Syndicate: mailradek no. 8

[Oleg Kireev <radek@glasnet.ru>]

Moscow-based magazine "Radek", dedicated to theory, art and politics
continues the project "mailradek in english". The information about the
magazine is available on the Website:
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                                     		text no. 63, part 1
                        5.11.1998
"Radek" has received the proclamation of Revolutionary Partisan Groups on
the Nicolas the Second monument's explosion in Podolsk. The activists of the
group asked us to distribute their text within the frames of mailradek
project and to write a comment on it. Here's their text:

			Proclamation no. 1
Revolutionary Partisan Groups continue their program of eliminating Symbols
of tsarism, started by the RVS RSFSR and the RKKA with an explosion of the
monument of the bloody hangman of peasants and workers Nicolas the Second in
the town of Podolsk, Moscow district.

This action has been carried out as a protest against the policy of criminal
regime, against repressions of those revolutionaries who have been kept for
more than a year in Lefortovo prison. We are strictly against a
rehabilitation of tsarism and attempts to discredit the achievements
of October revolution. We consider an organization of a partisan struggle
against the regime and capitalism to be the main task for the present
moment. Our actions serve as an example of an active civil resistance to the
criminal policy of the regime.
        
FREEDOM TO THE IMPRISONED REVOLUTIONARIES!
DEATH TO THE WORLD CAPITAL!
LONG LIVE TO THE PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION!
 
       The partisans' actions, which we, undoubtedly, completely and
certainly support, should be discussed in two aspects: political and
artistic.

1) Quite clear that an elimination of the capitalist system's symbols is
one of the most effective forms of resistance. Moreover, in modern society
exactly this form brings the most significant result. The power of
information increases the importance of symbolic substances extremely. The
same power permanently renews and changes the real political and economic power.
Today it is Yeltsin (is it Yeltsin really? Maybe, it is Berezovsky or
Primakov?), tomorrow it's somebody else. That's why the direct physical
elimination practically has no sense (we should remember, that Yeltsin is,
first of all, a symbol of power, but not a power itself). None among the
potential terrorists can know who is to be stroken and where to, but symbols
of the system are evident for everyone, and they are that should be eliminated.
This does not manifest weakness or usual intelligentsia's philistinery, just
the modern world has lost its corporal element (Guy Debord was among the
first to
recognize it). The political struggle in contemporary reality world takes
place on the territory of mass-media, not in the real life.

2) Art is a social contract. The time has the first-of-all-importance for
this kind of activity. The artworks that were rejected by the
contemporaries with disgust, seem splendid after some time (The Eifel's
tower, architecture of the Stalin's epoch and many others). The whole
cultural policy of the current Russian government rehabilitates the most
outdated and reactionary forms of art (for example, both the discussed
monument to Nicolas the Second and the previously exploded one were erected
by the nationalist sculptor Klykov). It's extremely important that they
won't become a living historical fact. A great majority of contemporary
regime's cultural monuments are to be destroyed as soon as possible. Their
place will be taken by the real contemporary art, which can situate the
Russian cultural scene into an international art's context. 

The only thing we take with skepticism is the text of the leaflet itself. We
think that it's necessary to write more originally, to formulate new
slogans. Experiment is the main value of any left radical. 
Experiment, phantasize, be merry!

We completely support their initiatives. Good luck guys! Rattle the brains
with the hammer! We're solidary!

                                                               Anatoly
Osmolovsky
project: Anatoly Osmolovsky and Oleg Kireev
translation: Irina Aristarkhova and Oleg Kireev
realization: mailradek