1991: Say No to counterrevolution in USSR

[Bolshy]

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(https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=explorer&chrome=true&srcid=0BwDPOkz150f-N2ZlMjhlMjktZTI4Ni00YjQxLTg3NjAtNmM5MWFmYjkzZmY2&)

[Tim Finnegan]

"In August 1991, Workers World Party held demonstrations in New York and San Francisco to protest the reinstatement of Yeltsin and Gorbachev and the subsequent suppression of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and Pravda.

WWP was the only communist group in the U.S. to take to the streets in defense of socialism and against the Bush-Yeltsin-Gorbachev counter-revolution."
That's ok, we all make mistakes.

[A Marxist Historian]

That's ok, we all make mistakes.

That was one occasion on which WWP (presplit, by the way) was doing the right thing.

I prefer however the Spartacists, who were trying to fight the counterrevolution where it mattered, in the Soviet Union, distributing a hundred thousand leaflets in Russian all over the country titled "fight Bush/Yeltsin Counterrevolution," and getting by the way a definite hearing.

Until the Spartacist leader in Russia, Martha Phillips, was assassinated, a bloodstained indication that somebody Up There got worried about the Spartacists.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

That's ok, we all make mistakes.

I note the WWP formula, "Fight Bush-Yeltsin-Gorbachev" counterrevolution, was problematic. That implies some sort of support for the "Gang of Seven" putsch against Gorbachev, which was not in any way a defense of socialism, and indeed is what touched off the collapse of the Soviet Union, not a good thing at all.

-M.H.-

[Lolshevik]

...Until the Spartacist leader in Russia, Martha Phillips, was assassinated...

Can you tell me more about this? I know the Spartacists were active in East Germany when the counterrevolution went down there but I didn't know they were in the USSR too.

[A Marxist Historian]

Can you tell me more about this? I know the Spartacists were active in East Germany when the counterrevolution went down there but I didn't know they were in the USSR too.

Oh yes. In fact a good smattering of their East German recruits, all of whom knew Russian of course and understood the scene much better than your average American, went to the Soviet Union after all was lost in Germany, following some American Spartacists, led by Spartacist Central Committee member Martha Phillips. A couple of those East Germans were former lowlevel East German army officers, which helped too.

They made a very considerable impact. Here's a Spartacist account of their time in the Soviet Union from the other leader of the effort who replaced Martha Phillips when she was assassinated.

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/926/russianrevpt3.html

Plus some mention of their efforts in Afghanistan in 1989 after Gorbachev pulled the troops out. Najibullah turned down the Spartacist offer to organize an International Brigade to join the fight vs. the Mujahedeen, but they did a worldwide fundraising campaign and sent a delegation to Jalalabad, which seems to have helped the morale there.

You had the biggest military victory the Najibullah regime ever had in the Jalalabad battle in 1989. Delayed the fall of his regime by three years. Indeed it survived longer than the Soviet Union.

-M.H.-