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Is There Any Opposition? - NGOs - Global policy Forum Is There Any Opposition?
By Carine Clement
Le Monde Diplomatique
February 2003The Putin administration has worked hard to produce its own subservient version of civil society, based on organisations that cannot grow popular roots because they avoid major social problems or have obvious links with the West and the Moscow authorities. The Citizens Forum convened in December 2001, attended by 5,000 representatives of single-issue campaigns and human rights groups, is a case in point. Held within the Kremlin precincts, it turned into a tragic farce in which organisations participating lost remaining legitimacy.
The trade union movement is no more resilient, and most of it is now under the Kremlin's influence. To secure support for the proposed reform of the labour code from the majority organisation, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR), the administration granted it a near-monopoly on representation in the workplace. In return the FNPR boss, Mikhail Shmakov, declared allegiance to Putin at the Federation's November 2001 congress, which was opened by Putin himself.
Putin's youth wing is an organisation called Idushiye Vmestye (Moving Together), created on the Kremlin's initiative with leaders from the presidential administration, and its only ideology is obedience and ostentatious devotion to Putin. Young people who reject that are kicked into line by the security services, through infiltration, bribery, provocation, threats and physical violence (1). During a demonstration in Moscow against the EU-Russia summit meeting last May, special forces beat up dozens of anti-globalisation supporters.
But repression sometimes leads to increased activism. More than a million employees, 20% of all trade union members, belong to minority unions that are a bastion of opposition to Putin's ultra- liberal reforms. They are fighting for a wages catch-up and more favourable collective agreements than those in the new labour code, which the FNPR has endorsed. Air traffic controllers are forbidden to strike under Russian law, but last December their union organised a hunger strike that closed airports and won the strikers a pay rise and better terms of employment.
Radicalisation in the minority unions has produced a political organisation, the Labour Party of Russia. Its members are trade unionists, municipal politicians, market traders, retired people and local activists. The party is marginal, with only one Duma deputy, Oleg Shein, but it is a focus for mobilisation on everyday issues. Its campaign against proposed municipal reforms forced the government to retreat on several points.
The opposition's latest offspring is the anti-globalisation movement, growing around core groups of young leftwing intellectuals, trade unionists, feminists, anarchists and radical environmentalists. Anti-globalisation groups are forming in many larger cities, and an information and co-ordination network is emerging. On his return from the European Social Forum last November, Vladimir Vorobiev, an activist from Siberia, said: "Talking to participants from other countries, I realised the problems we face in Russia are not unique. We are simply a few lengths ahead in ultra-liberal reforms and repression, but the logic is the same everywhere." Russia's integration in globalisation is provoking a new search for alternatives
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