One strand in the coalition of forces opposing Gamsakhurdia is a rival nationalist current headed by Georgi Chanturia, leader of the National Democratic Party. This party and others were involved in an attempt to launch alternative elections for a National Congress in September 1990, arguing that the Supreme Soviet, in which Gamsakhurdia's party was to come to power, was a part of the illegal Soviet power structure. However the protests also seem to have attracted the support of intellectuals and media workers disturbed by the president's dictatorial predilections.
Moscow ar
Labour Par THE following appeal for the Froleva, who are trade union officials in Moscow. DOCUMENT A NEW political situation has been created in our country. During the events of August 19 to 21, 1991, the people demonstrated their refusal to live like in the past and their determination to defend the elected authorities. Nonetheless the crisis in our country is not over. It is essential to find a rapid way to lift the economy out of chaos, re-establish normal economic relations between regions and enterprises, and to provide sufficient goods for the consumer market.
The dominant forces in the country,
International Viewpoint #213 • September 30, 1991
The independence of the three Caucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan is not yet assured, despite all the shocks the Soviet system has suffered in recent years. Central government troops continue to roam around areas of conflict, such as South Ossetia and the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan. This is clear proof that a purely nationalist outlook, which divides the peoples of the region against one another, is actually a severe hindrance to the establishment of national rights and sovereignty.
Furthermore, the Caucasus has historically been an area where Russian, Iranian and Turkish interests have collided; thus it is not only from Moscow that malign interference can be anticipated. The path indicated by history for the peoples of the Caucasus to achieve independence in peace is a union of the whole region, which can only be realized on the basis of secularism and pluralism. Voices calling for progress in this direction, however, have yet to make themselves heard. * peal for ty whatever nuances one might find, are all united in their belief that the are all united in their belief that the country's problems can only be resolved by very wide privatization, a massive appeal to foreign capital and the systematic defence of private entrepreneurs and the new possessing classes issuing from the old bureaucratic nomenklatura. The desire to create a "radiant capitalist future", expresses itself by the rejection of everything that can, in one way or another, be associated with socialism, including elementary social guarantees such as the right to work, free education and health care. We consider that the unanimity of the victors is dangerous above all in the absence of opposition; without the representation of alternative positions in the organs of power there will not be a real democracy. If the majority of the present ruling majority assume the objective of defending entrepreneurs, we state that our objective is before all else the defence of the wage-earning population.
The decades of the totalitarian Communist regime has brought discredit on socialist values and on the very idea of the emancipation of labour. But these values did not arise from the armchairs of intellectuals, they spring from the need for a political defence of the workers. The defeat of the CPSU at last opens the creation of a Party of Labour was İssued in Moscow on August 28, 1991. Among the signatories are Nikolai Gontchar, president of the Moscow soviet, Boris Kagarlitski and Vladimir Kondratov, members of the Russian Socialist Party and creation of a Party of Labour was İssued in Moscow on August 28, 1991. Among the signatories are Nikolai Gontchar, president of the Moscow soviet, Boris Kagarlitski and Vladimir Kondratov, members of the Russian Socialist Party and deputies in the Moscow soviet, and Mikhail Nagaitsev and Tatiana
possibility of creating an authentic leftwing movement that can give expression to this need.
Society needs a mass party that can defend:
• The right to work;
• The reform of the system of social guarantees;
• Economic democracy, workers' participation in the enterprises, in the making of decisions about their material situation and their conditions of work;
• The independence and guarantee of the rights of the unions in all the enterprises, whatever the form of property, as well as the ratification by our country of the international convention of the International Labour Organization;
• The development of collective and municipal forms of property, the transformation of the state sector of the economy into a decentralized social sector that is modern and efficient, capable of leading the country out of crisis;
• An end to the unregulated bureaucratic privatization of the former sector of "the property of the whole people" and a refusal to transform state monopolies into private monopolies;
• For the rights of the consumer and of independent domestic entrepreneurs;
• The democratic regulation of the economy, an indispensable condition for the establishment of civilized forms of the market;
• Integration into the world market in a way that upholds the interests of the national economy and not those of the international corporations;
• Self-management and a strong power based on representatives of the people as a counterweight to the power of the executive;
• For honest government, guaranteeing the separation of the activities of the state from the economy, and with a clear distinction between the social private sectors within the mixed economy;
• For real equality of women and for their possibility to fully participate in the life of society without this being to the detriment of their rights and obligations as mothers;
• For the rights of national, cultural and religious minorities.
We announce our intention to create a mass Party of Labour, founded on rank-and-file initiative. We reject the notion of the vanguard party. The Party of Labour must be the party that gives political support to the trade unions and workers movement. Only such a party can become an integral part of the international movement of left forces.
We are calling on all social forces, all union organizations conscious of the necessity of a political defence of the interests of the wage earners, and all citizens aware of the danger represented by a one-party system and who share the ideas expressed here to join this initiative. *