Soviet gay rights activist holds press conference in S.F

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Gays and lesbians were known as coverage for the cause of gay nights. "sexual dissidents" in the Soviet Union. I asked Kalinin if his presidential camThey lived in constant fear of exposure paign platform took up any political When hard-liners pronounced their lesbian rights. "Of course," he replied coup last August, gay and lesbian "My program was not just about gay activists teared tor their lives. In an rights and sexual freedom but about ominous development, on Aug. 20, the making life free for everyone." Gay and new government demanded that the lesbian activists, be said, came out of Moscow AIDS clinic supply them with the general movement for democracy, "I was not terrified-I was hysterical," Kalinin emphasized that the fight is Roman Kalinin, Russia's best-known still not over. He and his associates plan gay activist, told reporters in San Fran- to challenge the country's anti-gay laws, cisco last month. Kalinin, 24 years old, such as Article 121 of the Soviet Conis the editor of TEMA, the Soviet stitution, which outlaws homosexuality. Union's first gay newspaper. TEMA Kalinin, however, has illusions in means "theme" and is slang for "gay" in capitalism. He has ambitious plans for a Russian. network of gay and lesbian-run businessIn spite of the danger, gay and lesbian es-including bars, gymnasiums, a activists from TEMA played a coura- travel agency, and other American-style geous role in resisting the coup. Around enterprises. He plans to "support privatithe clock, TEMA's copy machines zation of the economy and the free printed the decrees of Boris Yeltsin- market," he said, "and use it for everyactivists then distributed the flyers to In a situation of disastrous impoverpeople throughout Moscow. The decrees ishment driven by market reforms, such were even handed to soldiers in tanks plans do not seem to offer much hope who were threatening the Russian parlia- for solving the evils fostered by StalinRoman Kalinin was one of a dozen was based. But the gay and lesbian people who started the Moscow Union movement is only beginning to orgaof Lesbians and Gay Men in February nize, and will certainly learn from its 14 SOCIALIST ACTION JANUARY 1992 down of its power.

The locomotive of the process of capitalist restoration is clearly the government of Russia, where the antibureaucratic movement, overall, has lagged far behind those in a number of the republics.

Before the August putsch, the Communist Party had been ousted from direct political control only in a few centers. Furthermore, even in those areas, the leaders of the "democratic movement" tended to be only slightly reconstructed Stalinist bureaucrats—-such as Popov, the mayor of Moscow; Sobchak, mayor of St. Petersburg; and Yeltsin himself.

In many of the republics, mass movements have arisen that, while formally committed to market reforms, are also more deeply influenced by democratic ideas and more directly vulnerable to mass pressure.

Thus with a regard to the first big problem facing the new Commonwealth, the projected price rise, correspondent Serge Schemann wrote in the Dec. 27 New York Times, "The economic debate was being argued primarily by the finance ministers of Ukraine and other republics, who were reportedly opposed to Russia's intention to free prices at the start of the new year and were planning to ask Moscow for a postponement."

This situation will pose a new test for the national democratic movements, whose clothes have been stolen to some extent by wriggling chiefs of the bureaucracy. In order to continue their advance, they will have to differentiate themselves more on social and economic questions from the core Stalinist bureaucracy.

In general, as the grip of the bureaucracy continues to weaken, politics will become more complex throughout the old Soviet Union, regardless of what its rulers call it. and imprisonment. a list of people with AIDS and HIV. with the TEMA logo at the bottom. The one's benefit."

ment building.

1990. Last May, he ran for the presiden- experience. cy of Russia. He was ruled off the ballot, but received a great deal of press questions in addition to that of gay and and thus were "highly politicized." ism and the backwardness on which it Kravchuk's victory was the decisive element for giving minimal legitimacy to the Commonwealth. Gorbachev had made it clear several times that no new Union was possible without Ukraine. But his new Treaty of Union had obviously become untenable in the political conditions after the failure of the putsch.

It still contained three provisions fundamentally unacceptable to the national movements—one Soviet citizenship (making it impossible for the smaller peoples to defend themselves against being flooded by Russians), a Union Supreme Court that could preside over a continuation de facto of the Union constitution, and central control of the armed forces.

Kravchuk was evidently finding it too hazardous an undertaking to sign such a treaty, which involved a direct continuation of the Stalinist state, in however attenuated a form. However, once the Ukrainian boss got through his electoral hurdle, he could hope to maintain the Stalinist state in a new form, ostensibly based on an initiative from below by the republics themselves.

The key role played in the founding of the Commonwealth by the Byelorussian leadership is another indication of its basically Stalinist-continuationist character. The uneveness and ambiguities of national consciousness from which Ukraine suffers are even more pronounced in Byelorussia (now Belarus).

The national democratic movement has made a breakthrough in the capital, Minsk, but in the rest of the republic the old Stalinist bosses have remained firmly in control-despite even the formal dissolution of the Communist Party. This republic is a notorious redoubt of unreconstructed Stalinism.

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attempted coup in Soviet Union," pub- democracy in the USSR does the Fourth International worldwidestaged the August coup, nor those around While perceiving greater differences within the bureaucracy than allowed for in the SA