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It seems that the AWL has been a
(relatively minor) victim of a scam being operated in
the Ukraine by members of the Taaffe group’s (CWI)
section.
A few weeks ago we got an email
posting from some people (with whom we have had some
Internet contact) in Moscow. We have consulted with
other British groups mentioned there. It seems that
the SPGB gave some substantial money to what they
thought was a Ukrainian sympathising group. They funded
trips etc; sent people out there, bought a computer.
The News and Letters group, which has a small number
of British supporters, also got stung. Chris Ford, a
member of the N&L British grouping who speaks
Ukrainian went out there and spoke at meetings. They
also funded what they thought was a sympathising group.
The IBT gave some substantial amount of money to
fund an office in Kiev and trips to Britain.
Workers’ Power paid for trips to their international
gatherings. They had 6 people - they say that 3-4 of
them were reasonably politically literate - at a recent
international event. We set up a fund and have parted
with £300 to cover translation of materials into
Ukrainian. We haven’t had any translations. One of us
spoke to Niall Mulholland from the CWI. He says that
they were alerted to these scams during a recent
European CWI school. They asked two Ukrainians present -
Oleg Vernik’s the central person - about the
allegations. The Ukrainians admitted to running some
scams. The CWI say they have suspended their section and
have sent two people to the Ukraine to conduct an
investigation. We asked, as these people have
admitted the allegations, if they’d been expelled. He
said they were suspended. We asked about the
motivations for this scam. He said the Ukrainians stated
that their operation had started out as political
information gathering, and got out of hand. These
people were politically active and this odd case doesn’t
seem to be (entirely) a matter of personal
corruption. Apart from the admission of guilt the
evidence against these people includes photos of the
same person who was claiming membership of several of
these groups. We have no opinion about these photos -
we’ve never met them face-to-face. Our contact had just
been to send publications and emails; we had received
emails, including copies of leaflets purportedly
distributed in the Ukraine. Chris Ford says the
statement we printed from the Ukrainians in the paper
was very similar to a statement their group had
received. One of the emails which the ‘Ukrainian AWL
supporters’ sent to us mentions various other groups
which have now been proved to be
non-existent.
"Potemkin villages"
in Kiev
Near 2001 the information about
existence in Kiev of many left-wing organizations had
begun to appear in Internet. All this virtual
organizations were in contact with some Western
left-wing organizations - trotskyist (AWL, ITO, LRCI,
LRP, PTS), left-wing communist (IBRP, ICG), SPGB. All
these organizations had shown the symptoms of their
existence only in Internet. For everybody, who know real
situation in the leftist milieu of the Commonwealth of
Independent States (CIS, the majority of ex-USSR
states), who know the extreme weakness and extreme
dispersion of this milieu, the existence of 12
trotskyist groups (which even had created "the united
front", as they proclaimed) in Kiev was absurd,
impossible. There are only two leftist groups which
had really existed in Kiev: 1) trotskyist Workers
Resistance (Robitnychiy Sprotiv, RS) - the section of
CWI (Taaffite "Militant"), leader Oleg Vernik, and 2)
maoist, radical trade-unionist Coordination Council of
Workers Movement (Koordinatsionnyj Sovet Rabochego
Dvizhenija, KSRD; one of leaders - Yurij Dokukin). After
the split of the group of a few of comrades from RS it
had become possible to know in detail about the
fraudulent activity of RS (these comrades had
participated in this fraud, but finally they rose up
against such practice and broke off their membership in
RS). The organizer of such activity was so-called
International Department (Mezhdunarodnyy Otdel) of RS.
After reading in Internet of documents of some Western
left-wing organizations (only such, which had not their
group in CIS!), International Department of RS had sent
to them letters from some fictive Ukrainian groups,
which read this documents and had understood that only
in these documents true marxism is presented. After
exchange by letters, usually a representative of a
Western leftist group had gone in Kiev. At meeting with
him the roles of members of fictive organization were
played by the members of RS, instructed by its
International Department, how they must to speak. At the
end of meeting naive Western leftist had gave some money
to them (the principle of the actors was: don't ask
money directly, but wait - and the foreign guest will
give his money himself!). By these money RS had rent its
own office in Kiev and done other political work (may
be, not only). This was the goal of all the
masquerade. For disinformation, in the documents of
virtual groups Kiev Militantists included some facts,
from which was possible to make the mistaken conclusion,
that authors of this spectacle are members of KSRD. For
example, the documents which they sent to LRCI were
subscribed, among other names, by name of Yurij
Dokukin. Of course, Kiev Militantists had to
accomplish some acts of collaboration with Western
left-wing organisations, if RS wanted to convince them
in reality of the scenery groups created by itself. For
example, Militantists translated some texts of IBRP
& ICG into Russian & Ukrainian. IBRP published
these translations on its website: the quality of those
Ukrainian translations is terrible! One of the morals
from this story: involuntarily the swindlers from RS had
organized the parody upon the exclusively virtual
activity of a lot of modern leftist groups. Only correct
conclusion: no - to virtual existence, yes - to real
revolutionary class struggle! Group of proletarian
revolutionaries-collectivists
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