"Автономное Действие" | Свобода! Самоуправление! Либертарный Коммунизм!

Late at night on 30 April - 1 May, a piece of grafitti that said "Time to
answer for your culture!", signed antijob.tk, appeared on the wall of the
central office of the FNPR (Federazciya Nezavisimykh Profsoyoozov Rossii |
Independent Trade Union Federation of Russia), Leninskiy Prospekt # 42.
Every year on May Day, the workers' movement holiday, the Independent Trade
Union Federation of Russia forces people who dependent on that organization
to participate in a showcase ritual for it's bourgeois masters. For the
entire rest of the year the FNPR spends it time not on the defense of
workers, but on the handing out of all-inclusive vaction packages and the
pacification and selling-out of the organization's few honest rank'n'file
activists. We think that these activities haven't the sligtest thing to do
with the workers' movement. Furthermore, we believe that everyone should
answer for their words, actions and self identification.

More than 200 people joined us to celebrate May Day in Moscow, despite the
fact that the info about the event was sent out only a day in advance. The
festivities took the form of a outdoor rally/concert. Performers included
groups directly involved in the movement, representing various music styles
from harcore to hip hop. Food Not Bombs gave out food. At the last minute we
even pulled together a large-screen showing of various anarchist video
projects. Some Swedish comrades joined us at the celebration. Closer to
nightfall, cops, with machine guns, arrived to "disperse the skinheads" but
by then the last band was nearly finished with their set and their arrival
didn't affect our general good mood.

On May 1st the Yekaterinburg and Tumen sections of Avtonomnoye Deistviye
(Autonomous Action) held a May Day picket in Yekaterinburg. All in all about
10 activists showed up. We assembled in front of the main Post Office around
1pm holding signs that read: "Death to the State, Freedom to the Workers"
and "Anarchy, hear and now." People brought lots of flags. We handed out
flyers and pamphlets with a history of May Day, various syndicalist and
anarchist texts, and spent some time shouting chants & slogans.

Folks on the street, apparently intrigued by the flags and unusual banners,
often came up to us and expressed curiousity about our views. Several
conversations and even acquaintances took place. Positive moments included
workers telling us stuff like: "You guys got it right. If only there were
more of you." On a more sour note, some grumpy old lady went into hysterics
while calling us imbeciles and eventually began to scream "You should all be
arrested, your website should be shut down and, besides, your all a bunch of
non-Russian drug addicts." A particular highlight was a discussion we had
with one retired guy on the subject of free v. compulsory labor following
the creation of a free society. Sympathetic young punk rockers came up to us
to show their support.

The cops were for the most part peaceful. Then again, in the end, one of
them (the prick), banned flyering at the event -- i.e., "your rally permit
says nothing about the handing out of flyers."

When the permitted picket time was up, the activists turned to the cops and
shouted "We'll Be Back!" and dispersed in an organized fashion.

The action resulted in a bond between the Yekaterinburg and Tyumen AD.
We're quite happy to have encountered passers-by that showed interest in our
banners & slogans. We got the feeling that they took a few ideas with them
when they left.

The Rostov Federation of Anarcho-Communists, Oborona and our friends from
the Green Alternative and other anarchists organized a rally and
demonstration to celebrate the springtime holiday of May Day. Around 20
people joined us under our flags and banners.

The event took place on Teatralnaya square, the town's traditional place
for such events. Our props included
a diagonal red and black flag, banners and picket signs that read "We're Not
Your Slaves, Your Slaves We're Not" (a line from a famous Russian poem;
rhymes in Russian) and "Viva La France." We distributed propaganda
materials and magazines and newspapers like Avtonom, Protest, Chernaya
Zvezda (Black Star), Pryamoye Deistviye (Direct Action).

Nearby another group of partyers included the Red/Brown types (Brown
represents Nationalists in Russian politics) from KPRF (Communist Party of
Russian Federation), VKPB (Vsesoyooznaya Kommunisticheskaya Partiya
Bolshevikov | All-Soviet Bolshevik Communist Party), RKRP (Rossiyskaya
Komunisticheskaya Rabochaya Partiya | Russian Communist Workers Party). The
stage was seized by a bunched-up crowd of "peoples' leaders" who spent the
time pontificating about their problems. Among the youth we also had some
out-of-towner NazcBols (National Bolshevik Party activists) who numbered
less than our group.

The rally ended in a march from the square down Pushkinskaya till Gorky
Park. During the march we carried a 4-meter-long banner that read: "Ban the
Illegitimate Authority of Bureaucrats and Cops!" Chants and slogans shouted
by our contingent during the march included "Revoluzciya," "Net Fascismu,"
"Anarkhiya - Mat' Poryadka," "Net Polizceiskomoo Gosoodarstvoo." The event
concluded with a loud and awesome party at the botanical gardens.

On 1 May, 2006 Nizhniy Novgorod's avtonomy (Autonomous Action activists)
attended a rally organized by RKRP (Russian Communist Workers' Party) and
KPRF (Communist Party of Russian Federation). We came without any symbolic
stuff and sold the newspaper Situazciya. Part of the communist group
assembled as always on Mininskaya square and later marched to Lenin square,
where the rally took place. The city authorities behaved in accordance with
their usual principle -- "there's no such thing as too many cops." They were
placed all over the city center and outnumbered the demonstrators three to
one. The sort of attention awarded to young people in groups of 3 or more
was unprecedented. Overall, our impression is that what city residents got
to know as the tradional May Day celebration of 1998-2003 is no longer with
us. It's worth mentioning, that the general consensus among the various
youth opposition organizations is that "May Day" and "November 7th" is lame
or "palevo" (~thrash). In other words, they're political events that bring
little serious benefit and instead serve as a "flashy display" for the
authorities. By curtailing genuine public political expression, power
provokes the development of totally different forms of protest...

This year's May Day demonstration saw it's first participation of ecologists from the Baikal movement with their blue flags. Irkutsk autonomes brought a long banner that read "Oil instead of water?" (Recently, in April 2006, there were major street protests in Russia over a proposed oil pipeline route very close to Siberia's Lake Baikal, a World Heritage Site). Even though Putin ordered the Transneft (state) oil company to move their re-route their pipeline, it's a good idea to keep the pressure on. Autonomous Action activists were joined by people from the radical labor union SKT-Shelekhov (the Shelekhov section of SKT: Sibirskaya Konfederazciya Trooda | Siberian Confederation of Labor). We gave out copies newspapers like Situazciya, Volnaya Sibir (~Free Siberia), Shelekhovskiy Rabochiy (Shelekhov Worker) and flyers in support of French students. After the rally the crowd marched down Lenin street. Autonomes chanted: "svoboda, ravenstvo, anarkho-komunizm" (freedom, equality, anarcho-communism), "vyshe vyshe cherniy flag, gosoodarstvo glavniy vrag" (~higher higher black flag, the state is the main enemy), "nashe otechestvo vsyo chelovechestvo" (our fatherland is all of humanity). May day has been and still is the day of international workers' solidarity, a day of resistance and struggle!