Talking with a Soviet Free Trade Unionist
ALLEN, CHARLES
A SEARCH FOR SOLIDARITY Talking with a Soviet Free Trade Unionist BY CHARLES ALLEN We support those of you who have decided to enter the difficult road of struggle for free and independent...
...What follows was adaptedfrom an interview with Borisov conducted for Radio Liberty by Charles Allen...
...they ask to be accepted into the organization individually...
...Do you feel that the Soviet regime is capable of reforming itself...
...Allen: If the audience for Western radio is as wide as you say, Western stations must exert considerable influence on the opinions of the Soviet population...
...Borisov: Some of them, yes...
...Even though I was only 13 at the time of the 20th Party Congress in 1956, when I saw how the Party could change its position on the most fundamental issues in a matter of days, I decided I could no longer believe the Soviet press...
...From their point of view, it serves to partly defuse the situation...
...The most it can accomplish is to provide information, stimulate thinking, spread knowledge of human rights, and reveal the unfairness of the workers' position...
...After all, there are only 200 members of smot, and even fewer activists...
...Borisov: By itself, Western radio can't do anything...
...The impression I get is that the Soviet workers do not really support the Poles, although they do sympathize with their position...
...Look at Spain, where unions are heavily politicized . Spanish trade unionists are sometimes expelled for purely political reasons...
...I f you transform a labor union into a political party, you get both a bad union and a bad party...
...Definitely more so than in England or France...
...There are 10-15 groups in all, and each elects a representative to the Central Coordinating Committee...
...If people feel a meeting is necessary, they designate a place and go there...
...The mainspring of the dissident movement is its concern with legality...
...The ordinary Soviet worker knew very little about George Meany, for example, but those who did realized that he had a great deal of power within the United States...
...They understand the importance of standard of living to a worker, and the meat shortage that triggered the strikes has its parallel in the USSR...
...Borisov: I consider every country, in principle, capable of self-reform...
...Established in October 1978, smot succeeded the short-lived Free Trade Union, founded by Vladimir Khlebanov in November 1977 and forced to abandon its efforts by spring of 1978...
...We may know of a group somewhere that we would like to contact and lack the money to finance a rendezvous...
...The intelligentsia is more wary of extremism than the working class, and more fearful too...
...Mini-reforms are always in progress, but fundamental reforms...
...Allen: What do workers read...
...They engage in active dissent...
...They either write to us, pass on their interest through a dissident, or contact us via an address published in a smot bulletin...
...Borisov: smot is basically an attempt to create an independent labor union in the USSR...
...Borisov: I would say that around 80 per cent of the Soviet working class catch Western radio perhaps once a month...
...Allen: So you consider yourself a Socialist...
...Allen: Is there a division between working class members of the democratic opposition and their intellectual counterparts...
...For the time being, not much chance...
...How many strikes have intellectuals staged...
...Borisov: Partly from other members, but mainly through Western radio...
...What prompts a worker to join the Party...
...But one thing I ought to point out here is that a large percentage of the working class simply watches television and plays dominoes, and doesn't caremuch about anything else...
...One reason is that the economic problems-the lack of goods, inflation, and so on-are becoming more acute...
...Borisov: There are as many ideas as there are members...
...members come from different parts of the Soviet Union, and the trip can be costly in money and time lost from work, smot's own resources are severely limited-the entire union funds consists of 500 rubles...
...If something is banned for political reasons, they immediately want to get their hands on it...
...In those places samizdat materials are in great demand...
...since they cannot often get together, they maintain only sporadic contact...
...Allen: How do would-be members find out about smot in the first place...
...Allen: From what you are saying, it doesn't sound as though the Western image of an uninformed and apathetic Soviet working class is an accurate one...
...Allen: How do the workers feel about their own media...
...From the outset, we took it for granted that the authorities would harass us, so we tried to come up with a method of making the organization self-perpetuating...
...The intelligentsia, since it has a highly developed sense of history, naturally wants to try and legalize dissent, and this legal orientation is now filtering down to the working class as well...
...I should add that the further one gets into the remoter parts of the USSR, the more workers listen...
...But even though smot has not grown since it was founded, it hasn't shrunk either...
...Borisov: I have never heard of workers bearing a grudge against the intellectuals because they lacked experience...
...If you read our bulletin, you will see that the organization is involved in many kinds of standard labor union activities, smot focuses on such questions as the illegal dismissal of workers, and we have even managed to get people's jobs back...
...In distant places, people gobble up any information they can get their hands on...
...I find the whole course of events in Poland extremely encouraging...
...Among smot's founding members was Vladimir Borisov, who was born in 1943 and spent 18 months working as an apprentice electrician in Kamchatka, in the Soviet Far East, shortly after turning 16...
...Finally, most of these emigrants come from large cities, where workers enjoy a higher standard of living than in the rest of the country...
...Do they see the situation the same way that you do...
...The government devotes considerable resources to prolonging this starvation...
...What aroused your interest in this issue in the first place...
...Not realizing that the USSR takes far more than it gives, they wonder why it should be feeding all these people-the Cubans, the Czechs, and soon...
...On top of that, most of them are Jews, and Jews do not usually belong to the working class...
...He made several statements of support for the working class opposition in the USSR, and these were helpful...
...When a union exists for purely political purposes, its labor goals are sacrificed...
...The government has a vested interest in encouraging ethnic tension, however...
...They kno wthat, while Romanian and Bulgarian workers live no better than they do, the reverse is true of the Germans and the Czechs...
...On the one hand, they are a bit envious...
...This is perfectly acceptable to the authorities, who fear written protest more than anything else...
...We've lost sight of some groups completely, but we've also managed to build some up...
...Can the stations do anything to bring about change in the USSR...
...Thus the message issued September 8 by Poland's Solidarity union from its National Convention in Gdansk...
...Borisov: Probably once a month on the average, but there is no set schedule...
...Are Soviet workers aware of this...
...We view trade unionism in very broad terms, and we assist workers in every possible way, whether or not they are members...
...Allen: And the workers don't accuse the intellectuals of never having been out in the world...
...In a sense, they do not exactly envy the Poles, yet perhaps they regret that they cannot do the same thing...
...Borisov: The pressure on workers to join the Party is formidable...
...They are too poorly versed in law and history to know their rights, and this stops them from coming to grips with their plight...
...Borisov: That is a term one must use very carefully...
...Many emigrants from the USSR are educated people, and their opinions are instrumental in forming Western perceptions of Soviet dissent...
...Western stations are in a position to reach many more people...
...How does it operate...
...Allen: Is smot a purely Russian movement, or does it include non-Russian nationalities too...
...Borisov: The West is relying on limited sources of information...
...They tend to pass on most of their information by word of mouth...
...A tiny percentage, somewhere between 1-3 per cent, listen constantly...
...If potential activists see that someone else has taken the initiative, they will be less inclined to stir up trouble themselves...
...Allen: How do Soviet workers see American trade unions...
...Still, in general terms, I believe the desire for knowledge is growing...
...It consists of separate, autonomous groups, or chapters if you like...
...Each chapter determines its own scope...
...Borisov: Since smot was founded under extremely difficult circumstances, its structure is unusual...
...For one thing, there is Poland-a valuable lesson for members of our organization...
...Some Soviet workers feel that they are being taken for a ride by the East Europeans...
...Since I have never had much to do with such people, I cannot claim to speak for them...
...Borisov: National distinctions are more important among intellectuals than among workers, who tend not to notice ethnic differences...
...It doesn't want hostility to be directed against the Russians, but conflict among the non-Russian nationalities is fine...
...And some members of smot are unaffiliated locally...
...Borisov: There are some non-Russians in smot, but they are a minority...
...People join on the strength of their ideas...
...Allen: Does smot advocate large changes in the Soviet economic system...
...Allen: You don't think smot is gradually going to fade from the scene, then...
...All this combines to produce a 'landlord' attitude toward Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe...
...The British unions do have considerable political power, but their economic power-their ability to defend the interests of working class citizens-is limited...
...Borisov: The problem is that most workers don't know how to protest...
...Of course, a lot is going to depend on government policy, and how people see their standard of living and the economic situation in general...
...He was subsequently drafted into the Army, where he was branded a troublemaker and eventually placed in the psychiatric section of a military hospital...
...It is more inclined toward reform, whereas workers are more revolutionary...
...The West knows of only a few people who belong to the movement, whereas thousands of people are in fact involved, especially on the fringes...
...In my view he understood the processes in the USSR better than the American government...
...Whether or not this is likely is another matter...
...At times meetings are quite difficult to arrange...
...As a rule, American politicians fail to grasp this...
...it often has the effect of diminishing individual effort...
...It's rare for a worker to have one...
...This pattern reached its peak with his work in smot, and continued until he was expelled from the Soviet Union in June 1980...
...Allen: How do you account for Western misperceptions of the Soviet working class...
...Borisov: Their feelings are certainly contradictory...
...That is why I made a point of spreading legal principles among the working class...
...But the working class is at a disadvantage when it comes to samizdat, because only the intelligentsia tend to own typewriters...
...Borisov: I must stress that my information on this subject is fragmentary, and that it comes from people with limited contacts...
...Don't forget that there are quite a few workers in the democratic movement, although they are outnumbered by the intellectuals...
...Borisov: Interest is increasing, especially in the smaller cities where people are less orthodox in their thinking...
...In the case of the Soviet Union, I think it highly unlikely...
...Unfortunately, workers tend not to know what has been banned...
...Allen: Vladimir Evgenevich, what exactly is smot and what are its aims...
...You can tell this from workers' political anecdotes, which are numerous and often very cutting...
...As for fiction, adventure and detective stories are the most popular...
...Allen: Do these somewhat ambiguous sentiments typify the attitude of Soviet workers' toward their Eastern European counterparts in general...
...Allen: Is there much interest in samizdat among the working class...
...Borisov: There are no strict rules limiting the membership of smot, and the organization includes both committed Communists and passionate anti-Communists, smot is a labor union, not a political party...
...The authorities persecute the members of smot they know about-the members of the Central Coordinating Committee...
...American unions have greater means and hence greater possibilities...
...His experiences there not only proved an "eye-opening" introduction to Soviet labor practices, as he puts it, but resulted in his being arrested for participating in a strike...
...Borisov: Of the central newspapers, Izvestia is preferred to Pravda, but most of the time workers read the local press...
...People may mock their convictions, but they are not ostracized like the blatant careerists...
...Maybe half of these listen for a reason, and hence tune in something like once a week...
...If you remember, during the Novocherkassk uprising of 1962, students were armed and used to quell the striking workers...
...As a rule, members of a smot group know each other well...
...Borisov: We know that in the U.S...
...in practice, there isn't always someone capable of assuming complete responsibility for the group...
...Even when the Soviet press reports the truth, the workers don't believe it...
...We trust that our representatives can meet soon to exchange experiences...
...Allen: I find it hard to believe that smot is able to function in the same way as a Western labor union...
...Their favorite magazine is Ogonyok, which has the largest circulation of any journal in the USSR...
...Allen: Do any members of the Communist Party belong to smot...
...Then the contact is lost...
...Allen: What about Western radio...
...Once his underground work brought him to the attention of the KGB, he was repeatedly harassed and interned in psychiatric wards...
...To them, Party membership is nothing more than a quick way of getting an apartment, or some other perk...
...In theory, when a representative has been imprisoned, his chapter elects a successor...
...Do your members favor a return to the free market, for example...
...Once you've worked with someone, you begin to lose your prejudices...
...Rights that exist in the West should be constantly compared to those that exist in the USSR...
...He now lives in Paris...
...This causes some workers to say, 'Okay,let'sjointheParty and get it over with.' Of course, there are also the careerists...
...Now look at what they're doing with our property.' Allen: One last question...
...The Party recruits heavily among the working class...
...Borisov: The absence of it, of course...
...Borisov: Working class dissent is certainly understated by Western analysts...
...Borisov: The workers simply do not believe the newspapers...
...unions are more powerful than in many other countries...
...Borisov: I've never noticed one...
...Do the workers listen regularly to Western stations...
...They speak quite openly...
...And at home now, some workers are listening for the first time to Western radio, while others are getting involved in samizdat...
...As a result, some groups go unrepresented and drop out of the picture...
...Naturally, in our country, any organization that is independent of the state automatically has political implications...
...Allen: Is that because of ethnic divisions within the working class...
...The West rarely hears from the large numbers of workers living in smaller cities like Ryazan and Kaluga, who are desperately poor and thoroughly disillusioned...
...They are richer and more active...
...Allen: Much of your activity has focused on freedom of the press...
...He understood that the USSR often bluffs, for instance...
...This is the trouble with setting up an organization...
...Workers are an important dissenting force...
...So the size of the organization has not in fact changed...
...On the other hand, there are a few sincere Communists...
...For one thing, there are more workers living there, and fewer intellectuals and civil servants...
...In principle, yes, I am a Socialist, but one who supports decentralization and the economic freedom of the enterprise as well as the cooperative ownership of property...
...Allen: Coming closer to home, how does the average So viet worker view the current events in Poland...
...Allen: But to judge by the little one hears about orgainzed worker protests, there isn't much they can do to improve their living conditions...
...And in cities, people have other information sources and other forms of entertainment...
...Allen: What do the local chapters do...
...A SEARCH FOR SOLIDARITY Talking with a Soviet Free Trade Unionist BY CHARLES ALLEN We support those of you who have decided to enter the difficult road of struggle for free and independent trade unions...
...Given the conditions under which we work, this is an achievement...
...There are also groups whose members are spread over the entire country...
...There are plenty of workers who share my views, but on a nationwide basis we don't add up to much...
...In addition, the authorities encourage world power chauvinism in an attempt to diminish people's resentment at being exploited...
...Roughly speaking, it can be summed up thus: 'We feed them, we liberated them...
...This is the root of all my human rights activities...
...Some, myself included, favor a free market, but I would not want to change over to a purely capitalist system...
...That's one reason why we have not managed to expand...
...Ordinary workers are often more critical of the regime than samizdat writings would lead you to believe...
...Allen: How do workers see the Communist Party...
...Please, though, don't take this as the standard smot platform-there simply is no such thing...
...Contacts are not established on the basis of what class someone belongs to...
...Borisov: I'm not sure that the government wants to liquidate smot entirely...
...Let's say that mockery occasionally surfaces, but never spite...
...Allen: Has the campaign against smot been successful...
...intellectuals in passive dissent...
...I realized early on-from reading Jack London, Victor Hugo and Karl Marx, among others-that a monopoly of thought is the most effective tool a totalitarian system can have, more so than control of the economy...
...Allen: How often does the Central Coordinating Committee meet...
...Borisov: That depends entirely on the group...
...The fraternal words were directed to fledgling free trade unions elsewhere in the Eastern bloc, which includes the Free Interprofessional Union of Workers (smot) in the Soviet Union...
...Upon his release from the Army, Borisov became an active dissident...
...Some are old friends, while others have worked together, or were classmates in school...
...Some workers would like to read The Gulag Archipelago, but they can't find it...
...Allen: Four years ago, you wrote: "Our country has been information-starved for more than half a century...
...Borisov: On the contrary, I think its influence is going to grow...
Vol. 64 • September 1981 • No. 18
