CrimethInc.

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Nearly five months after being charged with conspiracy and other indictable offences during Toronto’s G20 protests, both members of the southern Ontario hip-hop group Test Their Logik had their charges stayed and release conditions withdrawn. Although the prosecutor originally said the government would be seeking jail time, it turned out they had very little evidence and didn’t feel capable of bringing the case before a judge.

While asking to “stay” the charges, a move which still gives them a year to look for new evidence and re-open the case, the prosecutor told the judge, “We know they did it but we don’t have the proof.” This is a ridiculous assertion given that the main reason they were targeted and warrants were sent out for their hip-hop aliases is their music video “Crash The Meeting” that is still circulating on youtube.

There were over a thousand arrests and hundreds of charges brought against G20 resisters on little to no evidence. Like most charges relating to the G20, the charges against Testament and Illogik were targeted political repression not even perfunctorily disguised as an attempt to enact justice. The picture of Canada as a police state gone mad is growing ever clearer.

Unfortunately, though hundreds have had their charges dropped or stayed, several dozen still face very serious charges and need support urgently. It is more important than ever to donate to the legal defense of those still facing charges, and to show solidarity by any and all means. All proceeds from the Test Their Logik benefit album offered here two months ago will go to current G20 defendants.

As for Testament and Illogik, the two are now legally permitted to perform together, record together, and tour together. They are currently on tour in Mexico with Submedia promoting their music and the new film End Civ. In December they’ll be back in the studio working on their debut album which they hope to drop in early 2011. Test Their Logik knows they’ve got talented and amazing people who dig their music and are looking for solidarity and mutual aid in the following ways: cover art, audio mastering, publicity/promotion, MC’s/DJ’s/producers to remix songs and circulate different versions, European booking contacts for a european tour, and assistance setting up “legitimate” gigs in the U.S. so the border guards will let them in for a tour once they finish the album.

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In the midst of new outbreaks of social conflict, we are patiently completing a project we began over eight years ago: the distribution of hundreds of thousands of copies of the anarchist primer Fighting for Our Lives.

This printing of 50,000 copies brings the total to 650,000 copies over the course of five printings. We’ve also opted for whiter, brighter, heavier paper, making this printing the highest quality yet. Fighting for Our Lives is still free in every order from CrimethInc. Far East, or to anyone who requests one.

Projects like this may seem inconsequential next to head-on confrontations with the state, but they are part of the long-term outreach work that can ensure these confrontations produce liberation rather than new forms of oppression. Rest assured that while we finish carrying out old commitments like this one, we are also preparing new offensives more ambitious than anything the world has seen from us yet. Things are heating up and we intend to be in the front lines.

A story about Fighting for Our Lives in action.

Announcements about the previous printings of Fighting for Our Lives: third printing, fourth printing.

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On Saturday, November 13, a new and experimental infoshop in Winona, MN, opened it’s doors to the public. The Burrow is one of the first new infoshops to open since the controversial essay “5 Steps to Reviving Your Failing Anarchist Bookstore“, and at a time when long-standing infoshops are throwing in their towels, this account offers insight into the new models still unseen.

This story begins where our coverage of small-town organizing left off in Rolling Thunder #7. What follows is not only an account and recipe for a new type of space, but a possible intermediate step in anarchist organizing in long-term communities.

If You Build It . . .

Early on, the plan was to put a space in our home. Our friends and colleagues have known about our wild dreams for the last two years — that we’d be able to have a social space independent from the rest of our house. Now that we’ve finished most of the work, a community is waiting for us.

We knew from the start that making good on our promise would mean a lot of work and time. It would mean learning how to do things we’d never done before. Perhaps most importantly, it would mean we would have to care enough about the outcome to do things well.

The process was long, though. Visitors passed through to see the space in wholly different stages and shades. Before any work was done the wallpaper was sagging, the plaster dripping, like some paper street soap company.

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The walls were first to go. We had to tear down the old walls, swinging hammers and crowbars. Carpenters call this doing “demo” and it is similar, in many ways, to the anarchist sense of the word. Of course, it wasn’t all smash. We shoveled plaster and lath. We scooped armloads of asbestos vermiculite. It was dusty, disgusting, probably deadly, and it had to be done.

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With the inside of the walls exposed, we had lots of work to do. The framing of the walls had to be restructured. A wall and staircase were moved and supports were installed to brace the buckling structure of the house. We insulated the outside walls to protect the space from our frigid winters. We established a subfloor and a new ceiling to accommodate for a century of sagging and settling. Somehow, we found time between phases to host gatherings like this Really Really Free Market spokescouncil.

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New drywall meant new paint. We argued many nights over the exact colors to be sure that everything would be just so.

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We found used flooring at an extreme discount, and taught ourselves how to properly install it. It took about 45 hours to place all of the pieces and fasten them. Afterwards, we sanded the entire space with a very powerful expandable drum sander that a friend loaned us. Tragedy struck when we botched the seal job, on account of the frigid autumn temperature. And even though most people can’t tell, we will have to buff it down and apply a fourth coat of polyurethane.

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A member of our community happens to be a professional cabinet builder, so we called upon him to build the cabinetry for the infoshop’s kitchen. Amazingly, he manufactured a countertop out of wood pulled from a dumpster.

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Finally, we built the shelves for the infoshop’s library. This was a considerable undertaking, and another task we had never attempted before.

• 20x 8′ pine 1″x12″ boards = $260
• 5 lbs Tan Deckscrews = $18
• Jug of Woodglue = $8
• 5x 8′ pine 2″x2″ boards = $9
• 3x 8′ pine 1″x3″ boards = $10

At just over $300, our shelves store over 1000 books, a collection of anarchist magazines, and a display for anarchist primers and other critical material. Without the made-over interior, a sizable anarchist library can be a public resource for a third the cost of a month’s storefront rent. If you sacrifice your personal living room to it, there are no additional mandatory expenses. This does away with the tiresome obligation to fundraise month-to-month, and allows donations to go directly towards more features and services.

The construction work isn’t over — we still have to build shelves for our free food pantry, make other kitchen installations, trim the space, and build a projector mount and screen. Although, the space is open, welcoming, and usable, however incomplete. Building things from scratch complements the theories in our books — the sense of lasting commitment to anarchist resistance and transformation is embodied in the very process of creating long-term anarchist spaces. This is our propaganda by the deed.

. . . They Will Come

From the beginning, we wanted an explicitly anarchist space, even if we wanted to make it available to a community that was largely outside of the anarchist subculture. By waving this flag, we not only introduce and elaborate anarchist critiques and perspectives, we also can feel safe knowing that a thriving small-town community values and has affinity with anarchists who would otherwise be defined by the misdirected representations — or, and especially, those directed misrepresentaions — made in the newspapers and on the occasional newscast across the country. By flying the black flag, we put a face on the shadowy anarchists so that others can befriend or become them.

To these ends, we drafted the first version of a thorough Owners’ Manual, which details the policies of the space and articulates common anarchist intentions and tendencies. Additionally, this document spells out how to use the space, from the operating the audio system to borrowing books from the library.

It had been said before that it would be difficult to create a completely open space in a home. Although the duplex creates the illusion of separation, this obstacle is not completely overcome by architecture alone. To create neutral space in our home, we have committed ourselves to social communities larger than the anarchist subculture, and to sharing the reins with whomever will take them. In a small midwestern town with a modest anarchist population, this is a necessity. Wherever there are public anarchist spaces, they must connect with larger communities, or the anarchist scene will remain forever in adolescence. In this sense, we’ve created neutral territory on anarchist ground — a victory against subsumption and for communities of resistance.

Communities of Resistance

Today, mainstream society presumes that everyone who disagrees with its logic or authority will plead their grievances through established channels. This tendency is flawed in at least two ways: the first is that it presumes that anyone who doesn’t utilize those channels (write their elected representative, vote, peacefully demonstrate, etc.) has no wide-reaching grievances of their own; second, the established channels form a closed-loop circuit of speech-with-no-action.

For over than one hundred years, anarchists in this country have struggled against the narrow walls of these established channels—sometimes controversially—and because of that society has conceded ideas like the eight-hour workday and the term “birth control.”

If anarchists reject capitalism, hierarchy, gender and sexuality norms, the subordination of other species, eco-devastation, imperialism, and other forms of authoritarianism, what then is the purpose of demonstrating through the established channels? And what exactly would we be demonstrating? It is in this spirit that communities of resistance can inform expressions of our dissent. Each member of such a community is free to act upon their grievances with society in whatever ways they need to.

Communities of resistance are creative places, full of invention, performance, freedom of identity, consensual relationships, and gift-giving. But they can be a destructive force, too; as each member confronts their domination by modern society on their own terms, little pieces of that world crumble away.

A community of resistance is a demonstration of the lives we want—individually, we may be stuck in the real world, but collectively, we inhabit another real world.

— From the Burrow Owners’ Manual.

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The Grand Opening

The night before our grand opening, anarchist comrades arrived from the region to celebrate the beginning of a new anarchist space. After a feast at our grand banquet table, we cleared space and dimmed the lights for music and dancing. One by one, our local friends arrived, too. Electro dance music sounded where only power tools had for a full year prior. It was lively and lovely; but it was solemn, too, when the oscillating rhythm of Test Their Logik’s No World Order filled the Burrow with fury and longing.

Saturday began with an open house. Carload after carload of supporters arrived with trays of treats and boxes of books. People were able to browse the Owners’ Manual, inspect the shelves, and admire the signage for the first time after months of waiting. Approximately 40 people visited the space in this first event of the day.

Later in the evening we threw a potlock. Dozens of dishes from different households, accumulated in the kitchen. Afterwards, some kitchenware was even donated to the space!

The Burrow collective presented a slideshow with before and after photos, and welcomed the crowded room officially to the first evening of the new community library and social center. One of the out-of-town guests courageously stood, and delicately opened a little blue book to recite a passage.

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It was then that famed author and filmmaker Bill Brown took the stage to present a short film on the subject of demolishing old spaces and read adorably idiosyncratic tales of the adventures in daily life. The evening’s events ended with the latest from Froseph, and the jar went around to cover Bill’s bus ticket.

Coming Soon to Living Rooms Everywhere

Now that the long stretch of labor is past us, we are left pondering how many other living rooms could transform this way. How many new types of long-term social spaces can emerge from the anarchist community? In the days following the grand opening, participants returned to their households with Owners’ Manuals. A woman walking a dog through the neighborhood brought us 30 books and kind words, because her friend’s mother had given the space such a warm review. A homeless man had found a copy of the Owners’ Manual at the Catholic Worker and came to share some anti-police poems he had written. In our first week of open hours, we’ve received over 300 book donations: from Žižek and woodworking manuals to The Red Tent and The Monkey Wrench Gang. What dangerous ideas lie on the shelves of your friends and neighbors? More importantly, what must be built for them to synthesize?

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To visit the Burrow with a touring anarchist presentation or on some other adventure, email burrow.booking@gmail.com. Send books, zines, or anarchist outreach materials for distribution to: The Burrow Library, PO Box 765, Winona, MN 55987

We’ve just helped release the new LP from Plague Mass, our good friends from Austria. Entitled “Union of Egoists,” the LP captures the high-energy intensity of one of Europe’s best d.i.y. metallic hardcore bands. It’s available through Stickfigure distribution.

From the Depths will be bringing Plague Mass on tour in the US next February.

Just in time for the tour, we’ll be co-releasing a 12″ split between From the Depths and Next Victim, from Poland. We’ve been following Next Victim’s eerie music with great excitement since some of the members were in Mind Pollution, another amazing band. It’s an honor to get to collaborate with two bands that have been so inspiring for us!

Plague Mass “Last Home” [7.9 MB MP3]
Next Victim “Własna Nisza” [10.6 MB MP3]

These are the planned tour dates for Plague Mass and From the Depths. If you can help with booking, please email booking@fromthedepths.info.

Friday February 11 San Luis Obispo, CA
Sat 12 San Diego, CA
Sun 13 Tijuana, Mexico
Mon 14 Mexicali, Mexico
Tues 15 Tucson, AZ
Wed 16 Phoenix/Flagstaff, AZ
Thurs 17 Riverside/LA, CA
Fri 18 Santa Barbara, CA
Sat 19 Oakland, CA
Sun 20 off – San Francisco, CA
Mon 21 Santa Cruz, CA
Tues 22 Reno, NV
Wed 23 Redding, CA
Thurs 24 Portland, OR
Fri 25 Olympia, WA (w/ Marrow)
Sat 26 Seattle, WA (w/ Marrow)
Sun 27 Vancouver, BC
Tuesday March 1 Bellingham, WA
Wed 2 Tacoma, WA
Thurs 3 Eugene, OR
Fri 4 Arcata, CA
Sat 5 San Francisco, CA

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We just received this inspiring and instructive report from anonymous comrades in Russia, describing two years of struggle against logging operations in one of the major forests near Moscow. The struggle culminated this summer in the “Khimki battle,” in which several hundred armed antifascists and anarchists attacked a government building in suburban Moscow; the authorities responded in kind, and subsequent solidarity efforts in Belarus provoked further repression.

Most of the links in this text lead to Russian-language pages; those too busy to teach themselves Russian can at least plug the website addresses into Google translate and struggle through computer-generated translations.

Prelude: A Spiking We Will Go

We learned of Moscow city authorities’ plans to destroy the Khimki forest in summer of 2008, when local environmentalists started an outreach campaign to drum up support for their cause. Even then it was already late, since the forest—one of the three major forests surrounding Moscow—had already been extensively logged and was pockmarked with tumors: cottages for the nouveau-riche, warehouses, parking lots, and malls.

So without a minute to lose, we grabbed some spikes and rushed in. The logging site was patrolled by guards, but their attention was distracted by the official “eco-camp” in front of their cabin so it was easy to sneak in and spike every tree we could get our nails into. This was our first experience of eco-action and it was exciting and inspiring: we didn’t get caught and we accomplished what we had come to do. We were sure that between our action, the constant pressure liberal ecologists were putting on the authorities, and the popular movement gaining momentum in the local suburbs, the tree-killers would retreat and leave the forest for good. Soon we learned better.

The trees were being felled to prepare the way for a massive new road plan authorized by the federal government. High-ranking officials—as high-ranking as Putin himself, we later learned—had a stake in lobbying for the new toll highway to be built right through the forest. The construction was financed by the international syndicate Vinci, headquartered in France, and several European banks working in partnership with the Russian national bank, Sberbank. With such powerful enemies arrayed against the forest and its defenders, the situation turned ugly.

Foreword: The Russian Context

“Those numbers are murdered antifascists only. We don’t know exactly how many immigrants are killed by Nazis every year.”
-Anarchist spokesperson at an international Antifa conference

In fall 2008, Khimki journalist Mikhail Beketov, who played a major role in news coverage of the corrupt road plans of local and government officials, was brutally attacked by thugs. The attack left him in a coma and he later had to have his legs amputated. That same month, elsewhere in Moscow, several well-known activists were attacked or threatened with violence. That’s not to say that cops haven’t beaten ecologists before. But it was the first time such blatant attempts were made on the lives of our comrades.

We were sucked into “the wormhole of violence” in the dead of winter 2009, when Stanislav Markelov, who provided legal support for Beketov, and Anastasya Baburova, an eco-anarchist and journalist, were shot dead in the center of Moscow. By the time some of us returned to the surface—fortunately, almost unscathed—the whole activist landscape had changed.

Since winter 2009 the streets of Russian cities have been rife with Nazi/Antifa violence, as the conflict has steadily shifted from the social-political context towards a scenario of gang warfare. This context is crucial for understanding how the struggle for Khimki forest developed.

For almost six years now, the anti-authoritarian movement in Russia has consisted primarily of two wings, one ecological and the other antifascist; the former is primarily anarchist, but the antifascist movement also includes significant participation from patriots and Stalinist parties. These groups meet infrequently at convergences, eco-camps, and other events such as the numerous in memoriam actions dedicated to murdered comrades. But with machismo increasing in the antifascist scene because of the perceived necessity to maim and kill more Nazis in retaliation for Nazi attacks, and paranoia spreading in the eco-defense movement because of the need to constantly attack construction sites and engines in the absence of popular opposition to deforestation, the rift widened. By the time of the Khimki defense, the movement was already straining to maintain coherence. Some people suspect that if it weren’t for the selective murders of the few anarchists and antifascists wise and widely respected enough to hold the various schisms in check, the movement would have been more prepared for this crisis.

Interlude: We Don’t Need No Water

Two years after our first adventure, we experienced a touching reunion with our dear forest. It was the first night of the resumed logging operation when we disembarked from our special eco-defense vehicle and ran for the cover of the nearby tree line. In several minutes we changed clothes and double-checked our comms, camouflage, and the presents we had brought along for the construction vehicles. Soon several shadows glided silently over the nocturnal plain under the pale moonlight towards the faraway forest, which was still alive and foreboding.

When we arrived at the logging encampment, we split up. Some of us lay in the romantic cover of some bushes, enjoying the stars and the sound of each other’s breath; our friends who were more eager to do reconnaissance bounded off toward the black shapes of tractors and excavators. Then all hell broke loose. Suddenly we could hear the all-too-familiar sound of a vehicle going up in flames, which sometimes reminds one of a jet plane flying overhead. The entire forest was bathed in dancing red and orange light, and the comms scouts were yelling in surprise. We tried to figure out what had happened. Luckily we evaded the guards’ attention and made it back to our transport on the remote and empty road. Red lights, comm talk—and we were sound and safe, spirited away to another town.

As it turned out, ours was not the only group sneaking around the site that busy night. Needless to say, the inhabitants of the eco-camp were blamed for the arson. In fact, the presence of the camp actually prevented eco-defenders from damaging everything they wanted to—that is why only one vehicle was torched at the site. But this didn’t occur to the logging manager, who immediately requested a police investigation of the arson and the ecologists’ suspected part in it; soon enough, he got his revenge on them in a perverse but typically Russian manner.

Over the following days our scouts reported increased guard and cop nighttime activity around the logging site, including roadblocks and patrols in the vicinity, so eco-defenders had to cancel their initial plans and shift focus a bit. Khimki is a big forest, and the logging and despoiling of wildlife in the name of profit took place almost everywhere. The incident did raise serious questions regarding overall security though: because ELF groups do not share their plans with each other, such accidental encounters are bound to happen again and again as these methods are propagated.

A logging truck sheds some light on the ecological policy of the Russian government.

Enter the Nazis

As we found out later, one early morning we barely missed a mob of hired Nazi thugs who were marching towards the eco-camp at about the same time we were escaping yet again into the mist after another scouting mission. Upon arriving, they started verbally and physically abusing every eco-protestor present, but settled for guarding the logging equipment once the police made their appearance. A top manager of the logging company later admitted that he had hired the Nazis “for security reasons.”

This episode showed every doubting critic how easily capitalists fall back upon fascist support—a truism not yet obvious even to most activists in Russia—and sparked a fire in the hearts of the previously dormant antifascist wing of our movement. The confrontation that morning did more to popularize and escalate the conflict than any eco-camp, internet PR campaign, or eco-defense action ever could have. Some of our comrades reflected that what we had witnessed was a fine example of how an unforeseen, unplanned, chaotic event—even one deemed negative—can push the movement and its supporters in the right direction.

That is to say, in a revolutionary direction.

The corpulent guy with the number 19 painted on his t-shirt has been identified as the leader of the right-wing football support mob “Gladiators.”

The Khimki Battle

The loggers had made a major mistake. Employing Nazis in what was perceived by almost every citizen as an anti-human project broke the ranks of the extreme right; most fascist groups tried to capitalize on the situation by posing as opponents of the destruction of the forest. More importantly, now every antifascist in the vicinity had enemies in sight and rushed to the battle.

The next day the announcement went out that a huge unpermitted show would take place in the center of Moscow. Hundreds of anti-authoritarian activists, antifascists, and party-goers gathered in anticipation of a street-party with a long-disbanded famous antifascist band as the headliner. Instead, as everybody arrived at the meeting place a guy in sunglasses announced that there would be no show, no street-party, and that the plan all along had been to go to the suburbs and attack the logging camp and the Nazis gathered there. Some people left, but the majority set out for Khimki.

While most of protesters were traveling via railway, scouts reported multiple riot police squads at the logging site. It was then decided to head for the Khimki municipal building—Khimki formally being a town in its own right—which was defenseless while every available police unit was on guard in the forest. Dressed for a party, people gathered in a bright and colorful bloc at the railway station and started marching towards the target. The bloc was accompanied by two scooters that acted as lookouts and rear guard during the action. At first local residents reacted with fear or suspicion, but after hearing the slogans and reading the banner or talking to protestors many expressed approval and support. Cars continued honking throughout the march and assault on the building.

At the doorstep of the ecological riots.

So it came to pass that on July 28 in broad daylight, with the approval of hundreds of onlookers, several hundred anarchists and antifascists gathered in the center of Moscow, traveled to the railway station, hopped on the train, rode to the suburban district Khimki, disembarked, blocked up, and marched up to the municipal office chanting and lighting flares. Participants immediately commenced breaking windows, painting anti-logging and pro-forest graffiti, opening fire on the building with handguns, and even chopping the front door with an axe. Throughout this action no police officer showed up to protect state property.

Satisfied with the damage done and having received word from lookouts that riot police were loading up into busses at the logging camp, anarchists and antifascists started back towards the railway station. At this moment, two encounters with police took place. The first to face the angry mob were several cops on foot, who were strolling down the street when it suddenly flooded with anarchists. The cops retreated to the sound of breaking bottles and crashing stones. Then a police patrol made the mistake of trying to intervene in the protest; they quickly realized their mistake and retreated. Unfortunately, antifascists on foot couldn’t catch up with the swiftly retreating police car. It should be pointed out that, although the local populace supported the action verbally and symbolically via honking horns, the action failed to entice onlookers into any sort of participation.

Cops fleeing anarchists.

Nevertheless, protestors managed to reach the railway station and crowd into the train, where they waited patiently for the doors to close. The doors, however, did not close. As it turned out, the locomotive driver was at that moment involved in a tense conversation with the police commander. A group of antifascists with handguns was quickly dispatched to explain to him the negative consequences of siding with our class enemies, and finally the engine started moving, pulling the train towards the safety of the big city with no trees.

Criticism has been raised in the aftermath of this event about the distribution of information, the lack of advance organizing, and on-site video recording. Most of the people who took part had initially expected to attend a street party and arrived unprepared for direct action, without matching clothes, masks, or gloves and with working cell phones. Many young participants used social transport cards with ID tags in them to gain entrance to subway. The few organizers who did know the whole plan from the beginning hadn’t prepared accordingly and failed to provide even the most minor riot gear such as face masks. This led to a huge number of protestors being videotaped with their facial features clearly distinguishable.

The Russian anti-authoritarian movement has yet to learn from its own mistakes when it comes to video recording during street protests. Protesters and “media-activists,” most of whom turned out to be journalists invited from the liberal press, failed to recognize what a fatal mistake it was to videotape the unmasked faces of activists. Some of these reporters continued shooting even after people had gotten into the train and started pulling their masks off, so even participants who had provided for their own security failed to remain anonymous in the end because of this media-activism fetish. Later, people interrogated by the police reported that they were presented with a frame-by-frame breakdown of the video that circulated on the internet. Some comrades have been forced to leave the country because of this evidence.

Video footage of the action.

The Fallout: Repression and Solidarity

Alexei Gaskarov and Maxim Solopov, public spokespersons for the Russian antifascist movement, were arrested on July 30. This was followed by attempts to capture several other suspected organizers; because of their frustrating failure to turn themselves in, they were placed on a wanted list.

Facing intense pressure from government officials, unable to catch the elusive anarchists and receiving little cooperation from anyone, the police opted for massive sweeps of “prophylactic arrests.” Throughout August and September more than 500 antifascists, activists, and anarchists were detained, put in custody, tortured, and bullied into providing information on the movement—not only in Moscow, but in Nizhni Novgorod, Vladimir, and other cities as well. Police harassed people at public Antifa and animal rights events, football matches, and gatherings. Following this sweep, the sheer volume of data on the movement has swelled tenfold. As of this writing it seems that our enemies have moved on to the next phase, probing further into the network in what appears to be a third wave of interrogations of a select few activists who have been apprehended and deemed “interesting.”

It is still too early to draw conclusions, but some ideas about this repression can be explored, if only as a basis for future discussions. It is now obvious that the FSB, the Russian secret service, didn’t have any aces up their sleeves; their investigators have been joining in and ganging up on detainees from the start without a particular plan. Only two people are in jail awaiting trial, the main reason for their apprehension being their public profiles. The choice to rely on sweeping arrests and the total failure of the authorities to round up any direct action group despite all their attempts to convert detained activists into informants indicate that the Russian police approached 2010 unprepared in terms of provocateurs and informants within the Russian anti-authoritarian movement. This situation, of course, may yet change.

With all this said, it seems that the repression succeeded soundly in several ways. First, the movement seems to be isolated in a cocoon of fear. Support from outside is meager at best; social activists are second-guessing their cooperation with known antifascists. Second, almost every known “leader” or “organizer” has either been jailed or driven into hiding. Third, the authorities have managed to gather an ever-increasing amount of information since, as often happens, those who read about security practices and try to implement them in their daily lives are frequently not the ones who end up being arrested and answering questions.

Finally, and most importantly, almost everyone has forgotten about the original problem. Just as the capitalist leviathan has overextended itself, our movement has thinned its resources by betting everything on an ill-conceived riot and now all we can do is try to stem the rising tide of repression. This has happened before: in 2008 an anti-police campaign turned into a prisoner support campaign after police started hitting back with arrests and trials. Now we are watching the original environmental campaign fade into the background while prisoner support actions demand more and more attention.

There may be ways for anarchists to use the situation to our advantage, both in anti-Nazi outreach efforts and narratives and as an opportunity to reach out to the ecological movement and grassroots collectives. But the way the movement perceives itself has changed dramatically and we may need some reflection and self-assessment if we are to outmaneuver our enemies at this stage.

This is not to say that prisoner support is unimportant. Solidarity campaigns are crucial not only for the people in jail facing trial, but for the sake of those who may end up there yet. However, we should not forget the reason our comrades were arrested in the first place.

Most importantly, almost everybody has forgotten about the original problem. Our movement has thinned resources by betting everything on an ill-conceived riot, and now all we can do is try to stem the rising tide of repression.

Two Cocktail Parties

On September 2, the Russian embassy in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, was firebombed by anarchists. One of the Molotov cocktails hit a car parked in the yard. The car burned up. Evidently, this was the only damage inflicted by the attackers. Soon a communiqué was published on Belarusian anarchist websites, stating that the attack had taken place in solidarity with the Russian anarchists fighting for the Khimki forest and that Belarusian anarchists held the Russian government responsible both for the continuing deforestation and the repression of the movement.

The next morning repression hit the Belarusian scene. It took the Belarusian KGB several days to round up and arrest almost every known or suspected anarchist in Minsk, Gomel, Soligorsk, and other Belarusian cities. Our comrades were pressed for confessions of having cooperated with the Russian secret services in an attempt to discredit the Belarusian government and bring down Lukashenko’s regime. Most were formally questioned, then locked away and “forgotten” in cells for several days.

Some of our friends were not so lucky. One girl was hospitalized after she cut her veins during interrogation; another person, with previously existing serious health issues, developed major health problems as a result of the prison conditions and the severe beatings he received. Some lucky few fled the country; others stayed, taking it upon themselves to organize prisoner support campaigns. Among those who stayed were the comrades brave enough to carry out a follow-up attack on the Minsk detention center three days after the KGB started mass-arresting anarchists. A group calling itself “Friends of Liberty” firebombed a guard post in the detention center perimeter and claimed responsibility for both firebombing attacks—the Russian embassy and the police guard post—on the internet. In their second communiqué, “Friends of Liberty” stated that the KGB reacted by arresting innocent people simply because the latter had already been on the KGB’s radar. The aim of their second attack was evidently noble and brave: to demonstrate that the KGB got the wrong suspects. But the KGB was acting on Lukashenko’s direct order to “pacify the opposition,” a common practice in both Russia and Belarus shortly before presidential elections; so arrests, disappearances, and tortures continued unabated.

The Wings of a Butterfly

“Anarchy is all about order, not chaos.”
-popular Russian anarchist saying

Two notable events marked the fall of 2010: a deepening crisis in Belarusian-Russian relations, and the removal of Luzhkov from his position as the mayor of Moscow. Anarchists did their best to bring about both events.

Luzhkov, a petty Moscow tyrant who’d been abusing his position as mayor for more than 10 years, was relieved of his duties by presidential decree “for incompetence and failure to stand up to expectations.” This occurred immediately after he returned from vacation, a month after the Khimki riots. Among the reasons cited by experts and analysts was Luzhkov’s failure to cope with the Khimki crisis, as well as the part he played in the corrupt city development program.

Lukashenko, the Belarusian national-socialist dictator, gave in to fits of rage and anti-Russian rhetoric after the anarchist attacks on the Russian embassy and the police detention center where most of the anarchists arrested in Minsk were being held. An exchange of notes at the highest levels of diplomacy failed to avert the crisis, which had already been brewing before the Molotovs hit their targets. A series of bad political and economic decisions, the conspiracy-theory worldview every dictator seems inclined to, and a minor anarchist action led to the deepest political crisis Russia and Belarus have yet experienced.

This is not to imply that the departure of the mayor of Moscow and the collapse of relations with Lukashenko happened as a result of an anarchist plot or anything else along those lines. But it is important not to lose sight of the political perspective. We should consider the ways our actions can sometimes contribute to significant social changes and political upheavals—or at least scare the shit out of rich bastards!—however minor (like the Minsk firebombing) or major (like the Khimki battle) these actions may seem to participants and experts. It may be impossible to plan such things ahead of time, but we—boisterous chaos-loving anarchists—should take heart from these developments nevertheless. Hope for change and be the change.

A butterfly in the Khimki forest.

Calls for solidarity

Freedom for the working class can be won only by the working class itself.
-Nestor Makhno

Repression hit both the Belarusian and Russian anarchist scenes hard, and we are in dire need of support from around the world. A call circulated for solidarity actions in support of the Belarusian anarchists (in jail for suspected firebombing attempt) on October 14-20; solidarity actions are called for the Khimki arrestees this coming November 12-15.

Also, as much as we need solidarity and support for our friends in prison and in hiding, let us not forget about the forest that’s still being threatened with destruction. We ask for international support for the eco-defense campaign against the deforestation planned by the Russian government backed by Vinci Group and other international financial institutions.

You can read more about the repression in Belarus and planned solidarity actions on Belarus indymedia.

Information about the solidarity campaign in support of arrestees after “the Khimki battle” is available at www.khimkibattle.org.

You can contact the Moscow Anarchist Black Cross via this site to learn more about supporting anarchist prisoners in Russia.

You can send letters to the prisoners in Moscow care of this address:

     P/B 13 109028 Moscow, Russia.

Letters should be sent in an envelope without any name on it. Letters can also be sent to the prisoners digitally via the email address helphimki@gmail.com.

Finally, support stencil PDFs are available here.

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A tremendous amount of attention has focused on Greece lately. Looking at the successful anarchist movement there, we can nurture utopian visions to strengthen our resolve; but if we only consider apparent success stories, we will not be prepared for the challenges ahead.

The entire Balkan peninsula is a sort of laboratory of crisis. Studying it, we can discern some of the possible futures that may await us now that North America seems to be entering an era of crisis as well. The vibrant anarchist movement in Greece represents one possible future, in which a powerful social movement establishes hubs of resistance. But only a few hundred kilometers north Serbia shows another: a nightmare of ethnic conflict, nationalist war, and false resistance movements in which the anarchist alternative has sunk almost as deep as Atlantis.

The roots of the differences between these countries are hundreds of years old, but we can identify some recent factors. Only a generation ago, both were ruled by dictatorships: Greece by a US-based fascist dictatorship that collapsed under pressure from rebellious students, winning youth revolt the respect of the general population to this day; Yugoslavia by a socialist dictatorship, in which Tito maintained power by playing various groups off against each other. When the Berlin Wall came down and the socialist government collapsed, the country was torn apart by ethnic strife. By the end of the 1990s, Serbia was reduced to a much smaller nation ruled by a nationalistic communist, Slobodan Milošević.

On paper, what happened next reads like an anarchist fairy tale. An ostensibly decentralized and nonhierarchical underground youth group named Otpor (“Resistance”) carried out a propaganda campaign aimed at rousing popular revolt, despite aggressive repression from the authorities. After a rigged election, hundreds of thousands of people converged on the capital and intense streetfighting ensued. An unemployed vehicle operator, nicknamed “Joe” by his colleagues, drove his bulldozer through a hail of bullets into the headquarters of the state television station at the head of a furious crowd. Other protesters set the Parliament on fire and violently wrested control of the streets from police. The authorities surrendered, the government toppled, and soon a former anarchist was prime minister.

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In fact, organizers at the center of Otpor were directed by organizations affiliated with the US government, from whom they received millions of dollars. By ostensibly limiting itself to attacking the established order, Otpor drew participants of all ideological persuasions, while preparing the way for the implementation of capitalist democracy. The entire event was carefully choreographed to smooth Serbia’s transition into the neoliberal market. Afterwards, the same model was exported almost anywhere a regime was not cooperating with the US agenda; Otpor was followed by Kmara in Georgia, Pora in Ukraine, Zubr in Belarus, MJAFT! in Albania, Oborona in Russia, KelKel in Kyrgyzstan, Bolga in Uzbekistan, and Nabad-al-Horriye in Lebanon. In each of these cases genuine local unrest was channeled into a proxy war serving the interests of powerful outsiders. Yet most of the participants must have felt that they were genuinely fighting for liberation.

Ljubisav Đokić, the man who drove his bulldozer into the state television headquarters, declared shortly afterwards that the uprising had made no difference. Today Serbia is no closer to meaningful social change. Nationalism and fascism are still rampant, the population is more discouraged and apathetic than ever, and local anarchists are still struggling to gain traction in an unfavorable social terrain.

All this suggests that anarchists in the US need to develop a more nuanced understanding of social upheaval. Fixating on burning cars and fighting police can obscure the important dynamics at the root of events. The insurrectionist conviction that confrontations are intrinsically desirable offers little insight into what counts as a confrontation. Over and over throughout history, anarchists and other rebels who mistook violent clashes for real transformation have served as an expendable front line in essentially conservative revolutions. We need to refine our analyses so that when we fight, our efforts cannot serve our enemies.

Is it possible that, as the police were disappearing activists and the nation was teetering on the brink of revolution, the most worthwhile thing Serbian anarchists could have hoped to accomplish was to involve a few more people in their long-term networks? Bear in mind how difficult it must have been to stay focused on such a seemingly trivial goal under the circumstances. Or could anarchists have somehow taken the initiative in the struggle against Milosevic, miraculously outflanking an organization with millions of dollars of foreign backing in a nation consumed with nationalist fervor?

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In hopes of shedding more light on these issues, we’ve conducted this interview with a former member of Otpor currently active in the Serbian anarchist movement.

More on Proxy War.

For more historical background on anarchism in Serbia, skip to the appendix.

How did anarchists respond to the wars of that ripped Yugoslavia apart in the 1990s? Did this early activity have any influence on the context in which Otpor appeared?

Unfortunately, during the wars I was young and not involved in the anarchist movement, so I can only tell you what I’ve heard and read from older anarchists. Anarchists were involved in opposing the war practically from the start of Yugoslav crisis. For many of them, then very young and coming from the punk scene, this was the time to “get serious.” Communication between anarchists across former Yugoslavia continued throughout the conflicts.

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One of the first projects, in the first half of the 1990s, was the fanzine Over the Walls of Nationalism and War, started in Croatia. Anarchists were involved in the wider antiwar movement, often cooperating with antiwar groups like Women in Black (based in Belgrade). During the NATO bombing of Serbia, one of the main sources of information for people outside Serbia was the English-language anarchist newsletter Zaginflatch (Zagreb Information Potlatch) providing firsthand information from the Serbian anarchists and antiwar activists . Later, lots of anarchists were also involved in campaigns against the draft. At the end of the 1990s, meetings of anarchists from all over former Yugoslavia were held in the Bosnian village of Zelenkovac. But as the anarchist movement was very small in Serbia, their activities didn’t influence, as far as I am aware, the context in which Otpor appeared.

How did you participate in Otpor or in other forms of resistance to Milosevic?

I was very young when I started to be interested in politics and also to do some practical political stuff. And although this was “anti-government” politics it wasn’t radical in any way. Basically, along with the majority of my friends, I was a kind of nationalist, considering Milosevic to be a traitor and a “dirty Commie.” My first practical involvement in anti-Milosevic politics started when I was thirteen years old; it consisted of distributing leaflets and propaganda and participating in local protests and demonstrations organized by various opposition parties and student groups. I particularly remember one leaflet my friends made in form of a WANTED poster to the effect that Milosevic was wanted “dead and only dead” and that his crime was “treason to the Serbian people.”

Then Otpor appeared and I was involved in the local group in my home town of Zrenjanin. I was 16 years old and my friends and I were among the youngest people there. Our activities mainly consisted of putting posters and stickers on walls, graffiting the town with various slogans and with the famous Otpor clenched fist symbol, and of course participating in demonstrations. That was when police started to routinely stop me in the street, search me, ask me idiotic questions… it happened almost on a daily basis.

What were you doing on October 5, 2000? At the time, did you think that a positive revolutionary change was occurring? What happened afterwards?

On October 5, 2000, I was in Belgrade, with my friends and my dad, in front of the Parliament building among several hundred thousand people in a cloud of tear gas, watching football hooligans storm the building and people beating very, very scared cops who were trying to surrender. I remember thinking that the worst was still to come as army helicopters were flying over our heads. But then it was all over, and people started partying with no police on the streets… a strange day.

Of course, with my political beliefs then, I joined the majority of people in Serbia in believing that this was a positive change… and of course it wasn’t. Two years later I moved to Belgrade to study, met some anarchists, and soon my perspective on the world started to change dramatically. I recently heard a British journalist speaking about his political transformation, and although his change was completely different from mine—he changed from a Trotskyist to a conservative—I think that his metaphor is quite good. He said something about this kind of radical change of perspective being like falling through a floor which suddenly gives way beneath your feet, and falling so fast that when you hit the floor below it gives way beneath you as well, and that a huge number of things that you believed were not questionable suddenly become questionable.

But my personal change coincided with the growing of apathy and pessimism in the Serbian society and people, now twice betrayed, first by Milosevic and then by the new government.

How was Otpor organized?

Otpor had a quasi-non-hierarchical and egalitarian image. This was a clever political decision in a period when the opposition political scene was full of leaders who were considered to be incompetent in their struggle against Milosevic. So, this group (and later organization) of young people, primarily students, appeared with a seemingly new approach to politics. Members of Otpor didn’t have any formal ranks in the organization; they were only called “activists of Otpor.” But the truth was that this was a highly hierarchical organization with a small minority making all the decisions. For example, I don’t remember any discussions with older members of Otpor in Zrenjanin. They just gave us propaganda material and told us what to do with it, and we considered this to be normal in a way. And of course Otpor was financed with CIA money. All major decisions and all the proclamations were made by this small minority as well.

Should we be suspicious of resistance groups that claim not to have formal structures or hierarchies? Do groups have to be transparent to the public, in order to deserve trust? How does this affect the security of those who participate?

I do not think that we should be automatically suspicious of groups that claim not to have formal hierarchies, because this is an anarchist way of organizing, and I think that it is proven that this kind of organizing is possible and can be very effective. The Otpor case, which didn’t have anything to do with anarchism or any kind of radical politics or anti-authoritarian organizing, doesn’t disprove this at all.

As far as transparency to the public (and therefore the state) is concerned, I think that every case needs to be judged individually. In my opinion, the most important variables are the local political context, the type of political group, and what kind of activities you engage in. Different regimes have different ways of dealing with radical political groups; it is not the same to organize in Turkey or in Greece as it is in Serbia.

How much were anarchists or radicals involved in Otpor? Were there other resistance efforts going on at the time, or did it absorb all of them?

I am not aware if any anarchists were involved in Otpor, but I know former members of Otpor who are now anarchists or close to anti-authoritarian politics.

As I said, there was an antiwar and anti-nationalist movement in Serbia long before Otpor appeared—but this antiwar and anti-nationalist trend was a minority inside the anti-Milosevic movement in Serbia. And the anarchists and radicals involved in the anti-nationalist part of the movement were a tiny minority inside a minority. When Otpor appeared, most of the resistance efforts carried out by young people were absorbed by Otpor. The thing that is very important here is Otpor’s ideological relation to the nationalist and conservative majority of the anti-Milosevic movement.

In the ideological field, Otpor was also very far away from any kind of anti-authoritarian politics. Basically, the ideology that Otpor propagated was a form of anti-communism quite typical for that period in Serbia (and today to a degree), which combined a conservative world outlook, neoliberal free market ideology, cultural racism, elitism, Eurocentrism, and nationalism. One of the typical ideological points of Otpor’s program was that a war was taking place between two Serbias. One was a backward, Asian Serbia—Turkish, communist, collectivist, and pro-Milosevic—and the other was the forward-looking, modern, European, pro-free market Serbia that would build a new elite to guide a united nation.

How did the legacy of Otpor and the downfall of Milosevic frame the context for radical organizing after 2000? How did it make it easier for anarchists to organize, and how did it make it harder?

What is the legacy of Milosevic and his downfall and the ascension to power of his supposed enemies, including elite participants in Otpor? As I said earlier, it is a depressed and apathetic population. This is caused by the continuation and intensification of economic poverty and deprivation, the privatization of communal property, and state repression and terror, but it also reflects the frustration of the dominant ideological centers (nationalist, conservative, and fascist) with the fact that the Serbian imperialist project has failed miserably. So unfortunately this situation not only contributes to the development of mass cynicism but also fosters new forms of fascism and right-wing extremism.

The Otpor experience doesn’t help us much in anarchist and anti-authoritarian organizing in Serbia today. We operate in different circumstances and are in need of completely different strategies of resistance; in my opinion, this means constructing of networks of solidarity not only between radicals, but more importantly, between ordinary people who are fighting their “small” local fights in their factories, neighborhoods, and elsewhere. And based on this, creating an anti-authoritarian movement in the future that is centered around solidarity and mutual aid as its core values and principals.

When the Milosevic regime attempted to repress youthful opposition in 2000, this provoked a popular backlash. Did this delegitimize government repression of radicals after the change of the government, as well?

Milosevic’s repression of his opposition did not delegitimize repression of radicals or any other kind of dissent for that matter. Just recently we had a case in which six anarchists from Belgrade spent six months in jail for supposedly throwing a Molotov cocktail at the Greek embassy—the damage was 20 Euro—for which they were charged for international terrorism. After some public pressure, they are free now and the charges are dropped, but the repression of Roma people and striking or protesting workers is practically a daily event, with new laws making it more difficult to organize strikes and protests.

The rationale is that Milosevic’s regime was illegitimate, dictatorial, and communist, and that therefore the “revolution” of October 5th was legitimate, but that dissent against this government is not legitimate because the new regime is “democratic, pro-European, and accepted by the western democracies.”

Compare and contrast the Serbian anarchist movement today to anarchist organizing elsewhere in the Balkans, such as Croatia.

In both countries we speak the same language and share quite a lot of the recent and not-so-recent history. So there are many similarities, and anarchists from Serbia and Croatia have a long history of friendship and cooperation. In both countries recent anarchism mostly originated from the anarcho-punk scene. And as that scene was more developed in Croatia, today anarchism is more present there then in Serbia.

This “punk thing” has always been an issue here. Personally, I find this question boring and unnecessary. A lot of anarchists spend a lot of time attacking the punk scene as “lifestylist,” not serious, and so on; in my opinion this is senseless, because none of the anarchists coming from the anarcho-punk scene claims that “punk” is their politics. Also, some of the ex-punks are now “anti-punks”. I find this whole thing very silly.

So the movement in Croatia is more decentralized, with more active groups, better organization, and a few infoshops across Croatia while there are currently none in Serbia. In my mind the reason for this is a more developed anarcho-punk scene as a basis for the development of anarchism. I am not implying that an anarcho-punk scene is necessary for the development of anarchist politics, or that it is a necessarily a good thing. Of course, we have many problems in this case, the classic one being how to overcome subcultural isolation and connect to the wider society. But I don’t think this problem is inherent to the punk subculture alone. In a way, the old-fashioned “serious” leftists with their own rituals are also a very closed group that has a lot of trouble connecting with the rest of society as well. Maybe even more trouble!

In both Serbia and Croatia, we have one trend of anarchists organizing in small affinity groups and another trend of anarchists trying to develop anarcho-syndicalist unions but effectively being organized in small affinity groups as well, at least for the time being.

In Greece, the anarchist movement didn’t develop from the anarcho-punk scene, but from the radical leftist movement. Recently I spoke with two anarchist friends involved in the so-called “social anarchist” part of the movement in Greece, close to the Anti-Authoritarian Movement; they told me that they consider it a good thing for an anarchist movement to develop from a punk scene, like in Serbia and Croatia, because in their opinion that makes a movement more open to new ideas. I’m not sure if this is true.

What is the influence of the Greek anarchist movement in Serbia?

We maintain friendly relations with the anti-authoritarians from Greece. Some of them participated in our annual Zrenjanin Antifascist Festival, and they also organized a benefit event for ZAF in Greece. They invited us to participate in an event they are organizing in Thessaloníki. We are also discussing organizing some regional anarchist events together.

The situation in which the anarchist movement developed in Greece was quite different from the situation in ex-Yugoslavia. Greece was ruled by a right-wing dictatorship, while Yugoslavia had a “communist” regime, and then later a former communist as dictator. These situations led to very different outcomes: today in Greece they have probably the biggest anarchist movement in the world, while in Serbia a lot of right-wing, fascist (youth) groups have appeared, caused by the re-traditionalization and fascization of our society that happened in the 1990s. You can see this as a reaction to the “communist” and “socialist” authoritarian regime.

Nevertheless, the experience of the movement in Greece is very important to us. As is the building of wider Balkan networks of solidarity.

In a context of rampant nationalism, how can anarchists connect with “the” people without tacitly approving nationalist politics?

We should not perceive “the people” as an abstract entity like “the Nation,” but as ordinary people with their own local, everyday, “small” but very important issues and problems. In that sense, a group of radicals active in their local community is not something separate from “the people.” When you have an approach like this you will always deal with people who are not anarchists or radicals, and also with some who espouse even nationalist or conservative views. But when you meet them individually and personally, you can understand where they are coming from better and they can also understand how your politics are different from the politics of the politicians—and although maybe they won’t agree with all your positions, they will understand them better. This doesn’t mean we should be tolerant of nationalism—just the opposite!—but it means that in order to build a social movement based on solidarity we must engage with the local community and “face towards it.” Maybe this sounds simplistic, but this is the way I see it now.

What relationships do different nationalist groups through former Yugoslavia have to each other? Do nationalist groups in former Yugoslavia focus more on fighting against each other, or against radicals and immigrants? What can we learn from this?

Well, they hate each other, of course—not only because of the recent wars but also because their nationalist identities are very much based on hating each other. And the absurd but logical thing is that besides their mutual hate, their world views are identical.

Croatia is not a less nationalist society then Serbia, but in a way Croatian nationalists and fascists are currently less frustrated (although I believe fascists are “frustrated” by definition) than their Serbian counterparts, because the Croatian nationalist project was quite successful: they succeeded in creating an ethnically cleansed nation-state. On the other hand, Serbian nationalists and fascists are intensely frustrated by the total collapse of their nationalist project. So they turn their attention more to the “internal enemy”: LGBT people, Roma people, antifascists, anarchists, and other “traitors.” Of course, fascists always concentrate on the internal enemies, but less successful fascists do this more then others, in my opinion.

For example, it’s relatively safe for anarchists in Croatia to stage public events, but in Serbia you always need to think about potential assaults by the Nazis. Also, Zagreb Pride is a successful annual event despite fascists regularly organizing against it, but Belgrade Pride hasn’t happened yet. On the first attempt to organize it we had real lynching scenes in the streets of Belgrade, and last year it was banned by the authorities because “they didn’t feel that they could protect the participants.”

What strategies have worked in Serbia for building antifascist resistance? Which strategies have failed?

After a lot of discussions with my friends, I came to the following provisional conclusions.

One of the usual mistakes is to confuse “militancy” with radical politics, that is to believe that mere use of violence against the fascists means that your approach is politically radical. I already said that I think engaging the local community is crucial: thus the “fascist problem” must not be dealt with separately. If we connect the problem of fascism with the wider problems of capitalism and exploitation, which is not hard to do from an anarchist perspective because this is exactly the point of radical anti-fascism, and especially if we connect it to local manifestations of these wider problems, we create the conditions to re-establish anti-fascism as an important part of people’s struggles against oppression in general.

This does not exclude militancy, which is a necessity in combating fascism. But if we put mere violence in the center of our antifascist “politics” without a wider radical critique of capitalism and its concrete consequences, we risk being perceived as one hooligan or subcultural group fighting another—or even worse, as one group of extremists fighting another—and thus, becoming alienated from the rest of the society. And despite the use of violence being a necessity in combating fascism, it is also good to remember that the use of nonviolent radical methods is also essential in creating social movements.

Of course, I think it is equally bad to try to present your anti-fascism as “respectable” by refraining from violence and cleansing it of radical elements to build an alliance with liberal anti-fascism. In Serbia, this will produce the same results as I described above: alienation from the wider society.

Appendix A: What are the origins of contemporary anarchism in Serbia?

The first Serbian socialist, Zivojin Zujovic (1838-1870), was a follower of Proudhon. Zujovic influenced the first Serbian socialist theoretician Svetozar Marković (1846-1875), a central figure of the early Serbian revolutionary movement. Marković was not an anarchist, but was significantly influenced by anarchism, and his ideas contain libertarian concepts. In the 1870s there was a large contingent of Serbian students with socialist leanings based in Zürich, Switzerland. Among them there were anarchists such as Jovan Zujovic, Manojlo Hrvacanin, and Kosta Ugrinic who were in close cooperation with Bakunin. Bakunin took part at the 1872 conference of Serbian socialists, and almost single-handedly wrote the draft of the program of the “Serbian socialist party.” Alongside Russian, Italian, and other anarchists, some of these anarchists, including Hrvacanin and Ugrinic, participated in the Bosnian insurrection against the Turkish occupiers in 1875. The leader of this revolutionary contingent of insurrectionists was the Serbian socialist Vasa Pelagic.

Later, followers of Svetozar Marković divided into a reformist Radical party including some former anarchists like Jovan Zujovic (who became minister of education in the Serbian government in 1905) and the revolutionary wing led by Mita Cenic (1851-1888), another non-anarchist influenced by anarchism. He was in fact a Nechayevist Blanqist: he knew Nechayev personally, and thought that true socialist ideal lies in the synthesis of Blanqui‘s and Proudhon’s ideas.

By the beginning of the 20th century the Radical party had completely transformed from a revolutionary group into a reformist party and finally into a conservative party, as Cenic had predicted. Between 1905 and the beginning of the First World War, thanks to the influence of Kropotkin’s ideas and anarcho-syndicalist efforts elsewhere in Europe, new anarcho-communist and anarcho-syndicalist groups and papers appeared. A group of anarcho-syndicalists was also active inside the Serbian social democratic party.

The most prominent figures among the non-party anarcho-syndicalists were Krsta Cicvaric and Petar Munjic. Munjic was also the Serbian delegate at the 1907 anarchist conference in Amsterdam. Sima Markovic, one of the prominent members of the “party” anarcho-syndicalists (the “direktasi”), later became general secretary of the Communist Party. The anarcho-communist group was called Komuna.

All these groups worked and communicated with anarchists in the Vojvodina region (then part of Austro-Hungary, now of Serbia), where the Serbian anarchist Krsta Iskruljev operated, and also with anarchist members of Young Bosnia, the organization that assassinated Franz Ferdinand in 1914, as well as with Slovenian, Croatian, and Bulgarian anarchists. After the First World War, many of these anarchists became communists in the newly formed Kingdom of Yugoslavia; others became reformist socialists or even nationalists, like Cicvaric. Those who remained anarchists—such as the painter Sava Popovic, killed in 1942 by the Gestapo in Belgrade—were quite isolated.

After the Second World War and as a result of the largest antifascist insurrection in Europe, a socialist Yugoslavia was formed and soon broke its ties with the Soviet Union. In the 1960s there was some renewed interest in anarchist ideas, especially after the 1968 events in Belgrade and Zagreb. The Praxis group of Marxist humanist dissidents also appeared during the 1960s. Some of the theoreticians of the group had written quite positively about anarchism, and some anarchist books were published. One of the younger people from Praxis, Trivo Indjic, was an anarchist, and later Zoran Djindic, a younger person close to the Praxis group, also considered himself to be an anarchist. Filmmakers connected to the Yugoslav “black wave” cinema at the time, such as Makavejev, Stojanovic, and Zilnik, also espoused anarchist views. In that period, Left dissidents—Marxist humanists and some Trotskyists and anarchists—mostly moved inside closed discussion groups without any kind of contact with social movements. As in the Eastern Bloc, “social movements” were practically nonexistent.

When the Yugoslav crisis broke out in the 1990s many of these people converted to other ideologies such as nationalism or liberalism. In 1990, the former anarchist Djindjic joined some other Praxis members in founding the pro-capitalist Democratic party; within a couple of years he became the leader of the party. After October 5, 2000, he became the prime minister of Serbia, until he was killed by organized crime/secret police/nationalist elements in 2003.

Meanwhile, Indjic and a few other people from his generation joined some younger people in the Belgrade Libertarian Group. They were one of a few small anarchist groups that appeared in the 1990s; others included Torpedo in Smederevo, Kontrapunkt in Kraljevo, Crni Gavran (Black Raven) in Smederevska Palanka, and GLIB in Belgrade.

After 2000, Indjic became the Serbian ambassador to Spain; both the Belgrade Libertarian Group and GLIB disbanded. Kontrapunkt also disbanded and reassembled again in Belgrade; it still exists today as a completely different group, maintaining an alternative media website. Torpedo also disappeared. Some people from Torpedo and the GLIB later joined the Maoist Partija Rada (Party of Labor).

In 2002, the ASI (Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative) was formed, and later the DSM (Another World is Possible) collective. The ASI is the Serbian section of the International Workers’ Association, and DSM was close to People’s Global Action; they organized a PGA conference in 2004 in Belgrade before eventually ceasing to exist.

Anarchists from Novi Sad are mainly active inside AFANS (Antifascist Action of Novi Sad). For a while the group Freedom Fight, which works closely with some Serbian workers groups, was close to anarchist politics and published the Balkan edition of Z Magazine. After 2000, Anarhija/blok 45 publishing initiative also appeared; they publish books that are not sold but distributed based on the principles of gift economics. Some of the newer groups include Antifa BGD, Queer Belgrade, Antifa Zrenjanin, and Zluradi Paradi, which has already translated and published about fifty anarchist pamphlets.

For more information about anarchist activity in Serbia:

You can contact us at a.zrenjanin@gmail.com.

Also, the 5th Balkan Anarchist Bookfair will take place in Zrenjanin October 29 to 31. Antifa Zrenjanin is organizing this with ZAF. Previous Balkan bookfairs occurred in Zagreb, Ljubljana, Sofia, and last year in Athens and Thessaloniki. Send inquiries about the bookfair to balkanbookfair2010@gmail.com.

Further Reading

Appendix B: Proxy War

from Rolling Thunder

In a civil war, rival factions often seek assistance from foreign governments; the latter, of course, have agendas of their own, and what might have appeared a simple local conflict becomes a tangled international intrigue.

Once upon a time, when the governments of different nations generally perceived themselves to have distinct interests, open warfare was relatively common. As individual nations consolidated themselves into blocs held in check by other blocs (see Mutually Assured Destruction), proxy war increasingly replaced open conflict. The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, for example, was largely fought by proxy on battlefields such as Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, and Nicaragua. Afghanistan was one of the last of these, and subsequent hostilities between the mujahideen and their one-time sponsors illustrate the hazards of proxy warfare.

One cannot understand the history of resistance without taking into account how many movements and organizations have received foreign aid. For example, after the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990, it came out that the Red Army Faction, West Germany’s longest-running armed resistance group, had been funded, equipped, and sheltered by the notoriously repressive East German Stasi, despite the ostensibly conflicting agendas of the RAF and DDR. Likewise, the Serbian group Otpor, known for mobilizing grass-roots resistance to the regime of Slobodan Milošević that culminated in the storming of the capital building and the offices of state television, received millions of dollars from organizations affiliated with the US government. The countless copycat groups that appeared afterwards across Eastern Europe—Georgia’s Kmara, Russia’s Oborona, Zubr in Belarus, Pora in the Ukraine—could be seen as youth movements struggling against repressive governments or as front groups for foreign powers, depending on one’s vantage point. Even when they did represent genuine local movements, it was easy for their enemies to portray them as pawns of Western corporate interests.

Since the end of the Cold War, international conflicts are no longer framed in binary terms; instead, they manifest themselves as a global majority attempting to rein in a “rogue state” such as Iraq or North Korea. Rather than openly contending for ascendancy, governments are working together more and more to deepen and fortify the dominion of hierarchical power. Statist and state-sponsored revolutionary struggles are less common than they were forty years ago—in a globalized market, they’re too messy and unpredictable to be worth the trouble. It follows that the revolutionaries of the future will probably have to do without government backing.

This is not necessarily for the worse. State sponsorship is at best a mixed blessing, even for those who don’t oppose state power on principle. In the Spanish Civil War, a classic example of proxy war, the Soviet Union backed the communist elements of the Republican forces, while Hitler and Mussolini backed Franco; when Stalin had to appease Hitler to serve Soviet interests, he forced the Spanish communists to sabotage their own revolution, taking down the anarchists and the rest of the Republicans with them. Lacking sponsorship of their own, Spanish anarchists were at a tremendous disadvantage—not so much against the fascists as against their own supposed allies. When the lure of foreign funding no longer exists and all the governments of the world band together to put down uprisings, anarchists will come into our own as the only ones capable of revolutionary struggle.

Two of our favorite hip hop artists, Testament and Illogik, are facing serious charges for their alleged involvement in the historic protests against the G20 summit in Toronto last June.

Performing as Test Their Logik, the two were in the middle of preparing their debut album when they were arrested. Now their release conditions prohibit them from associating with each other, and they are unable to continue recording.

Fortunately, we managed to get our hands on the material they finished just before their arrests, and we’re releasing it as a benefit to help with their legal expenses. This is some of the most powerful, passionate music we’ve heard in years; it’s an honor to share it here.

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Test Their Logik
“Arrested Development” 9-Song Album
: 160kbs (VBR) MP3 [40.3MB] :
: 160kbs (VBR) AAC [41.9MB] :
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Click here to make a donation to
the Test Their Logik Legal Fund.

The album is available here for free downloading, but we urge everyone to donate to their support fund. If you can’t use Paypal, click here to learn how to send a check to their support committee.

The charges against Testament and Illogik are a shameless attack on political activism. The two have been outspoken critics of the G20, the 2010 Olympics, and capitalism in general, publicly speaking out even when others were intimidated into silence. They are among over 100 people facing conspiracy charges in connection with the G20 protests, an unprecedented crackdown on dissent.

The charges are also an attack on hip hop. Sure to come up in the trial is the Crash the Meeting video the two released to promote the G20 protests, which has received nearly 50,000 views on youtube. The video is hardly shocking by corporate hip hop standards; it doesn’t objectify women, promote guns or gang violence, or glorify personal acquisition of wealth. Instead, it spreads a positive message of collective struggle against tyranny—exactly the kind of message the authorities want to keep out of popular music.

Before corporate America started paying attention, groups like Public Enemy used hip hop to spread revolutionary messages and consciousness. Profiteers moved into the hip hop market not only to make millions off it but also to promote artists who rap about pimpin and blingin instead of social change.

Test Their Logik take hip hop back to real life, describing the destruction wrought by capitalism and calling for grassroots resistance. Everything they predicted in the Crash the Meeting video came true in Toronto beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. Essentially, they’re being charged for having their finger on the pulse. The authorities can try to jail the messengers, but there’s nothing they can do to stop the music.

Testament and Illogik were arrested June 27, 2010. Both are charged with Conspiracy to Commit an Indictable Offense, Council to Commit an Indictable Offense, and Disguise with Intent to Commit an Indictable Offense. Testament was also charged with breach of bail as a result of being arrested wheatpasting posters about the G20 in London, Ontario a week before the summit; the charges from that arrest were dropped immediately afterwards and the London police chief went on record saying they had only charged him so he would be out on bail conditions during the G20. Bail was set at $20,000 each.

The release conditions for the two include not associating with each other, not associating with members of “Black Bloc” [sic], not possessing anything that could be used as a disguise including bandanas and scarves, and not associating with various people from Quebec they’ve never met.

If you want to support them but you can’t use Paypal, mail a check made out to Russell Silverstein to:

Test Their Logik Legal Defense Fund
C/O Submedia
2746 East Hastings St. #57024
Vancouver BC V5K 5G8
Canada

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And I’m a poltergeist, you know a violent spirit
Product of a world with too much violence in it
So many people trees and animals’ll die in a minute
Can’t ask them to stop, they ain’t tryin to hear it