A-Infos (en) Russia, Anarchists and the Second Chechen War* - Anarchist resistance against the Second Chechen War (2/2)

Most likely, even without the explosions of 1999, the anti-war movement would have been 
miserable, but afterwards it did barely existed. It took 3 months after the beginning of 
the war for the anti-war movement to gather enough courage to get out in the streets. The 
first people to demonstrate in Moscow in December of 1999 were Anarchists. Apparently some 
sorry pickets had already taken place in other cities. Soon after other groups appeared as 
well (liberals and Trotskists), and the question of cooperation became an issue.---In this 
respect, the movements in Moscow and St. Petersburg developed in different directions.--In 
St. Petersburg, all anti-war groups (anarchists, liberals and Trotskists) agreed upon a 
common anti-war picket, in which everyone was to participate with their own political 
symbols. In Moscow liberals did not want political symbols present in the pickets, but due 
to nature of the slogans (instead of ÂNo war but the class warÂ, there was ÂFor 
negotiations between Putin and MaskhadovÂ), their weekly picked had a liberal flavour.

The question of bringing political symbols is many-sided, and as a matter of
fact in recent years there have been plenty of cases in which anarchists have
seen their role amongst the social movements in Moscow as defenders of the
autonomy of protest against the intrusion of political parties. In such a
situation, it makes sense to demand that nobody bring political symbols,
anarchists included. But when the proposed solutions themselves are
fundamentally diverging according to ideological paradigms, as is the case
with the conflict in the Caucasus, anarchist symbols in actions help
underline the differences between the solutions proposed by anarchists and
those  proposed by other political groups.

Separate anarchist anti-war pickets in Moscow had already died out by the
spring of  2000, and a small number of anarchists began to join the weekly
liberal picket. Autonomous Action in Moscow concluded that participation in a
weekly picket is merely a symbolic act, as the small numbers in a picket do
not correspond with the widespread anti-war sentiment in the rest of
society - during the first half of the decade, independent opinion polls
showed that,  30-50% of those asked were against Putin's political practices
in the Northern Caucasus. That is, such a picket is more a show-off of one's
own Âmoral superiority towards surrounding society, than a real attempt to
change the political situation in the Northern Caucasus.

This is why the Moscow group of Autonomous Action decided to look for other
means of resistance. At first, we gathered humanitarian aid and spread
stickers with the address of the website of the Kazan anarchists, which had
advice and legal aid for those wanting to avoid military service. Then, since
2005, we began the ÂDeserter DayÂ-festival.

The last revitval of the anti-war movement took place in the autumn of 2002,
when special forces attacked hostage-takers in Dubrovka with gas which killed
more than 100 of the hostages. Back then, Autonomous Action once again joined
the Moscow Anti-War Committee, dominated by pro-Western liberals.  However,
this resurgence was to be short-lived, and the last strike against Âanti-war
unity was when the Moscow Anti-War Committee gave a platform to 2004
presidential election candidates such as Irina Khakamada. Anti-war sentiment
in Russian society was always spread beyond the liberal intelligentsia, which
sympathizes with US politics and neoliberalism, but liberal participants in
the committee never figured this out, and eventually Autonomous Action left
the committee again, this time for good.

We were never willing to cooperate with liberal parties, no matter if they
attempted to participate in or boycott the elections, but we are ready to
cooperate with those Non-Governmental Organisations which are not mere a
front-organisation of some political party, even if the members of these
organisations themselves are mostly liberals. Unfortunately people from the
Anti-War Committee of Moscow, as many other political figures in Russia, did
not value the political independence of their own organisations.

Deserter day festival

Already back in 2001 the Moscow group of Autonomous Action picked the struggle
against the draft as a tactical part of the anti-war campaign. Oviously we do
not support a  professional army but rather a ÂBlack guardÂ, a volunteer
anti-bourgeois militia, however the draft was the easiest way of finding a
common ground between the Russian and Chechnyan working class.  The name of
the festival, which has been organised annually since 2005 (and outside
Moscow since 2008),  ÂDeserter dayÂ, was a conscious provocation, as
desertion generally makes the Russian news only when desperate conscripts
escape garrisons with assault rifles and run amok, killing random people. We
can understand their despair, although we do prefer more rational ways to
desert as the only rightful reaction against an imperialistic war. We picked
up the label ÂDeserter day in order to declare our main position, and to
underline the dead-end of reforms such as Âa professional armyÂ
or Ânegotiations with MaskhadovÂ. Only by declaring such a principled
position, could we develop an autonomous anarchist political subject in
Russia, whereas otherwise we would have been lost in the amorphous general
mass of liberals and Âleftists (whose Âleftism is often suspect).

The Deserter day was a success. The original goal was not starting a tradition
but in 2009 the 5th edition was organised in Nizhni-Novgorod (the first time
the festival was organised outside Moscow was in 2008 in Kirov). Deserter day
has also become a model for other large anarchist convergences which soon
followed; Black Petrograd first organised in 2004, the Libertarian forum of
2006, the Gender Festival of 2008. Eventually, these kind of convergences
replaced the conferences of formal anarchist organisations as the main form
of inter-city meetings in the movement. This was a fundamental transformation
in the Russian anarchist movement. Obviously, having visited the Deserter day
festival, people were way more hopeful than after yet another weekly anti-war
picket, thus at least in this respect new tactic was a success.

Although the first action day in 2004, which a year later was declared to
be ÂDeserter day ,  was organised on the  day of the 60th anniversary of the
deportation of Chechens and Ingushetians, gradually the anti-war theme moved
to backround, and the festival in Kirov in 2008 was practically an
anti-military event. The intensity of the conflict has been decreasing for
years and the less news there is  of new attacks, the less the problem is in
the minds of anarchists and society at large. Paradoxically, the defeat of
the anarchist anti-war struggle opened new directions for activity. As the
North-Caucasian conflict is no longer daily news, anarchists can get involved
in more fruitful activity than the anti-war campaign, which was judged to be
a defeat since the very beginning. This only because the Âsignificant
minority of population with anti-war sentiment does not have real
significance, if there is a lack of structures which can organise resistance.

The Defeat of the campaign against the Second Chechen War

Neither anarchists, nor other anti-war groups have such structures. During the
times of the Perestroika, the destiny of the anarchist movement became tied
with the destiny of the general democratic movement, and nobody was prepared
for the pace and insolence of Yeltsin's treachery. For the sake of liberals,
one must say that the best of them understood what was going on already well
before the beginning of the First Chechen War. However, after many years
during which the liberals were building the support base for the falsely
democratic segment of the nomenclature, masses either stayed behind the
segment, or became totally politically apathic while attempting to survive
during the economic shock therapy of the beginning of the 90's. It was too
late to change  course, and anarchists, Âdemocratic leftists and Âliberals
with a conscience were left without a mass support. This state of affairs
had already become clear during the First Chechen War. Back then, despite the
anti-war propaganda in the mass media owned by oligarchs, who hoped to gain
personal dividents from Yeltsin by blackmailing him with the threat of
popular opinion, the scale of anti-war protests was a modest one. In general,
there are hardly any successes in history in terms of stopping imperialist
wars through the effort of the population of the imperialist countries alone.
When anti-imperialist movements gained an upper hand (for example in
Vietnam), most of the sacrifices were always suffered by guerilla movements.

In Chechnya, odds were too uneven from the very beginning. The victory of the
resistance in the first war was a miracle, which has no analogy in modern
history, thus it is of no surprise that it was not repeated in the second
war. The reasons for the defeat of the resistance were already laid out in
1996, when during the Khasavyurt negotiations the Ichkerian government failed
to gain a recognition of sovereignity from Russia. That is, despite the
miracle of the victory in the fight over Grozny, in the diplomatic battle the
resistance only managed to reach a draw. It is pretty likely that both
Maskhadov and Basayev figured this out, but only the latter decided to keep
on waging war, while the former understood that the resistance had already
completely exhausted its reserves. Perhaps Maskhadov hoped that some miracle
would result in such a deep crisis in Russia,, that the country would
collapse altogether and establishment of Ichkerian independence de jure with
the recognition of other countries would become possible. . But such a
miracle did not took place.

Right now, due to the succesful Âlocalization of the conflict, meaning that
it is waged mostly by the army and military structures manned by local
population, the main losses are among the local population, followed by
recruits(contract soldiers) and rarely amongst amongst inhabitants of other
regions or conscripts. and even more seldom are recruits from other regions
being killed. Also due to the strenghtening of the control over mass media,
the war has practically disappeared from the TV screens, and for a vast
majority of the population, it simply does not exist. The only chance for the
resistance right now is to count with some global crisis, which will
disintegrate Russia completely and stop the influx of money from the federal
budget to the local elite. However the current global energy crisis is only
strenghtening the federal authority in Russia, due to the vast reserves of
oil and gas in Russia.

The stubborness of the St. Petersburg anarchists, who, almost without a pause
co-organised anti-war pickets for 8 years in a row deserves a praise. There
were times, when there were less than 10 people in the picket and it seemed
to be a show of pointless masochism, but at  one point the numbers of
picketeers started growing, and in the period between 2004 and 2007 it was
regularly attended by dozens of people, of whom at times 90% were anarchists.
St. Petersburg anarchists managed to reclaim a space in the city, where every
week any local citizen could come to and have a talk with anarchists, and
acquire some anarchist press as well. This waspossible only due to
stubborness and to some level a self-sacrifice as well. More than once the
picket had to be violently defended, first with sticks and lateron with
knives as well. At the end one of the very early participants of the picket
had to leave Russia altogether, when the state apparatus started to use one
of the cases of self-defence as a pretext for repressing the movement as a
whole.

In the end, the fatal problems of the St. Petersburg anti-war movement were
not due to its tactics, but due to its positions, which eventually split and
soon after totally annhilated the oldest anarchist group in the former Soviet
Union at that point, the St. Petersburg Anarchist League (PLA), which for
years was the most active section of Association of Anarchist Movements
(ADA), which in turn was for a while a member of the International of
Anarchist Federations IFA(or do you mean International Anarchist Federation).

Originally, the St. Petersburg anti-war pickets were not initiated by the PLA
but by Âunaffiliated anarchistsÂ. However, PLA members and positions were
prominent in the picket, especially as time went on. The position of PLA was
always that of support for the resistance (with a critique on attacks against
civilians), as the PLA was looking for the unification of all possible
anti-Putin forces, with the approach Âfirst we get rid of them, and then
settle issues between each otherÂ. The Moscow Autonomous Action never wanted
to accept such ÂecumenismÂ, our basic position was always that nobody would
support us, unless we can present a valid alternative to the current regime.
If, at times, we collaborated with other anti-war initiatives, it was always
only on the  condition, that we would present a strictly anarchist
alternative to imperialist wars â that is the fraternization of the
proletariat from both of the sides, against their own bosses.

The position of the PLA is partially justified as, after all, in 1994 it was
the federal forces, who started the wide-scale massacre. The internal
conflict in Chechnya had started a long time before, but Yeltsin raised the
scale of warfare to a completely new level. In order to convince people that
an alternative exists, one has to present it â but when one looks at
an Âunited front from the sidelines, the usual impression is that the people
involved do not know what they want in the first place. Today the whole
Russian opposition is collapsing, and only anarchists are on the upswing â
this is a sign that we were right, when we insisted on keeping our own
positions in regards to the war in Chechnya. If we had merged with
some Âunited front back in 2000, we simply would no longer exist.

Defeat is not end of the struggle

Thus, although the main culprits of the escalation of the conflict were the
federal authorities, the Moscow Autonomous Action never supported the
nationalist, nor the Islamist elements of the Chechen resistance. We were
always proposing a third alternative â the unification of the proletariat
from both sides of the conflict, against their leaders. But in practice,
since beginning of the first war this Âthird alternative  was practically
nonexistent in the region. People in Chechnya were too busy fighting for
their individual survival to also fight against their government. In some
sense, the movement against the disappearance of people, where unarmed women
dominate is now such a Âthird force (apparently according to the
North-Caucasian norms, it is not worthy of a man to plea for something from
authorities without an assault rifle). Also such a movement is that of the
inhabitants of Makachkala (the capital of Dagestan), who after collapse of
the city infrastructure due to the corruption of local authorities were
building barricades in the winter of 2007-2008, apparently independent of any
politicians. Unfortunately, although one has been seeing such initiatives in
the Northern Caucasus already for some years, the anarchist movement in
Russia is not strong enough to form any kind of alliance with them. The third
example is the movement of the Âmothers of BeslanÂ, organised by relatives of
the victims of the 2005 hostage crisis and resulting massacre. Due to the
general political situation which makes punishing the people who ordered the
start of the attack and the shooting of a school full of hostages, with
bazookas and tanks, rather impossible this movement has gradually degenerated
into a semi-racist anti-Ingushetian movement not harmful to the authorities.

Due to the lack of such a Âthird forceÂ, the position of supporting the
resistance is of course very attractive to radicals, as bearded guys with
assault rifles obviously look more cool than elderly ladies with placates of
their disappeared sons. Eventually, some elements of the PLA found a common
language with anti-Arab and anti-Russian racist Boris Stomakhin, who is
currently doing a 5 year prison stint for his ideas, sentenced among others
things for Âhumiliation of human dignity of a group of persons due to their
nationalityÂ. A crime he has definitely committed, but  which does not
necessarily mean that he had to be sent to prison (in my opinion having his
ass kicked would have been enough). The Anti-Russian (or ÂRussofobic as it
is called in Russia) stance is, if not unavoidable then, at least a logical
end for anyone who began to support the nationalist or Islamist resistance.
Thus in the end, the anarchists in St. Petersburg went in different
directions, and the anti-war picket was inherited mainly by those, who at
first refused internationalism, and later anarchism alltogether. Some
comrades from St. Petersburg criticized us, claiming that in Moscow we Âdo
not give proper attention to the anti-war themeÂ, but instead of ritualistic
protests we attempted to find some new, creative approaches, some new ways to
make an impact. We never denied the importance of the Chechen issue, but the
existence of the question alone is not enough to redefine priorities. In the
end, in terms of results one can not consider either the St. Petersburg, or
the Moscow approach as succesful, but at least in Moscow we were able to
establish certain ways of action, which eventually helped local anarchist
movements/groups? to reach a new level in terms of organisation and action.

Besides the approaches of the Moscow Autonomous Action and the St. Petersburg
League of Anarchists, there was also a third anti-war approach. The
Anarcho-Syndicalist KRAS-AIT made anti-war stickers and joined a number of
anti-war actions, but they never focused  on anti-war actions completely.
They preferred to find conflicts in the work place and not only, which could
open roads for such a social movement, which could challenge capitalism, and
thus also such consequences of capitalism as imperialist wars. This makes
sense to a certain extent â it is clear, that anti-war actions, in the form
they took place, where more symbolic deeds for cleansing one's conscience
than real means  of stopping the war. But on the other hand, it is no doubt
that in the beginning of the millenium, the Chechen war was the most current
problem in the Russian society, and Moscow Autonomous Action decided that it
would be a crime to be silent, even thought there wwas little chance of
influencing what was going on. By means of organising a protest, we could at
least break the situation of total silence in general public, and to find
those few people, who were ready to act against all odds. It is easy to be an
anarchist during revolutionary times, but those heroic deeds of past
anarchists which we now envy, are easy when you have a feeling that the
society surrounding you is supporting and approving them. the most genuine
revolutionaries are those, who do not lose their spirit even in conditions of
a total isolation. We almost lost our spirit, but eventually we passed the
trial.

Pyotr Afos

(source: http://avtonom.org/node/9327)
==================================================================
* This article was published in Avtonom #30 in December 2008,  whole issue is
available in PDF format  here: http://www.avtonom.org/node/1821. English
translation was originally published in Abolishing the Borders from Below #35.
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