By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Anti-nuclear campaigners may be on the road to victory in a battle to prevent the completion of the Rostov Nuclear Power Plant, under construction in southern Russia. Local authorities in six administrative districts of Rostov province, where the plant is being built, have now sent declarations to the provincial Legislative Assembly calling for a referendum on the issue.
Among anti-nuclear activists, hopes are high that the assembly will resolve to put the commissioning of the plant to a vote — in circumstances where opponents of nuclear power are favoured to win.
The campaign against the plant has attracted wide attention in southern Russia since July 29, when pro-nuclear thugs staged a brutal attack on protesters blockading a road to the construction site.
The participants in the blockade were mostly members of the Rainbow Keepers, a radical environmental group that uses non-violent direct action to combat ecologically dangerous projects. Since mid-July, the Rainbow Keepers had maintained a protest camp outside the plant.
On the morning of July 29 the Rainbow Keepers placed a row of cement-filled steel drums across the main road to the plant. Protesters were then handcuffed between the drums.
The attack that followed was coordinated by the chairperson of the plant workers' trade union committee, with the complicity of the plant management. Buses were used to bring approximately 500 plant workers to the site. Armed police stood by and watched as at least 30 protesters were beaten, five seriously.
The protesters who were fastened to the barrier were forcibly separated from it, and a bulldozer was used to clear the road. Other attackers burned and looted the protesters' camp.
For the Rostov province "nuclear mafia", this victory carried a heavy price. The pogrom drew strongly negative coverage from the media in the provincial capital, Rostov-on-Don.
On July 31, the municipal assembly in the province's second-largest city, Taganrog, sent an appeal to the provincial legislature calling on it to support the struggle to stop the nuclear plant.
For the protesters, the aftermath of July 29 brought an important new ally — the local Cossack community. Descendants of farmer-soldiers of tsarist times, Cossacks make up much of the rural population in the Don River region. Still largely engaged in agriculture, they have more than almost anyone to lose from a serious nuclear accident.
The mix of cultures in the new alliance was bizarre — the Cossacks with their traditions of militarism and Orthodox Christianity, beside the eco-anarchist Rainbow Keepers. But the reasons to collaborate were compelling.
An agitational flying squad of Cossacks and activists from the protest camp was soon visiting rural settlements throughout Rostov province. Cossack organisations drew up anti-nuclear demands to be presented to district and regional authorities.
Other campaigning continued, much of it together with the regional organisations Green Don and For a Nuclear-Free Don.
In Volgodonsk, the city nearest the plant, local authorities were obliged to register an initiative group for the collection of signatures to force a referendum on whether the plant should go into operation. Top elected officials in Volgodonsk were reminded that support for a referendum had been among their campaign promises, before pressure from pro-nuclear interests had caused them to play down this commitment.
On August 11 another blockade of the plant site was mounted, with the participation of local Cossacks. This time, the barricade was of logs connected by steel staples. Police were brought in to smash up the protest and haul the barrier aside.
But the Rainbow Keepers, together with a Cossack veteran of the Afghan war, then lay down across the road beneath a banner reading "We declare our Don a nuclear-free zone".
The Volgodonsk authorities realised that the opposition to the plant was not going to die away, and that the safest course was to rediscover their support for a referendum. A few hours later, two mayoral deputies arrived at the site.
In discussions, a compromise was hammered out. The local authorities would appeal to the provincial legislature to hold a prompt referendum. A special commission would examine the July 29 pogrom. In return, the protesters would suspend their blockade.
In the weeks since, activists from the camp have been travelling about Rostov province agitating against the nuclear plant and trying to persuade local authorities to back the call for a referendum.
A major problem now is finances; on August 25 activists reported that they could no longer pay for an office and telephone in Volgodonsk, or for e-mail. Current plans are to shift the protest camp to Rostov from October 1, in order to try to put direct pressure on the provincial administration.
Despite all the obstacles, the campaign may well have gathered enough strength to tip the balance. The province governor, Vladimir Chub, was also elected on a promise to put the question of completing the plant to voters, and is reportedly finding it difficult to resist pressure on the issue.
According to unconfirmed reports cited by the Rainbow Keepers, the provincial authorities have resigned themselves to holding the referendum. The same reports have the federal government preparing to spend 5 billion roubles (about US$860,000) on campaigning in favour of the plant.
Nuclear power is not popular in Russia, and recent history suggests that pro-nuclear interests in Rostov province would have a hard time winning an honest poll. Last December, 87% of voters in a referendum in Kostroma province, north-east of Moscow, rejected plans to build a nuclear plant in their region.
"Honest", however, may be the key word. With major institutional interests at stake — the city of Volgodonsk is home to the giant Atommash plant, one of the centres of Russian nuclear engineering — anti-nuclear activists warn that efforts are likely to rig any ballot that is ordered.