Russia Follow

THE FOCUS in the Russian submarine disaster has naturally been on the tragedy of the 118 sailors, many of them conscripts, killed as the vessel went down. But that will not be the only legacy of the disaster. The submarine's nuclear reactors and missiles pose a serious threat which could last for thousands of millions of years.

Ordinary people living in the Soviet Union were promised democracy and prosperity after the area fell apart between 1989 and 1991. Recent events underline how false those promises have proved.

AS RUSSIAN generals continued to wage their brutal war against the Chechen people, campaigners held a meeting in central London last week to voice their protest at the slaughter. All the speakers linked this war to NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia, which made the world a more dangerous place, encouraged military conflict and acted as a model for Russia. Liz Davies, a left winger on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee, opened the meeting. She spoke about the horror of the Russian assault on the Chechen capital, Grozny. "Thousands of innocent people are freezing in basements, living under the Russian bombardment. Many of these people are elderly and cannot leave the city."

THE 20th century is ending with the horror of Russia's barbaric war against Chechen civilians. As Socialist Worker went to press 40,000 people were still trapped in Grozny after Russian generals threatened last week to annihilate the Chechen capital. Most of those sheltering from the onslaught were too old, sick and frail to leave the city.

AT THE start of the 20th century people across the world were promised an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity. The growth of capitalism and international trade were supposed to bring order and affluence. But the opposite was true. The Great Powers' struggle for markets and influence brought more conflict-and the wars were more terrible than before. Wars between Russia and Japan, and in the Balkans, were followed by the most bloody war in history up to that point-the First World War.

BY THE start of 1917 the slaughter of the First World War, economic ruin and hatred of the Tsar combined to spark rebellion in Russia. At the front soldiers, spurred on by Bolshevik agitators, deserted in droves and returned home. On 23 February, International Women's Day, the working class women of Petrograd filled the streets demanding bread. A revolution was under way.

"WE DEMAND total control of the branches of industry by the working people. From you capitalists, weeping crocodile tears, we demand you stop weeping about chaos you yourselves have created. Your cards are on the table, the game is up, your persecution can no longer be successful. Go off and hide. Think your own thoughts and don't dare show your faces, or else you'll find yourself without a nose, and without a head to boot." RESOLUTION passed at mass meeting of workers in the Putilov engineering works in Petrograd on the eve of the Russian Revolution

THE LEADERS of the Russian Revolution knew that the new society would be strangled at birth by the capitalist powers if it remained isolated. So revolution would have to be an international phenomenon. The Western powers, realising this, moved quickly to isolate Russia. The country was invaded by 14 capitalist powers which backed the reactionary "White Army" during the civil war that followed. The motor of the revolution, the working class, was slaughtered and atomised.

A WORLD divided by the Cold War also saw outbursts of struggle East and West. In Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 workers rose up against the Stalinist regimes, and battled against Russian tanks. In France in 1968 and Portugal in 1974 there were powerful mass movements that challenged the existing order. The long post-war boom had raised people's expectations of a better life. Many were prepared to fight to realise those aspirations.

"GET OUT or die." That was the barbaric message from Russian forces to people in the Chechen capital, Grozny, this week. Russia is waging a savage war to crush people in the tiny republic in the mountainous Caucasus who are fighting for independence from Russian rule.

THE NEW film Onegin is set in the world of the Russian aristocracy in the 19th century. It is based on a novel by Alexander Pushkin-himself a member of the Russian aristocracy-written in the 1830s. Russia was then a backward, rural society where individuals' lives were controlled by patronage and "fate". But it was also a world in transition.

BORIS YELTSIN was hailed in the West as the slayer of the Stalinist regime that ruled Russia till 1991. But in Chechnya he has been acting as Stalin's heir, trying through indiscriminate bombardment to crush a people whom Stalin himself deported to Central Asia at the end of the Second World War.