AROUND THE WORLD
Belgium Strike wave in Flanders FOR THREE months, a wave of strikes has been sweeping Flanders, the northern part of Belgium. The struggles were sparked off, in the majority of cases, by negotiations of collective agreements. Workers wanted to recoup the losses they have suffered under the austerity policies of Wilfried Martens' government. They have already won some gains, for example in the chemical industry in Anvers.
Significantly, these struggles for the most part began after the signing of sectoral agreements or, even, after the conclusion of a pre-accord between unions and bosses.
As well as making good wage losses there are added problems of employment and working conditions. Confronted by competition, the bosses are trying to reorganize production and increase profits by introducing flexible hours, job versatility, Saturday working and so on.
During the last ten years a whole new layer of militants and union representatives have become active. Now having the confidence of their workmates, they have begun to challenge the central union apparatuses. It is this layer of activists and representatives who have the potential to develop a class-struggle trade unionism in Flanders.
Finally, it is important to stress that these struggles, led jointly by the two main Belgian unions - the Christian Trade-Union Confederation (CSC) and the socialist Confederation of Belgian Workers (FGTB) -throw some light on the relation of forces existing between the two organizations. The CSC is seeing its orientation of "necessary sacrifices" and its image of being a responsible" union demolished by its own base. And even if the CSC remains the largest union organization in Flanders the more militant FTB is now gaining ground in the big workplaces. O Nicaragua Contras in crisis A DEBACLE is the only way to describe the ongoing crisis of the US-backed contras. Arturo Cruz resigned 92 in mid-March from the triumvirate leading the United Nicaraguan Opposition (UNO), the "political arm" of the contras. Now it is the turn of "El Negro" Chamorro, the leader of the Nicaraguan Democratic UnionRevolutionary Armed Forces (UDNFARN), to withdraw from the UNO. The UDN-FARN operates from Costa Rican territory.
In the summer of 1985, the Reagan administration created the UNO in order to give the counter-revolutionary movement a unified image and international legitimacy. It was also created to try to erase the far from bril liant image of the Nicaraguan Democratic Force (FDN), mainly composed of ex-Somozaist guards and led by the retired general of the National Guard, Enrique Bermudez. But Washington is visibly incapable of controlling the contras' internal squabbling, provoked by the struggle for money and power.
Last year Arturo Cruz received 7,000 US dollars a month "to maintain his family" (sic). Now the US press has revealed that Chamorro was also paid by the CIA so that his group, the UDN, could unify with the UNO.
Many commando leaders in the FDN have sent a letter to Alfonso Robelo, head of the UNO, in which they complain about the management of funds allocated by the US Congress.
The leaders of other contra groups who are not part of the UNO -Alfredo Cesar of the Southern Opposition Bloc (BOS, heir of Eden Pastora's ARDE) and Brooklyn Rivera of MISURATA - have "welcomed with pleasure" the various resignations. No doubt they hope that Washington will pay a bit more attention to them now - and perhaps and perhaps give them more money? A part of the painting "Guernica" by Picasso
Basque country Commemoration of Guernica FIFTY YEARS ago, on April 26, 1937, the German bombers of the Condor Legion devastated the Basque town of Guernica. Guernica is important for the Basque country, containing as it does the ancient oak tree which is a focal point for the celebrations of the Basque national day, and being the capital for the Basque autonomous government created in 1936.
The bombings in support of the reactionary Francoist forces took place despite the agreement of nonintervention by foreign powers in the Spanish Civil War. Some 2,000 people were slaughtered. An eyewitness reported:
The day was well chosen. Monday is market day in Guernica, and all the peasants from around about crowd into the town. It was 4.30 in the afternoon, the market was full and peasants were still arriving when the church bell began to toll to warn them that the planes were coming.
"Five minutes later, one German bomber appeared. It made a lowflying circle over the town and dropped six big bombs, apparently aimed at the railway station. A rain of bombs and grenades fell on a school, houses and the neighbouring streets. Then the plane moved away. Shortly afterwards, a second bomber appeared and dropped bombs on the town centre. A quarter of an hour later it was the turn of three Junkers to continue the work of destruction. From this point on, the intensity of the bombing raid increased and did not stop until 7.45 in the evening.
"The town, containing 7,000 inhabitants and 3,000 refugees, was systematically destroyed within a radius of eight kilometers. Other planes were given the task of bombing all the farms in the surrounding region."
This year, a series of activities are planned in Guernica between April 16-26, which will reflect the role of the town in Basque resistance and culture. After the traditional "Aberri Eguna" (Basque national day) on April 19 there will be a peace congress to which movements and countries fighting for their liberation have been invited - Kanaks, Salvadoreans. Filipinos, Irish, Nicaraguans and so on. International Viewpoint 20 April 1987
USSR Soviet play includes Trotsky I CANNOT go on maintaining that the October Revolution was led by a group of spies, that Lenin was surrounded by renegades, criminals and terrorists. that the great purges of the 1930s are part of the Leninist tradition. With my life, with my work, I have tried to demonstrate that this is not true, that Leninism and socialism are something quite ditterent.
"The time is over when lists were drawn up of supposed agents of imperialism, and the time has come to rewrite the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and of the Soviet Union. No one can be expelled from history, nor should anyone be afraid of confronting history."
The Soviet dramatist Mikhail Shatrov made this point in an interview published in the April 2 issue of Corriere della Sera. He was in Italy attending a meeting organized by the Accademia dei Lincei and the ItalyUSSR Friendship Society. The Italian daily described him as "an ambassador of the perestroika [Gorbachev's "restructuring"]. It noted that his career began under the star of Khruschev's Twentieth Party Congress and that it was now re-emerging from the eclipse of the Brezhnevite period.
Shatrov went on to say, "All my works have created 'scandal' and provoked a 'fierce struggle.' And after Khruschev's removal, they were inexorably blocked. The wind ol inexorably blocked. The wind of renewal has brought them back into the daylight. After the 'Dictatorship of Conscience, an examination of the degeneration of socialism that is playing in Moscow theaters, where it has gained success and notoriety, four films on Lenin have been broadcast over TV that have aroused a sensation, because the Lenin played by the actor Mikhail Ulyanov, alongside whom Bukharin appeared for the first time over TV screens, is not the hagiographical Lenin, the Lenin they put on a pedestal, but a flesh and blood human being."
Shatrov's next play, "The Brest Peace," also promises to be a succes de scandale. Its characters include Trotsky, Bukharin and Kamenev, and the author indicated that they would not be repetitions of the old Stalinist stereotypes.
"When people were re-emerging from the prisons and documents from the archives, I thought that it was necessary to take a lesson from these events, take a look back, change to a new belief."
He started the project in 1962,
International Viewpoint 20 April 1987 under Khruschev, and it went into cold storage after his fall. But now, Shatrov said, "it is possible to break the chains of history because there is a will to create a society in the USSR that will not be afraid of anything, that thinks and acts on its own, without being passively dragged along, condemned to darkness and ignorance.
Shatrov was asked how the "banned figures" appeared in the play. He replied: "I present Trotsky and Bukharin as leaders of the revolution, of the Central Committee, companions of Lenin, faithful to the role that they played in a given historic moment."
Trotsky is hardly the hero of Shatrov's play, but the author claimed that he sought to treat him objectively:
'In the debate over the Brest peace, which was decisive for the fate of the revolution, Trotsky took a wrong position. Unlike Lenin, he did not go to the root of the situation. In his arguments there was no lack of interesting points. He agitated and spoke forcefully in the debate, but apart from theatrical gestures he did not offer a valid contribution to the solution of the problem. Good and bad intentions are demonstrated by results and the latter have shown that Lenin's analysis was more correct and more profound.
"But I also point up Trotsky's positive features, his great organizational gifts, the effervescent oratory. Here, as in the case of Bukharin, who reproved Lenin for abandoning the hopes of expanding the revolution, I do not add or take away anything. It is necessary to study seriously and objectively what the great Bolshevik leaders did and said, to analyze the positive and negative sides, which is what was done in his time by Lenin himself, who considered Bukharin the favorite son of the party, an outstanding theoretician, but openly recog nized his errors."
Shatrov was asked when he thought it would be possible to rewrite the history of the Soviet Communist Party.
'When the line of the TwentySeventh [Gorbachev] Congress has triumphed....
"It is necessary to put an end to the criteria that started to be used at the end of the 1920s. This is a ridiculous, blind, savage approach. Violence has been done to history. Excesses, terror and abuses have been passed off as socialism. This was not something inevitable. We have to ask ourselves why the historical process took that path in our country, why so many horrible crimes were committed."
Again, Shatrov was asked, when this would be accomplished, and he repeated: "At the risk of sounding monotonous, when the line of the Twenty-Seventh Congress triumphs." Then, he shifted the entire problem onto a subjective level: "The funda mental obstacles to the reconstruction are not outside of ourselves but within ourselves. The fundamental thing is your talent, what you think, how you see the situation. You have to come to terms with yourself, to analyze yourself. The perestroika must come from within you."
Shatrov's play is to be published in the April issue of the literary magazine Novy Mir. •
27