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Russian Socialists in the Struggle for Democracy

For the past few weeks, protests for fair elections in upcoming municipal polls have become weekly in Moscow and St. Petersburg as thousands have defied authorities to attend unsanctioned rallies. The police crackdown has been particularly harsh in Moscow. Protests on July 27 and August 3 resulted in over 2000 detentions. Images of police in riot gear wrestling citizens to the ground and beating peaceful protesters were reminiscent of the mass protests against election fraud in 2011-2012.

Members of the Russian Socialist Movement, a small Marxist, anti-Stalinist organization active in the Russian left, have been participants in local electoral campaigns and in the protests. Two RSM activists, Valeria Kovelishina and Ilya Budraitskis talk about the Russian Socialist Movement, their electoral work, the protests for democracy in Russia and what they might mean for the future.

August 10, 2019

Witnessing the Collapse of Communism


Roundtable discussion marking the 30th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. Participants include Timothy Garton Ash, Bridget Kendall, and Jens Reich.

August 2, 2019

The Evictors

Around Moscow, there’s a whole industry of so-called “black creditors” — microfinance institutions (or MFOs) that swindle and seize debtors’ homes. Ivan Golunov’s investigation for Meduza has discovered that almost 500 apartments have been seized from their owners over the past five years without so much as a court order. In fact, this scheme involves more than simply “squeezing” people from their homes. It is possibly part of a wider, international money-laundering system. Here’s Meduza special correspondent Ivan Golunov on the ins and outs of this industry.

July 19, 2019

From the Komsomol Archive

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Today, I began research on Komsomol participation in collectivization and found this little tidbit in the archive.  This is from Komsomol Central Committee member Gerasimov’s report, October 1929:

In Penzen region, there were rumors that a [grain requisitioning] commission arrived to close the church.  Or in a similar rumor, the commission arrived to arrest the priest and take him away.  A crowd gathered.  Or another case, to catch a swindler.  A crowd of up to 800 people surrounded the commission and began shouting.  They wanted to arrange a samosud.  There were shouts of “They attack the peasantry from all sides, let’s beat them all.”  True, more than half of [the crowd] was drunk.

RGASPI f. 1M, op.5, d. 24a, l. 22

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