lawyers, activists, homeowners, and workers.

ANASTASIA BABUROVA was a fifth-year student in the journalism faculty at Moscow State University. She worked for Izvestia, Novaya Gazeta, and several other publications. She was an activist in the anarchist and environmental movements. She participated in many protest actions and civic initiatives, in particular, the European Social Forum in Malmö (2008). Nastya covered non-mainstream youth movements, street actions and protests, and court trials.

Stanislav was thirty-four; Nastya, twenty-five. Both of them were just beginning their work: they could have accomplished a lot more had they not been killed. They took on toughest, most important problems of our time. They were people who understood quite clearly that freedom in our society could only be fought for and won—fought for and won by citizens themselves. If citizens don’t fight for this freedom, it will become less and less, until society is strangled by totalitarianism or fascism.

SOLIDARITY IS OUR WEAPON!

February 1: Stop the Terror!

February 1

Stop the Terror! An International Campaign of Solidarity with Russian Social Activists

On February 1, in Moscow (3:00 p.m.), Paris (3:00 p.m.), Rome (5:00 pm), and other Russian and European cities, protest demonstrations will be held in memory of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, and in solidarity with all those bold, active people who do not merely live in our society, but who also try to change it for the better, to make it a freer and more just place.

What is the point of going to a demonstration? Why do people in different cities assemble and discuss such things with each other if

THERE IS NO POINT IN DEMONSTRATING?

• Because we won’t bring Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova back to life this way;
• because we won’t shed any light on this case by standing in the streets;
• because we will also be demonstrating against ourselves—
• because in fact we are also responsible for their deaths:
• because we allowed someone to think that it is possible to murder people in broad daylight in Russia, in the center of Moscow, without upsetting anyone.

Stanislav Markelov defended the rule of law. Anastasia Baburova covered crimes against justice in the press. They defended our rights, the rights of the citizens of Russia. The rights of young people who are not content with arbitrary treatment and abuse by the authorities. The rights of adults who have been persecuted. They stood up for us, and we lost them.

So why go out on the streets? Because

IT IS AN ASBOLUTE NECESSITY!

We won’t give those people who want us to wait the storm out at home another chance!

We will no longer put up with all this in silence. We do care about what is happening!

We will come together for these demonstrations. Bring your friends and acquaintances!

Journalists, anti-fascists, and foreigners are being attacked on the streets of Russian cities. People who did something for all of us have been murdered in the heart of Moscow. These people did something for us, people who live in Russia, and so their murders affect us directly, even if we’d rather close our eyes and slink into the shadows. Because this didn’t happen somewhere beyond the horizon, to people we don’t know anything about. This is our life, this is our country. In days past, it was still possible to sit things out at home, waiting for the streets to become safe again. But now it is inaction and silence that are dangerous. They are even more dangerous than the desire to say something. Silence is a signal to the criminals and murderers: everything is fine, you may go on doing what you’re doing. The people of Paris and Rome are prepared to support you. This includes activists of various political persuasions and age groups, scholars, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists. They will be joined by people who have heard about the Moscow tragedy from their friends, people who read it about in blogs and newspapers and have decided not to remain indifferent. All of these people have their own problems. But they, too, care about what is happening: they will demonstrate in solidarity with everyone who takes to the streets in the cities of Russia. They understand that something is wrong in Russia when social activists are gunned down in the streets. We understand this ourselves. The murders of Markelov and Baburova have shown us the cost of our silence. We will go into the streets and look each other in the eyes. And there we will see not fear and obedience, but solidarity, the faith that change is possible, and the readiness to defend our common values. We will find the words to say and the courage to say them on February 1.

Slogans for Our Demonstrations:

• Put an End to Political Murders!
• Stand Up for Stanislav Markelov and the Rule of Law!
• Stand Up for Anastasia Baburov and Fearless Journalism!
• Stop the Violence against People Who Fight for Justice!
• Solidarity with Activists Who Fight for Our Rights and Freedoms!
• I Am a Social Activist, Too!
• We Are Not Extremists or Victims! Our Weapon Is Solidarity!
• We Are Not Extremists or Victims! We Will Put an End to Political Murders!
• Say No to Crimes against Justice!
• Solidarity Is Our Weapon!

In Italian:

• No al silenzio sui crimini contro la giustizia in Russia!
  
• Basta con gli assassinii politici!
  
• Solidarieta per i militanti russi esposti alle violenze!

In French:

• Assassinats politiqes: ASSEZ!
  
• NON aux crimes contre la justice!
  
• SOLIDARITÉ avec les militants russes exposés aux violences et persécutions!

Leaflet for Distribution at Demonstrations in Russia, with Information about Stanislav and Anastasia (.pdf file, in Russian)
Information about the Memorial Actions in Moscow and Elsewhere (website of the Institute for Collective Action; in Russian)

What You Can Do:

If You Go to a Demonstration: 
If you have a printer at home or work, choose a slogan you like, print it out on a sheet of paper, and bring it with you to the demonstration. If you plan to attend one of the demonstrations (whether in Moscow, Rome, Paris or elsewhere), you can find downloadable .pdf files with these slogans (in Russian) on the website of dvizh.org. If you plan to attend a demonstration outside of Russia, it makes sense to print out, as you like, slogans in your local language as well as in Russian and English, considering that (we hope) these events will be covered by the foreign press as well.

In Moscow, Paris, and Rome, there will be lots of strollers and passerby in the places we gather on Sunday. Do you think that all of them have heard about what has happened? You will be both surprised and discouraged by what they say. Many people probably have heard something, but they know few details and know nothing about the protests and solidarity actions. If you are in Russia, please print out several copies of  this leaflet, which contains information about Stanislava and Anastasia (in Russian). If you are outside of Russia, you may use any of the articles published on this blog or on the Internet at large. Pass the leaflets out to people and talk to them about what it all means. Solidarity begins with conversation. (Editor’s Note: We will try to have a translation of this leaflet posted and available in English translation by the end of today.)

• In Moscow, our demonstration will take place at the Griboedov monument in Chistye Prudy (Metro station Chistye Prudy), at 3:00 p.m.
• In Paris, our demonstration will take place at La Fontaine des Innocents (Les Halles district, 1st Arrondissement), at 3:00 pm. For more information, write to infoaction@mail.ru.
• In Rome, our demonstration will take place on Piazza Cavour, next to the Adriano movie theater and opposite the Palazzo di Giustizia, at 5:00 p.m. 
• In Krasnodar, our demonstration will take place at 2:00 p.m. near the Pushkin monument. Notification for the demonstration was submitted to the Krasnodar municipal adminstration on January 28. For updates (in Russian), go here.

If You Cannot Make It to a Demonstration, Live in Another City or Feel That It Is Important to Do Something:

• Print out a leaflet (above) and post it in the lobby of your apartment building, on a notice board, in a shop, at a bus stop, at your university, at your workplace. Make people stop for a minute and think about what has happened.
• Print out one of the slogans (in any language), put it an envelope, and mail it to the Russian Federation Prosecutor General’s Office. Mail another copy to the Russian Federation Interior Ministry. You might ask: who there is going to read these letters? In all likelihood, no one. But they will open the envelope. Your next question: but won’t they toss the contents of the envelope into the trash? Probably. Then what is the point? The point is in the number of such letters they receive. The point is to make them feel our rage over the murders of Stanislav and Anastasia and our solidarity with them. When the Prosecutor’s Office and the Interior Ministry get fifty or five hundred such letters, their trash bins will fill up. And then, perhaps, the high officials there will realize that they can no longer keep silent. Let them know that you care. Here are the addresses:

Russian Federation Prosecutor General
GSP-3 125993 Moscow
ul. Bolshaya Dmitrovka
Attn: Yuri Chaika, Prosecutor General

Russian Federation Interior Ministry
119049 Moscow
ul. Zhitnaya, 16
Attn: Rashid Nurgaliev, Interior Minister

We will update this information as needed. Watch for updates and breaking news here at Chtodelat News, as well as (in Russian and Italian) at:

• dvizh.org
• ru.indymedia.org
• ikd.ru
• roma.indymedia.org

Despite Everything

We got this reflection on reactions to the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova from Comrade A., a student, writer, and activist in Petersburg.

I usually don’t swear, and I don’t know what to think when I come across an abundance of such words—or even more ambivalently, one such word—in a text. But now I realize that all I can do is swear—in letters, blog posts, and articles.

Wise gentlemen reproach the anarchists who marched in Moscow in memory of Stas and Nastya in Moscow: “Grief is grief, but why smash shop windows?” Well, one wants to smash the fuck of out everything in Russia right now.

And it is not just a matter of grief.

Oleg and I return to the city, and Sveta informs us the news right there in the bar: “Markelov has been murdered.” Nastya Baburova, an anarchist who was accompanying him, tried to “detain” the killer and took a second bullet—in her head—and was at that moment dying in the intensive care ward.

I will write only about myself. Perhaps this is the most honest thing now, when completely predictable memorial rituals commence and threaten to obscure what happened. I really didn’t now either Markelov (aside from the fact that he was “the only leftist lawyer in the country”) or Nastya (although she was part of the Russian delegation I traveled with this past fall to the European Social Forum, in Malmö). But this doesn’t matter either, because in this mode of distanced engagement you can ponder things a bit more soberly, without “understanding the pain of the loss” one bit less. However, I would hope that our understanding would not be limited to this. While this is definitely a tragedy, we need, despite everything, to make it an occasion, a cause. A cause for what? That is what I will explain in what follows.

All the more so that the co-optation really happens instantly and “unconsciously.” It already turns out (I see this in the photos of the first memorial in Moscow) that “they perished for Russia’s freedom.” There is seemingly nothing wrong with this phrase, but in fact there is. Liberal circles are good at quickly commencing their self-satisfied ruminations. True, in this situation all that leftists can do as well is chew over their own helplessness: their numbers make them more a collection of political freaks than a movement. A situation like this is as demoralizing as ending up in a weak class or school (for anyone with half a brain).

When your city (a place where a socialist revolution took place ninety years ago) turns out a hundred people at most for an action in memory of the victims of a political murder (there is no need here to remember the horrors of Soviet times and the valiant dissidents: this time there has been sufficient information about the murders in all the media, although it was given the correct ideological spin of course), then all you can do is swear.

When you realize that even the march of the anarchists in Moscow and their window-breaking caused bewilderment in some people or (a more complicated case) provoked some others to strategically warn them against scaring off the population (but if the population is frightened by shattered shop windows and not by the fact that someone was shot in the back of the head in the middle of the capital or by the fact that the only person who tried to stop the killer was a 25-year-old anarchist . . .), then you can no longer help but smash shop windows.

But when you realize that once again nothing will come of this—that everyone walked the walk with their candles (in Petersburg) or flares (in Moscow), but that this is the extent of what they are prepared to do—then you cannot help but realize that we need to create an organization.

Despite the total passivity of the population. Despite the fact that this is not the first time this thought has occurred to you, despite the fact that some work is even being done in this direction. Despite the fact that “revolution is always impossible—you have to make it.”

 

Shattered Windows

Yesterday (January 26, 2009), Novaya Gazeta published a short compendium of joyous LiveJournal reactions to news of the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova on the part of Russia fascists and neo-Nazis. We simply don’t have the heart to reproduce even the slightest bit of that hate-fest on these pages. If you want to test your knowledge of sub-standard Russian hate speech, then you’re welcome to go here. Be warned: it is not for the faint of heart. The editors of Novaya Gazeta say as much in their brief introduction to the publication. The only point of their intervention, they write, is to make one thing perfectly clear to their readers: a war is on.

In a sidebar piece entitled “The Nazi Chronicles: December 2008−January 2009,” they show why this war is not just a matter of the “sensational” murders of Markelov and Baburova and similar infamous cases. Last year in Russia, no fewer than 87 people were murdered by Nazis, while 387 people were injured in neo-fascist attacks. In the past two months alone, at least 50 people have fallen victim to such attacks: 26 of them were killed; the other 24 were injured.

So now we know the reaction of the fascists to the latest episodes in this civil war, and we know the reaction of Novaya Gazeta. But what about the rest of Russia?

In a footnote to the Nazi hate-fest piece, Novaya Gazeta makes a point of quoting a Russian Foreign Ministry press release. Their spokespeople are concerned that the murder of Baburova is being “artificially politicized” in order to discredit Russia. This, in turn, explains the most remarkable non-event of the past week: the total absence of a response to the murders on the part of the President and Prime Minister. For them to say anything at all, then, would be tantamount to admitting that there was something in the politics of Markelov and Baburova either to warrant killing them or to warrant talking about their murders. We are thus left to make three (perhaps mutually inclusive) conclusions. 1. They could care less. 2. They approve. 3. They have completely lost control of their country—and thus are loath to “politicize” this awful fact by admitting they both care and disapprove.

But what about everyone else? When we add up the Nazis; the staff at Novaya Gazeta; assorted editorialists, journalists, and TV reporters; some deputies in the State Duma; human rights activists; all the folks who have attended various memorials, marches, and protests countrywide (the bulletins on the Institute for Collective Action website are a good source here), I think we’ll barely make a dent in the 142,008,838 people estimated to be living in Russia.

So what gives?

Something’s got to give. For example, the windows. . .

Shattered Windows

On the news wires I read that the anti-fascists and anarchists who came [to downtown Moscow] yesterday to honor the memory of the murdered human rights activists smashed shop windows in a fit of rage and caused a pogrom in the metro. To my great surprise, I detected solidarity in my heart with these barbaric actions, and I even felt regret that I hadn’t been there myself and smashed everything up. And this despite the fact I’m not an extremist at all, and not even a leftist activist, but an ordinary, quiet university teacher. I like going to department store sales and drinking coffee on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. And I am against such actions in principle. But in this case I got it: this is righteous anger, justifiable rage, a reaction against contempt for our lives, for our feelings, for our intellectual life. When people begin to publicly smash up a city, this means that they no longer have any other way to draw attention to the problems that trouble them. When French hooligans burn cars, schools, and libraries in their own cities, they do this because snobby French politicians don’t consider the problems of these poorly educated and unemployed people important or a priority. The same thing is happening in Russia. The entire population of the country—including highly educated people, the intelligentsia, and all those whose personal political culture has taken on the semblance of views and convictions—is treated with nothing but contempt. The most horrible thing about all this is that we have heard about the LATEST political murder. No one is surprised anymore: that is the terrifying thing. Comparisons are made with [the murders of] Politkovskaya and Starovoitova, with the beatings of this person or that. The cases are analyzed—what is similar, what is dissimilar. . . In terms of the quantity and quality of all these murders, Russia is probably already on a par with Pakistan or Lebanon. There is nothing at all here that even smacks of Europe. Notwithstanding my respect for the country of which I am a citizen, Russia was and remains one big prison camp. When distinguished, famous people, supremely professional people, are “taken out” in broad daylight simply to scare everyone else, and everyone understands that nothing will happen, and all that remains is to wait for the next such criminal act; when our intellectual efforts are of no avail, and no one has any use for our brains and even less use for our conscience (it might  just as well be flushed down a toilet), then apparently all that remains for us is to smash shop windows. Because this way we can vent our aggression against this humiliating situation we all find ourselves in.