The founding conference of Autonomous Action took place 25th-27th of January
2002
in the city of Nizhni Novgorod. Besides from Nizhni Novgorod, there were
participators from Krasnodar, Moscow, Samara, Yaroslavl, Tymen, Chelyabinsk
and Aksay of Kazakhstan. Besides these cities, Autonomous Action has
individual members
or contact persons in around 20 cities, in Belarus and Ukraine as well.
There were observers from Praxis-collective of Moscow, Confederation of
Revolutionary Anarcho-Syndicalists and Rainbow Keepers. Siberian
Conference of Labour and Tver anarchists sent their greetings to the
conference.
The founding process of Autonomous Action took 2 years, first preparatory
conference
was organised in Nizhni Novgorod exactly 2 years before. Other preparatory
conferences
were organised in Novorossisk (Black Sea rim) in the summer of 2000, in
Kasimov of Central
Russia in spring of 2001 and in Sochi (Black Sear rim) in the summer of
2001.
Most of the work of the conference was dedicated to developing manifesto and
organisational principles
(rules) of the new organisation. Conference also made a resolution about
globalisation and
a number of decisions about practical work of the organisation - against
intoxication in the
conference, about registration of existing and new members, about e-mail
list of the organisation, membership
fees and editorial work of the journal of organisation, Avtonom, which is
currently most widely
distributed anarchist paper in the former Soviet Union, with about 1500
copies. A five-member
coordinatory council was elected to coordinate work of the organisation
until the following general
meeting, to be organised in Krasnodar in August 2002, with a strictly
limited mandate.
Concept and projects of the new organisation
Notwithstanding the name, federalist organisational practive of the new
organisation has propably more in common
with traditions of organisational anarchism than with the marxist autonomia
of the Central and Southern Europe. The term "autonomia" is unknown in Russia,
thus this attribute leaves more space for the self-definition, than
"anarchism" saturated with meanings, many of them contradictory with our
ideals. And participators find it important to build cooperation with
marxists with clearly anti-authoritarian orientation.
There is already a number of existing anarchist organisations or networks in
Russia, so undoubtly identity of the new organisation is to big extent
defined as an alternative, but not opponent to the existing ones. However
each of the participators have their own reasons to prefer Autonomous
Action, so it is hard to draw general conceptual differences with other
organisations which all the participants would subscribe. Most important
differences with existing organisations are propably wide program instead of
straightforward opposition to state (as in case of the Association of
Anarchist Movements, ADA) or enviromentalism (as in case of the Rainbow
Keepers), higher level of coordination of the actions and commitment to
libertarian communism as the only credible alternative to the capitalist
order. Membership of Autonomist Action is overlapping with many other
anarchist organisations and groups.
The main publication project of Autonomous Action is the Avtonom-paper
mentioned above, besides it publishes also pamphlets in "library of the
journal Avtonom", this far library has published books about Zapatista
uprising and book about history of anarchism by Petr Ryabov. Moscow group
makes website against work with aim to discredit crook employers. Website
has also a paper version "radical lazybones", which is free of charge.
Groups in South have been struggling against building of "Blue Stream" gas
pipeline under Black Sea, founding "Anti-globalist initiative" (this
self-definition has been criticized in the movement) as radical wing of the
campaign. Many groups have had different anti-fascist and anti-nationalist
projects, Moscow group has made buttons and t-shirts with a text "person of
Caucasian origin", for people who want to protest against campaign of
vilification by Moscow mayor and press against immigrants from the Caucasus
area, which has made "persons of Caucasian origin" as number one targets of
the nationalist hatred in Russia today. Moscow group has also participated
to organisation of Polish anti-racist bordercamps of year 2000, 2001 and
2002. Belorechensk group has anti-racist initiative "Reason", and many
groups have been founding movement of Red and Anarchist Skinheads RASH in
former Soviet Union, which has already become an obstacle and a source of
irritation to fascists.
Many groups have their own distros and musical projects, Moscow has musical
distro "Rock against the rich", Novorossisk has "Class war records" and
Samara has "Music against fascism and racism". Moscow group runs the biggest
anarchist literature distributor in the former Soviet Union, A-Distro, which
has not only 60 different issues of 20 different papers in its catalogue,
but also plenty of leaflets, videos, stickers, t-shirts and buttons.
Contacts of Autonomous Action (English translation of our manifest below
contact adresses)
Websites:
ad-direct, federal site - maintained from Novorossisk
Redskin, Red and Anarchist Skinheads, maintained from
Novorossisk
antijob, Site against work, maintained from Moscow
antifa.da.ru, Anti-fascist project "Black and Green resistance" from
Samara
potok, Website against Blue Stream gas pipeline,
maintained from Novorossisk
narod, Nizhni Novgorod group of anarchists
A distro, A-distro, biggest distributor of
Anarchist literature in the former Soviet Union
almaty-liberta, Libertarian communists in Kazakhstan, a
group which has individual
members in AD altough is not affiliated itself.
Local groups (do not write name of the organisation to envelope
when contacting groups)
Autonomous Action of Krasnodar (also for Avtonom-paper)
P.O. Box 3472,
350001 Krasnodar Russia
fak-kr
Autonomous Action of Moscow
P. O. Box 13
109028 Moscow Russia
dikobrazi
Anarchist group of Nizhni Novgorod
P. O. Box 25
603104 Nizhni Novgorod Russia
ad_nn
Samara
anti–fa
Cities with individual members and contact adresses
(for Brest of Belarus, Kirov and Perm write to Krasnodar
contact adress)
Alma Ata
P. O. Box 149
480 000 Alma Ata Kazakhstan
ad_eldar
Belorechensk
P. O. Box 5
352630 Belorechensk Russia
sukivse
Bryanka
P. O. Box 10
94100 Lugansk oblast Ukraine
com_act
Chelyabinsk
P. O. Box 18742
454021 Chelyabinsk Russia
chel.surnet
Grodno
P. O. Box 38
230015 Grodno Belarus
Irkutsk
Vladimir Skraschuk
Poste Restante
664056 Irkutsk Russia
Izhevsk (Udmurtian republic)
antiwar
Kaliningrad
ska-konig
Kasimov
P.O. Box 52
391330 Ryazanskaya oblast Russia
lavrik
Kolomna
Yuri Popov
Poste Restante
140476 Moscow oblast, glavpochtampt, Russia
Minsk
P. O. Box 34
220030 Minsk Belarus
Murmansk
P. O. Box 4614
183050 Murmansk Russia
Novgorod
Vitaliya Lapikina
Poste Restante
173014 Novgorod Russia
holosik
Novorossisk
P. O. Box 144
353907 Novorossisk Russia
ger2
Rostov-na-Donu
P. O. Box 4059
344103 Rostov-na-Donu Russia
neponyatny
Saint-Petersburg
Bolshakov A.E.
Poste Restante
192281 Saint-Petersburg Russia
blackguard
Sochi
d_m
Tyumen
P. O. Box 4481
625001 Tyumen Russia
roustam_f
Volgograd
Vyacheslav Yaschenko
ul. Novorossiskaya 16-56
400087 Volgograd Russi
Voronezh
an-action
Anarh-vrn
Yaroslavl
yar_anarchy
Yekaterinburg
kreator
Yoshkar-Ola
P. O. Box 76
424028 Mari Republic Russia
Manifesto of the Autonomous Action
WHO ARE WE? Autonomous Action - it is a community of people, for whom
"freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and Socialism without
freedom
is slavery and brutality". We consider that the most
important thing
in life are not the consumption of goods, making a career, reaching
reaching positions of power and making money, but creativity, real human
relations and
personal liberty. All of us, be it workers and the unemployed people,
students and
pupils, employees and marginal elements, have one common unifying element -
to protest against
any power of a man over another man, state, capitalism and
officially spread bourgeois "culture". A desire not to be a wilful nut in
the mechanism of the System - to collectively resist it, to demand free
self-realisation.
OUR IDEALS AND OUR AIM. Autonomous Action against any form of domination and
discrimination, both within the society and in our own organisation. The
current system
of domination is tightly interlaced with repressive state apparatus,
industrial capitalist economical structure and authoritarian and hierarchic
relations between people. We see, that every state is an instrument of
oppression and exploitation of the working
majority for the benefit of the privileged minority. Power of stateand
capital is suppression of personality and
creativity of each and everyone. This is why for us libertarian (free,
stateless, self-governed) communism, a society without domination, is the
necessary structure of society. The closest aim of Autonomous Action
is to create a tradition and basis for a new humanist culture, social
self-organisation and radical resistance against militarism, capitalism,
sexism and fascism.
HOW WE ARE ORGANISED. Our goals may be reached only when aims and means
meet.
This is why our organisation has a federative
structure,
which excludes leadership and hierarchy, denies inequality
of the participators, centralism, strict division of functions, which
ruin initiative, destroy autonomy and suppress personality. Our
ideals and organisational principles are wide enough not to make
us a sect, and concrete enough to allow co-ordination of actions, common
tactics and aims and successful decision about tasks we engage in
. Our structure,
conditions of membership and mechanism of decisionmaking are defined
in detail in the organisational principles of the Autonomous Action.
HOW WE TAKE ACTION. Members of Autonomous Action support direct
action. In order to reach our goals, we do not participate in the fight for
power,
for a seat in parliament or for arm-chairs of state officials.
We realise our goals in direct order, by a wide spectrum of
non-parliamentary
and cultural action, if necessary revolutionary by form and content.
Autonomous Action is a common front, subdivisions of which, each in their
own directions, realise
an attack against repressive relations in different social
movements, in all spheres of social and
individual life - at the same time building new relations, without
domination and submission. Autonomous Action recognises the right of society
and individuals to defend
themselves and to resist against exploitation.
WAY TO OUR GOAL. We recognise a multitude of ways to reach our goals. The
way might be one of
revolutionary insurrection self-organised by the working masses, a general
strike or a more or less gradual disappearance of the institutions of power
and capital in favour of self-governing structures of alternative civil
society, and so on. Life itself will define, which of the methods will
be most effective and timely. But a society without domination may never be
reached through reforms and legislative acts of parliaments and governments,
initiatives of inter-state and corporate structures, representatives of the
privileged and the ruling class. Our strategy is REVOLUTIONARY in the sense
that it comes from below, from the very bottom structures of the
society, and does not operate with the mechanisms and resources of the
system;
in the sense, that it does not demand partial changes in the system, but
its destruction and change as a whole.
OUR ALTERNATIVE. Centralised bureaucratic machine, national and global
capital and the consumerist mass culture which they have given rise to, that
is the system supressing us, and it's not only immoral and unjust, but it
also leads the present human society to an ecological and cultural
catastrophe and to war.
Sharp change of direction has become an urgent necessity today. This is why
we propose a radical alternative to existing
order of things, based on humanism, liberty and equality.
Our goal is not to
"set up a divine kingdom on Earth", but only to open a road to real social
development.
In such a
society some of the present problems may remain, and some new may appear,
but it will in any case be more equal, human and free than the present
one, and in certain circumstances, becomes almost the only alternative to
approaching catastrophe. Simultaneously, our alternative is not only a goal
of the distant future, for which we are fighting for, but
a society which we are creating here and now through everyday resistance.
This alternative is fixed by the following ideals and directions of our
activity, which every participator of Autonomous Action expresses according
to his will, whereas her or his actions comply with goals of Autonomous
Action and do not contradict the ideas of this manifesto.
IDEALS AND DIRECTIONS OF ACTION
ANTI-AUTHORITARISM
Against every form of dictatorship, leadership, authoritarism, centralised
bureaucratical apparatus, police excesses. For right to participate in
making decision on any question influencing our destiny. For
minimisation of vertical and maximisation of horizontal relations inside
the society. For decentralisation of the governance, local autonomy, direct
grassroots democracy and federalism. For free federation of self-governed
individuals, groups, communes, regions where organs of the co-ordination,
when they are necessary, are independent councils or other institutions of
social self-governance, formed by assemblies not according to principle of
presentation, but according to principle of delegation and imperative
mandate - with the right to immediate recall delegates. FOR COMPLETE
LIBERATION OF EACH AND EVERYONE! YOUR FREEDOM IS SENSELESS WITHOUT FREEDOM
OF THE OTHERS!
ANTICAPITALISM
Human race, undivided in its natural state, has become divided between
masters and powerless exploited majority. We stand for liquidation of the
class society, wage work, humiliation and exploitation of human by another,
power of money, imperialism. Against the dependence of human from the nature
of
"market relations". Products should not govern people, in contrary people
should use products sensibly and cautiously. Society should get over the
catastrophical logic of the bourgeois production.
Against growing power of transnational corporations and international
structures of the capital. For workers' governance and control in
production. The wealth and resources of society should be accessible to
everyone, not only to the governing elite. For people's self-governance
without
capitalists and bureaucrats. For organisation of property by the principle
"from
everyone according to their capacities, to everyone according to their
needs", keeping in mind the production limits given by the society and
saving the equilibrium and diversity of nature. Capitalism, as a system
of all out war, profiting and humiliation has only one historical
perspective - death of humanity and planetwide ecological catastrophe. And
in
the best case, immersion to gulf of "civilised" barbarism. Capitalism
may not be reformed.
ANTI-FASCISM, ANTI-NATIONALISM
Fascism, racism and nationalism are means of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy to
provoke people against each other, and to divide them to different races
and nations, to hide mastership. To create profits
and maintain power of bourgeoisie and bureaucracy over the society. We are
internationalists. Only organising workers in international scale may not
only challenge power and capital, but also give them a decisive death blow.
World should be multi-coloured, not brown! For a world without borders and
national states, one in it's multitude of cultures and traditions. For a
world with multitude of personalities, collectives, communities and regions,
no to a downcast world of national and religious hatred, racial prejudices,
chauvinism, xenophobia, unified and closed "national culture". For
protection of national and cultural minorities against discrimination and
fascist terror. For radical counter-attack against neo-nazis and
national-patriotist ideologists and organisations. For foundation of
anti-fascist shock troops to physically confront fascists.
ANTI-BOLSHEVISM
Negative experience of "real socialism" in countries like USSR, China, Cuba
etc. does not in any case discredit ideas of libertarian communism. It is
not possible to create free society and solidarity through authoritarian
party structure seizing the state power, with dictatorship of any party
apparatus or
self-appointed "avant-garde". Against Bolshevik principles of the
organisation. For organisational structure,
based on libertarian principles of mutual respect, equality and solidarity.
Organisational structure should be image of things to come in the society,
foundation of which we are trying to reach.
We see, that regimes in so called "socialist states" were nothing but
rude form of global tendency towards state-capitalism, a system in which
bourgeois economical relations, wage labour as well as psychology remain.
The only difference was that capitalist was one and collective - the
governing party elite. Only difference between "socialist" and "western"
capitalism was the form of capitalist accumulation. Libertarian experience
of the Makhnovist movement, Spanish revolution, Tolstoyanism, independent
labour movement etc. showed with which zeal Bolsheviks try to root out any
anti-authoritarian, really communist movement.
We are against any ideal and organisational unity with Leninists
(Stalinists, Maoists, trotskists etc.). For close co-operation with
non-authoritarian socialists, anti-party left communists and libertarian
Marxists.
SELF-GOVERNANCE
Forms of self-governance may be
a) means of production seized by the workers to become common property,
functioning with libertarian model of organisation;
b) libertarian communes;
c) other institutions, founded on regional, functional and other principles.
Such forms of self-governance could be effective method to found the basis
of
social alternative to the present society.
ANTI-MILITARISM
Against state army as a system of violence, instrument of governance of
ruling class and instrument of integration of young men to patriarchal,
authoritarian and hierarchical systems of domination.
Against forced conscription. We should not defend state and government,
which only
exist in order to humiliate us. Boycott military call-ups! Trash all draft
cards!
For an alternative of general armament of workers and people's militias,
without hazing, humiliation of human dignity and prison regime. For full
control of the society over military specialists. PEACE TO THE WHOLE WORLD!
FREE PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE TO DIVIDE IT!
ECOLOGY
Against non-sustainable exploitation of the nature for profit of the few.
Against industrial system of organisation and power of the technocrats. For
development from all directions and inculcation of the
alternative technologies. For foundation of ecological settlements and
harmonisation of the relation
between human and the nature. For decentralised, humanist, balanced
production for interests of the people, with protection of the environment
for the future generations, with gradual abolition of the industrial
technologies. Active support to social ecologists in their struggle,
participation to ecological actions and campaigns. NOT MORE, BUT BETTER! NOT
EXTERNAL, BUT INTERNAL! NOT TO OWN, BUT TO BE!
FEMINISM
Against sexism - humiliation, violence and discrimination against women and
men based on their sex.
Against patriarchy - authoritarian structure of any class society, where
mostly proprietor-men have power in all key spheres of the society, "female"
is
always subordinated to "male", and family has a function of
of reproduction and socialisation of the labour power.
Against sexist stereotypes, family despotism, homophobia, porno industry and
ageism (discrimination
on the basis of the age). For active participation of the women to the life
of the society, and possibility of individuals themselves to control their
own bodies (and reproduction in special). Every human is equal and unique
socially, sexually (in her/his gender) and age.
NEW HUMANIST CULTURE
Against hypocrisy and repression of the official mass culture,
commercialisation of the creativity, power of
the show-business and "amusement industry". Against manipulation of the
conscience and behaviour of any kind and form. Against elitism of the
culture and hierarchy of its institutions. Global support to any kind of
uncommercial creativity, experimental art and pedagogic. For support of the
initiative of people, who already now want to live according to
unauthoritarian
principles. This kind of initiatives are important not only for escape from
the reality, but also to gather experience of free and sensible
relations.
For foundation of squats, housing collectives, artist communes, autonomous
cultural and information spaces, organisation of mass festivals of
alternative culture. CULTURE SHOULD NOT IMPOVERISH OUR LIFE. LIFE SHOULD
BECOME BIGGER THAN IT IS!
ANTI-CLERICALISM
We, without conditions, support full "freedom of spirit", for every man's
free search of world outlook and faith. But we should do our best to resist,
without using mechanism of rule, those ideological systems which
bring hatred, xenophobia, nationalism in society and transfer individual to
an
authoritarian and dogmatic person. Many religious ideas are connected to
such kind of systems.
Even more resolutely we are against hierarchical church organisations,
pyramidal and authoritarian
structure of which may not serve interests of liberation of human
individual. Such churches serve only one goal - fortifying human both
physically and in spirit. One of the most serious and powerful churches of
such kind in Russia is the Russian Orthodox Church, which already long time
ago transformed into a powerful capitalist and bureaucratic corporation,
receiving from the state both financial and ideological advantages.
Against using needs of man for explanations about universe in the interests
of business and
power.
HOW TO START RESISTANCE?
Do not wait, take action yourselves. Concentrate your efforts to any
direction you desire and feel close
to yourselves. Find adherents among your friends, work- or schoolmates.
Start from little, main thing is that you have some real issues to organise,
such as publication and distribution of papers, formation of worker's
unions, organisation of squats, communes, alternative information centres or
participation to a strike, anti-fascist struggle, protest camp, meetings,
pickets or rock-concerts. The main thing is to take action, not to be based
on the state or bourgeoisie, to take action against them and independent
from them.
It is necessary to connect other groups and initiatives, maintain
informational and organisational connections to adherents in the whole
country and abroad. That brings you confidence and power.
Send materials about your life and struggle to our paper "Avtonom", which
covers struggle in the whole libertarian sphere. BE COURAGEOUS! LIVE FULLY,
FREELY AND STRONGLY! RESIST! REMEMBER,
THAT A SMALL GROUP OF FIGHTERS MAY START AN AVALANCHE!
