By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Five anti-nuclear protesters were hospitalised, and at least 30 more were left bruised and bloodied, after hundreds of thugs on July 29 staged an organised attack on a blockade outside the soon-to-be-completed Rostov Nuclear Power Plant in southern Russia.
Coordinated by the leader of the plant's trade union, the pogrom took place with the clear collaboration of the plant management, and with the evident support of police and local authorities in the nearby city of Volgodonsk. The attackers, described in reports as workers from the plant, also burned and looted a camp established by the protesters.
The attack was the latest incident in an extended battle to stop the Rostov plant. Construction on the site was well advanced in 1990 when a campaign encompassing many cities in Rostov province forced the suspension of work.
Russia's nuclear lobby did not give up. In the summer of 1996, anti-nuclear activists were forced to mount a further province-wide campaign. Last September, this resulted in a decision by the Rostov provincial authorities to oppose completion of the project.
But by April, the provincial administration had buckled under pressure from pro-nuclear interests, giving its backing to federal government plans to complete the plant.
The Rostov plant, whose construction began as far back as the mid-1970s, is to have two reactor blocks equipped with VVER-1000 pressurised-water reactors. The first reactor block is now close to the testing stage, and plans provide for it to be brought into operation in 1998. The second block is to come on stream in 2000.
As described by Greenpeace Russia anti-nuclear spokesperson Oganes Targulyan, the VVER-1000 is a Soviet-era design that has come under sharp criticism from international experts, who have repeatedly expressed scepticism that it can be made acceptably safe.
Environmentalists are also perturbed by many details of the site chosen for the plant — only 13 kilometres from Volgodonsk, with a population of 180,000. The geology of the area is unstable, and the plant rests on waterlogged soil instead of rock.
Rainbow Keepers
For some years, the campaign against the plant has been an important focus for the Rainbow Keepers, a radical environmental group. On July 16, members of the Rainbow Keepers set up a protest camp outside the plant's walls. Other members set up an information stall in Volgodonsk.
Over the next 10 days, the number of people at the camp grew to more than 60, from eight countries. The protesters' key demand was for a province-wide referendum on whether the plant should be started up.
Harassment by the Russian police, the "militia", began almost immediately. Militia officers scoured the site regularly, recording the personal details of anyone present.
Meanwhile, pro-nuclear interests set to work trying to mould local opinion. Protesters were dismayed to meet Volgodonsk residents who had been told that the Rainbow Keepers were FBI agents being paid $200 a day. Anti-Rainbow leaflets began to festoon the city.
An application by the protesters to city authorities for permission to hold an anti-nuclear festival was first ignored, then refused; meanwhile, the city administration began preparations for a festival under the slogan "The Energy of the Atom is the Energy of Life!".
On the morning of July 27, local anti-nuclear activists held a rally in the central square of Volgodonsk, after which about 100 people headed out to the plant site. The protesters then began a blockade of the main road leading to the plant, using tactics developed by Czech environmentalists.
Drums full of concrete were placed across the roadway and connected by a steel pipe. A row of protesters then had their wrists handcuffed inside the pipe. The barricade could now be moved only with great difficulty and at high risk of broken bones.
Although the blockade was essentially symbolic — there was another road into the plant — a series of provocations followed. At one point, a vehicle tried to ram the barricade.
Late on July 28, the protesters were approached by Volgodonsk deputy mayor Ivannikov, deputy chief of the local militia Rubtsov and the head of the nuclear plant's trade union committee, a man named Bashkadov. The officials told the environmentalists that they expected attacks on the barricade from angry workers and said they could not guarantee the protesters' safety.
On the afternoon of July 29, the barricade was still in place, with a row of protesters attached to it. Three militia officers, including a major, were standing nearby with radios and automatic rifles.
Organised assault
At about five o'clock, soon after the day shift at the plant ended, eight buses drove up, accompanied by a bulldozer and by three cars containing people whom protesters identified as plant executives. Hundreds of men poured from the buses. Directing them was Bashkadov.
As the militia looked on, the assault began. Dozens of blockaders, including women, were savagely beaten; the injuries included a broken nose and cases of concussion. Money and passports were stolen.
A camera crew, which according to protesters was that of the plant's press office, filmed the proceedings; cameras belonging to the protesters were smashed.
The blockaders who were strapped to the barricade were detached from it, at no small cost in blood and bruises. Then, with the help of the bulldozer, the barricade was pushed into a ditch. Bashkadov was heard to exclaim, "That's all — let's go!". At that, the rabble climbed into their buses and departed.
Several hundred metres away, a smaller group of men attacked the campsite. Again, protesters were viciously beaten. The tents, and any other goods that did not take the attackers' fancy, were piled in a heap, doused with petrol and set on fire.
Half an hour after the attack, a train of cars arrived on the scene. Emerging from one of the vehicles, Volgodonsk's mayor, Sergey Gorbunov, began lecturing the environmentalists on the sanitary condition of the still-smouldering camp site, and on the protesters' contempt for the law.
Next day, July 30, the local media quoted deputy militia chief Rubtsov as saying that there had been no pogrom, and that workers from the plant had simply removed the drums of concrete from the road and gone home.
The same day about 20 militia officers came to the camp site and arrested 17 people. Five more protesters were arrested on the road, and more still at the perfectly legal information stand in Volgodonsk. After some hours, the detainees were brought before a judge, warned and released.
For the people who carried out the attack on July 29, there is only one excuse that can be made: with the plant or without it, their lot is unenviable. The burdens of life near a Russian nuclear facility do not need spelling out.
But for many people in Volgodonsk, the rejection of the nuclear option is also a source of dread. With its giant Atommash plant, the city is one of the centres of Russian nuclear power engineering. Without the jobs and monetary demand created by Atommash and the Rostov plant, tens of thousands of people in the city would be threatened with semi-starvation.
That cannot, however, serve as a reason for completing and commissioning the nuclear plant. In terms of jobs, the nuclear option is an absurd way of meeting the province's energy needs.
Rostov province is one of the centres of the Russian coal industry. Developing new pits and building new thermal power plants would create far more jobs, across a much broader range of professions, than the limited number provided by the nuclear plant.
Challenge for unions
Unlike the nuclear industry workers, Mayor Gorbunov and deputy militia chief Rubtsov are not in danger of starvation.
"To all appearances, the pogrom was agreed on in advance with officials of the militia and the local administration", prominent Rainbow Keepers activist Sergey Fomichev later remarked. If this is true, the local ruling apparatus in Volgodonsk bears a responsibility for the mayhem on July 29 that is a whole order of magnitude greater than that of the men who finished up with blood on their knuckles.
Meanwhile, the role played by union chief Bashkadov presents the labour movement — from the provincial committee of his own union, up to the leaders of the national labour federation — with a moral and political challenge that must not be dodged.
Are the union bodies going to investigate these events, with a view to taking stiff disciplinary action? Or will their inertia signify consent in principle to the fascistisation of Russian workers' organisations?