Belorus
September 21st, 2020

More than a month after the electoral fraud and in spite of the brutal repression that has thousands of detainees and almost a hundred missing persons…. With mobilizations, stoppages, picket lines and strikes The Belarusian working class and exploited are confronting the Lukashenko government of misery, death and repression The people want the fall of the regime! Down with Lukashenko! Immediate and unconditional freedom for all political prisoners! Since August 9, the day on which a new and scandalous electoral fraud was consummated that once again gave Aleksander Lukashenko the victory, the working class and the exploited in Belarus have been confronting this hated government with the working class' methods of struggle: strikes, picket lines and general strike, facing a savage repression in the streets. On September 20, in the last mobilization there were 100,000 people in Minsk, the capital of the country, and 300 were arrested. There were also mobilizations in Brest and other parts of the country. The regime of Lukashenko, a man from the kidney of the old CP of the USSR that has been in power for almost 3 decades, is repressing harshly the strikes and mobilizations. With his former KGB dogs hooded and patrolling the streets in unmarked cars, the regime has arrested protesters and strike leaders. More than 12,000 people have been detained and more than 80 have disappeared. The demonstrators and strikers are sentenced to 15 days in prison, where they are terribly tortured both physically and psychologically. The working class intervenes in this mass political struggle against a regime of hunger, misery and repression, with its methods of struggle, and plays a decisive role. Since August 10, the workers have began to organize their strike committees, in spite of and against the rotten Stalinist bureaucracy of the CP that from the main trade union center supports Lukashenko. All activities in Belaz, the biggest automobile factory in Belarus, the plants of the Minsk Tractor Plant, the Madz autoparts company, several workshops of the RIA Novosti steelworks, the Steel Works (BSW) in Zhlobin, the State Institute of Powder Metallurgy, the Kozlov Power Plant, the Zhabinska sugar factory and the Minsk margarine plant, as well as the big chemical industry Grodno Azot, the Belaruskali mines, have been stopped by the strikers. They have closed down bars and stores. Students are returning to schools and universities and organizing their own struggle committees. That's the way! In Belarus, the great allies of the martyred Syrian masses massacred by al-Assad and the hitman Putin on behalf of imperialism, are fighting! As Lukashenko said, "If Belarus falls, Russia will be next”. The fall of Lukashenko at the hands of the Belarusian masses would weaken Putin, who strengthened his role as the gendarme of imperialism in the region after his offensive in Syria. The communist parties of Belarus and Russia, which have supported Putin's bloody intervention in Syria, also support Lukashenko and accuse the masses of being agents of imperialism. Currents of former Trotskyists throughout the world are painting Lukashenko's as a bourgeois government of rupture with imperialism, and raise the specter of "revolutions of color" and say that if it falls, what will come is more hardships for the masses because the imperialist plunder will be deepened. That is, for them there would be a progressive bourgeoisie (Lukashenko in this case). This is a swindle. They said the same thing in Syria, and after more than 9 years of massacre, and al-Assad having not fallen, the hardships of the masses have multiplied: thousands of dead, millions of IDP, their houses demolished, without water and without bread, and a brutal imperialist plundering that left the oil-producing country without a drop of fuel. They also said this in Ukraine, which was broken up, and both in Kiev with the pro-European oligarchy and in the Donbass with the pro-Russian oligarchy and Putin, the imperialist plundering plans of closing and privatizing the mines, with thousands of layoffs, were imposed. Contrariwise to what the world left proposes, the pro-imperialist government of Lukashenko is which has been implementing the plans of imperialism and guaranteeing its business in Belarus. And now that the workers and exploited are rising up to overthrow him, imperialism is seeking to recreate a "democratic" opposition variant embodied in a coalition among Christian democracy, the Civic Party (of conservative orientation) and social democracy, to save its businesses. But this is nothing but a "democratic" trap to expropriate the revolution. It never occurred to those bourgeois fractions to call on the masses to unite and overthrow Lukashenko, defeat his counter-revolutionary shock forces and put an end to the caste of officers in the Belarusian army. So much so, that after the first mobilizations the main opposition candidate fled to Poland and called on the masses to leave the streets. What imperialism, Putin and Lukashenko really fear is the masses of this former Soviet republic in Eastern Europe, who already have experience in expropriating the bourgeoisie. And if tomorrow the masses succeed and make Lukashenko's head roll, no doubt the policy of the ex-trotskyist currents that today are shouting against that imperialism-backed bourgeois opposition will be to subject the masses to the "democratic" trap of the plebiscites and referenda prepared by imperialism, as they have already done in Chile and Egypt, to give some examples. This heroic struggle of the workers and the masses of Belarus is looked at with sympathy by the Russian exploited who are struggling to rise up against the hated regime of Putin who, strengthened after his role as imperialist hitman in Syria, has deepened the attack against the Russian people. This uprising of the masses of Belarus is a twin struggle to that of the miners of eastern Ukraine: there the revolutionary forces of Eastern Europe are seeking to put themselves on the warpath again. Therefore, their struggle is also a sibling of the struggle of the exploited Russians' one that seek to stand up against the hated regime of Putin, that murderer of the Syrian masses at the expense of imperialism. And it is followed with attention by the workers of Europe who, from France, surround them with solidarity and are calling to fight alongside them. The working class and the exploited in Belarus face a regime of terror. Down with autocracy! The Lukashenko dictatorship must be defeated! That is the first task to conquer democratic rights and freedom, to have work, housing, health, decent wages and pensions, to conquer the right to form independent trade unions, to strike, the right to demonstrate and mobilize, to win immediate and unconditional freedom for all political prisoners, to end the persecutions and false criminal cases against the demonstrators. Out with Lukashenko! Out with the oligarchy of the old traitors of the CP who handed the USSR over to imperialism ! Immediate and unconditional freedom for all the more than 12,000 people arrested during the mobilizations! The more than 80 disappeared people have to be returned alive! Dissolution of the police and intelligence services, and of the entire repressive apparatus of the state! The self-defense committees must be set up right now! The workers and militant youth have already begun to put their strike committees on their feet: We must develop and centralize the masses' self-determination bodies! We must recover the unions and all the workers' organizations from the hands of the CP's union bureaucracy allied with Lukashenko! For a National Congress of the workers' organizations in struggle and the independent unions with delegates from all over Belarus! We must expropriate the enterprises, industries and natural resources that were stolen by the former bureaucrats  becoming the new owning class, who handed the former USSR over to imperialism, without compensation and under workers' control! We must expropriate all the imperialist enterprises and banks without compensation and under workers' control! We must recover the lands from the hands of the oligarchy and imperialism, by expropriating them without compensation! We revolutionary socialists affirm that democratic liberties, which are subjugated at every step by the governments of the capitalists and imperialism, are only conquered and defended with the methods of working class struggle: stoppages, picket lines, general strike, battles in the streets and the revolution itself. The workers and the people of Belarus must take up again the road of the heroic October revolution: For a Soviet Belarus of workers and red soldiers, without dictators or traitorous Stalinist bureaucrats! From Portugal to the Russian steppes, one single working class and one single struggle against one single enemy, imperialism, the bankers and the oligarchs: For the United Socialist States of Europe from Portugal to the Russian steppes!   By Nadia Briante