Dodaj nową odpowiedź

Throughout the night before the rally we did banners and a variety of posters and an action plan for the next rally. By the morning we made some 15 posters with the slogans - «The workers and students together», «Kherson Today and tomorrow the whole Ukraine», «One solution - the resistance», «To workers: plant, wages, worker control», «Revolution NOW» etc., and one big banner - «Do not give up, keep up the strike».

In the morning at 10 o'clock we met comrades from Kiev and immediately headed for the seized plant, which is approximately 5 minutes walk from the station. We handed workers leaflets which we had prepared. We were a bit surprised by the lack of peparation of the workers in the campaign
plan (on their part very few posters were done and few flyers were made to hand out passers-by, etc.) While awaiting
the start of the meeting, we chatted with the workers, and they were
genuinely pleased that we came, the more so as in Kherson the «new
generation» has not reacted at all to what is happening. It was also
disappointing, how passive was reaction of Ukrainian activists and
anarchists... It is a very shame that from such a big country as
Ukraine, only few people came to support workers.

At 11:00 with the deployment of flags and posters, along with the
workers we went to the building of regional administration of the state,
chanting various slogans on the road. On the road workers and bystanders
repeatedly asked why we had the black flag. Some were openly hostile,
some after the «explanatory work» were satisfied. There was even one
woman, who tried to expel one of our activists from the demonstration,
yelling «we do not need any anarchists, we are in this for ourselves; we
do not need any party». Of course, this kind of aspiration of workers
for independence made us happy, but it was funny to hear, because just
ahead flags of PSPU and CPU flew. At the meeting, we listened to the
speeches of a great number of bosses and functioneers of parties, rather
than of comrades. It was frankly a little boring and depressing. Party
functionaries only remainded us the Soviet past: how wonderful it was,
what salary, what benefits, and most importantly - factories owned by
the state. Ofcourse, then in respect of workers and their rights things
may have been somewhat better. But let's look back in history: workers
were not interested in labor, because it did not pay too much, compared
to how

much they had to work. There was no enthusiasm in the work – many
products were of substandard quality – workers considered that it was
not worth of effort to work for some small money, there was lots of
theft in the workplace as workers considered property to belong to them
and in a sense they were right. In general, the system, despite some
advantages, was rotten. Moreover, it does not depend on what government
leads the state. It is the state what is the problem. The state, as well
as a private owner is an exploiter and cares about the workers only
insofar as it benefits himself. Given that private ownership exists a
shorter time than state, it is beneficial for the state to treat workers
a little better than a private owner. But state only cares about its
credibility, their profits and legitimacy. Therefore, we think, it would
work better to achieve socialization and not nationalization of the
factory, but the question is: Are they ready for this? . «The liberation
of the workers is the work of the workersthemslves »; the workers should
keep this in mind: and not trust their lives and working conditions to a
bourgeois or the state. We sincerely hope that they will not llisten to
the promises of

parties who need glasses, and be his electorate at the next election.

After the rally, we, along with the workers, went back to the factory.
We liked the fact that people were already good and friendly to us and
to the flag. What struck us and outraged us , is that the owner still
controls security of the factory and which decides who goes and who does
not go inside. Inside, we heard an ardent speech about the painful
condition, their speech was much more interesting and sincere than at
the rally. This is little surprising, as they know their problems better
than any party. Their speech were followed by a "Agrarian Bourgeois"
from a nearby farm. He praised the production plant, and wished them to
save the plant itself, so that it would be revived and operated as
before. After the meeting we were served a meal. It was not so tasty,
but a pleasure from the fact that we were treated so well - as honored
guests. Although, in our view, we saw on the part of workers a certain
passivity, indecision, and a apathy relative to what is happening.
Perhaps their behavior is due to the «Soviet past», where trade unions
did not have autonomy, and organizational decisions were not taken
collectively but imposed from above. Maybe this can explain the lack of
enthusiasm, and perhaps just a moral hesitance at such radical change.
It also disappointed us that workers can not make decisions
independently and on all questions, they should please contact their leader.

And although the rally was not as radical as we like, and a little
staged and politicized in general – we liked it. At least from the fact
that people started to show class consciousness, and a reaction against
the very failed bourgeois and failed parties

Crimean anarchists

Russian original: http://news.zaraz.org/?n=1112
Original, machine translation fixed by English speaker:
http://mollymew.blogspot.com/2009/02/international-labour-ukraine-report...
(also some more amended machine translations available there)
Molly's translation corrected by Russian speaker:
https://avtonom.org/index.php?nid=2262
Originals have photos as well