TO THE QUESTION OF CRISIS

by Sergey Fomichov

The hopes of many greens that the democratic authorities system will change the priorities of social development to the benefit of nature and man, have been broken down. And, unfortunately, broken down together with a half of environmental movement. The matter is that those who try to reach some agreement with industrial mafia by deminishing or abolishing their demands in order to reach economical prospering (which is very ghost-like, by the way) can`t be called greens anymore.

Those who remaine greens, now understand pertectly that the local model of democracy dosn`t want - and it isn`t even able - to find any other way but the unlimited industrial development as it is in the West. There are quite enough examples: the President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin signes the decision about resuming the Kostroma NPS constructing, and the state secretary Gennady Burbulis stimulates the constructing of the Astrakhan gas plant, inspite of Russian nature protection state commitee negative conclusion. The history of the Ignalina NPS in Lithuania, which became a classical example of greens defeat by their former allies on anti-imperialistic front, can be also reminded. It is a politic knock-out, to say so. There is also an economical factor which was one more thing the greens hoped some day. Now it is really possible, though very difficult, to buy a piece of land to organise a private national park there (but it can be taken away from the owner because of it`s "non-effective using") or one also can make the pollutors to pay a fines (these fines were considered to be useless already in times of "commies".)

Nevertheless such advantages of the free market look very poor when there is a lot of propositions like taking and buring in our land nuclear wastes for 1 million a tun or to receive 3 millions for the right of a harmful enterprise construction, as it happened in Novokuznetsk. And it is not hard to guess whom will choose the local authority between greens and greenbucks.

The greens began discussing the crisis. They have different views of the crisis itself. The fact that the
movement lost its mass character is considered to be the main symptom of the crisis by many ecologists. It is connected with the green radicals, so that they need now to be oriented on small but nevertheless effective actions of ecological sabotage , not on the actions of civil disobedience. But it is not the thing that everybody is able to do. The left greens (as well as the right ones, by the way) suffered more: mass participation is the main criterium of their activity's estimation. Some people don't consider the lack of mass participation to be a symptom of crisis, other ones regard it as a secondaty factor and say that the lack of spiritualety and the crush of political ideals are the most important problems.

The thing which everybody agrees on (that is, an extreme iack of time for avoiding the approaching catastrophy) is the fact that everybody preters not to mention at all.

In my opinion, the main symptom of crisis is the great deminishing of activists among the greens themselves. If to estimate how many greens remained green, it would be not a small number: the Nature Protection Teams movement managed to keep almost its previous volume, because as it was conservative and to some extend elite-like it didn't start real politics and melt in the "democratic" environment. Together with Nature Protection Teams there is a certain number of local ecological groups, who suffered the crisis too, because they were never interested in politics at all. The radical green movement has been is also still existing, though it has suffered much. It never cared about the reason why nature was being destroyed: either in honour of the plan or in honour of profit.

After losing its party-like form, the left wing of the green movement has alsosurvived, though, frankly speaking , now it deals with theoretisation more than with practical activity. Those ones of the democratic ecologists, who don't see any connection between real democracy and the rot taking place in our country nowadays, continue working too. And at last some anarchist groups, work on ecological issues - those who are not impressed by the "Great August". This community, whose ideas and methods varies, after losing a certain part of their members does not at all try to reach consolidation, which is very reasonable in critical situations, but acts in the opposit way: they rush to different directions, making the crisis harder.

Consolidation is of strong necessaty. As for today, now one can see how the ecologically oriented anarchists refuse to deal with the greens in order to prevent from using drastic actions of the first for earning political and financial capital by the last.

The nature protection movement does not regard the preservers of the urban environment as their allies. Both of these streams wonder on hearing about the concept of controlled ecological catastrophy. The extremists refuse to colaborate with the lobbists, and fundamentalists don't accept
any attempt of politisation. Under these conditions the idea, of the unified green organization is not supposed to be accepted even like the idea of association, if not as a party, though in Germany the party did not consist of realos (politicians) but it was constructed as a result of uniting of various initiatives - from the green terrorists up to the housewives community. But maybe the greens would condescent to a punctual agreement on cooperation.

The respected members of nature protection teams should not be tempted by the thought that national parks would save the whole variety of wild life while there was the same socio-political system of indastrialism. The left greens shouldn't hope that their ideas about nev sociiety would be accepted by the people if the only thing thay are going to do in future is writing manifestos and declarations.

The radicals shouldn't think that their wild life protecting actions or protesting against harmful enterprises could change something by their existence itself. And do the lobbists really suppose they could manage to create a more powerful lobby than that of the nuclear or military industry?

Now when our society follows the principle "everybody cares for himself", when mass media shows its Claws only if somebody disturbes it, the army takes arms only if the army is attacked, and the people's deputies and members of the government unanimonusly defend their private interests, it is extremely important for greens to unify.

Everybody who consider the solving of ecological problems to be more necessary than national, class and state ones, must be brought together get together for a powerful blow on the survived undustrial mafia. May be it woned be the last blow, because now we have no more time.