Abolishing the Borders from Below is an English-language magazine about six years old based in Berlin, covering anarchist struggles in Eastern Europe and ex-Soviet Union. It has traditionally come out bi-monthly, although as of issue # 30 the editors have decided to become “excitingly irregular”. Far from it being the case that there isn’t the people power or the material to predict when an issue will be ready, however, they have decided to publish as and when the material is plentiful enough and as soon as there is time to devote to it. This is beautifully free spirited! There is certainly no evidence that material is thin on the ground, as # 30 is 82 sides long and all of it worth reading. As well as carrying what you might expect (lots on antifascism, anti-militarism, anti-borders), the articles submitted, commissioned and translated reveal an extremely diverse movement. In addition, some issues are themed; for example Patriarchy (#23, February 2006), Discrimination (#25, July 2006), Education (#27, December 2006), Labour, (#29, May 2007), Mental Health (#30, October 2007).
Brutal states
As such, Abolishing the Borders is an essential early point of reference for anglophone anarchists trying to overcome a genuinely difficult linguistic divide that limits what we know about comrades confronting an even more brutal and unaccountable system than we face. It has been said many times by the AF’s IFA contacts in eastern Europe, by the Russians and Belarussians specifically, that their situation is very different from ours. Our organisational models and what is possible for us in terms of visible protest is not always appropriate. Holding demonstrations that are not given prior clearance by the police or failing to carry identification can very likely lead to arrest and land you in prison. Bosses of our energy companies would be unlikely to organise with neo-Nazis to break up an anti-nuclear camp by murdering and injuring sleeping protesters, for example, as happened last year in Angarsk, Siberia. Neither do we tend to get arrested and framed for planting bombs on trains to discredit our movement, as happened to anarchists in St. Petersburg, who were already facing heavy repression in the wake of anti-globalisation protests. Both these incidents, reported in ABB # 30, October 2007, touched the AF deeply because we have contacts with the anarchists affected. They are acutely aware that we face nothing like this and ask that as well as more obvious passive forms of solidarity such as raising money for bail, solicitors (and, sadly, hospital fees and funerals) we can publicly address what is happening to them and the repressive context in which they are working, so that ‘the whole world is watching’. The message is, don’t just read in ABB about what is happening to comrades working in contexts ever bit as repressive as in the era of state-communism; act on it!
Different experiences
It isn’t just the case that the state is more brutal and task of the eastern comrades simply more dangerous. We can only understand the global manifestation of the state if we do it subjectively, that is to say through other comrade’s experience. Reading Abolishing the Borders it is impossible to avoid noticing just how different some manifestations of political life are there, reminding us that our task as internationalists is not just to ‘support’ each other but to learn about the variety of ways reactionary forces and ideas are organised.
For example, Anarchists are organising in Bulgaria against a recently formed National Militia, a militarised wing of the Bulgarian National Union (Ataka – see article elsewhere in this issue). The militia is openly recruiting in the BNU’s sportclubs and aims to defend ‘Bulgarians’ against natural disasters as well as civil disorder. This quasi-fascist militia is technically illegal in Bulgarian law, and is indeed being investigated by the government (#30). But whilst the state contemplates this affront to its own ‘legitimate’ authority, Roma people, the militia’s real target, are left to defend themselves in ways that alienate them from mainstream ‘Bulgarian’ society. In the Czech Republic (Czechia), Slovenia and other places the Roma are also placed in a slightly different situation from some minorities in western Europe, seen as an anti-social ethnic from enemy ‘within’, rather than ‘from abroad’ (#23).
This has required some very sensitive treatment indeed from Abolishing the Borders editors because of what, some contributors seem to be arguing, is a genuine clash of cultures and not just about racists in the majority trying to force the minority to conform (#27). The editors are aware that the line they are expected to take is something like ‘if Roma are anti-social it is because society is anti-Roma’ but try to go beyond this and exploring why anarchists in more that one country are coming to a ‘politically-incorrect’ analysis. It doesn’t quite work, and requires the commissioning of an article that would be important to anti-racists everywhere, not awkward editorial acknowledgements that things seem to be a bit different with the Roma question.
Anti-fascist and secular
Even anti-fascist work itself, by far the biggest and most documented activity in the magazine, has a slightly different emphasis. It is a much bigger problem in terms of the sheer scale of fascist organisation. Racial attacks and murders carried explicitly by Nazis are commonplace. Furthermore, the ‘left’ are seen as part of the ‘right’, in that some of the most reactionary activity is undertaken by nationalists nostalgic for a different kind of authoritarianism. This is something Antifa has to confront, like in the Czech Republic where they are having to resist infiltration by Bolsheviks (#23).
Another difference is that, having emerged from decades of state-enforced atheism, the undermining of religious belief doesn’t necessarily feel quite as progressive or liberatory to ordinary people in ex-Communist countries. Anarchists work with a secular materialist agenda, nonetheless, criticising state promotion of Catholic dogma in schools and targeting the latest of some 300 memorials to Pope John Paul in Poland (#23 & #30). Likewise, in countries where the combination of universal sufferage and free, ‘democratic’ elections is only relatively recent, it is as important to them as it is here to smash the myth of freedom through the ballot box (#30).
Food Not Bombs
Even Food Not bombs means something different in countries where this might be the only form of support for people without homes or money. It’s not just a case of showing that ordinary people are responsible for making sure everyone has something to eat and that we shouldn’t rely on the state and the church. It might be the only food some people get. In Serbia, for example, the church has lost interest in this sort of charity work, according to the FNB ‘Subwar Collective’ in Belgrade. Two issues of ABB (#22 & #23) have reflected on the appropriateness of this anarchist ‘charity’, and concluded that it is important work “towards a free anarchist society where sharing the food doesn’t need to take a character of political action but being completely common daily practice of everyone for everyone” (#23 p. 44).
In the workplace
Workplace struggles sometimes take place in a different context too. In Russia, for example, most unions are closely wedded to the state structurally, not just ideologically like here. Fighting to set up or defend a politically independent union is an act of serious defiance, as discovered by Syndicalist Alexandr Kolovanov in Irkutsk, Siberia in 2005, when he was arrested and threatened with charges of terrorism for giving out leaflets in his workplace (#23).
ABB is sometimes better on action, issues and tactics than on analysis, perhaps taking too much for granted, given its audience, that we understand the theoretical and historical processes that have formed movements in ex-Soviet-bloc countries. Sometimes this is a real problem. An article on labour struggles in Poland (#23) contains no anarchist analysis and appears to be actually pro-Solidarity, as though anarchists are like reformists and nationalists in considering that this particular trades union was the liberator of the Polish people under Communism. This clearly doesn’t totally represent Polish anarchist attitudes, because there was discussion of the issue of reformist unions in Warsaw in April 2007 (#29), even though we are not told what the dissenters said, and the same issues contains an interview with Polish ‘Workers Initiative’ (IP) that recently transformed itself from an anarchist workers network into a Syndicalist union.
In spite of the fact that there are few articles that are over-arching in a theoretical sense, there is often important reflection on the state of the anarchist movement itself. In Czechia one writer thinks it is too punky/subcultural to grow or even survive (#23), whilst another (#29) thinks it can’t reach ordinary people because it has rejected its own cultural base, anarcho-punk, too strongly and relies on an assumed, artificial and archaic image, as such alienating both punks and workers! The Czech anarchist resurgence 5 or so years back produced a federation that joined our own International, but it has since collapsed. Following such discussions in ABB will be really valuable for the AF/IFA and others in understanding what happened.
Anything new in eastern Europe will be reflected in Abolishing the Borders because its profile in the East is very high. It is an obvious early port of call for all new initiatives. How else would we have known of the formation of PunaMust (Red & Black) group in Estonia in 2006 almost as soon as it happened and but even have its Aims and Principles to read in English (#27)? With contributions from 205 separate contacts listed in 20 countries, we hope ‘exciting irregularity’ might mean more issues a year rather than fewer!
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Abolishing the Border from Below is distributed in Britain by Active Distribution, http://www.activedistribution.org and the ABB website is: http://abb.hardcore.lt