Russian workers marched in towns and cities across the • country on October 27 to protest at growing poverty, unemployment and economic collapse.
The attempt by President Boris Yeltsin and his government to force through market-style reforms amid the wreckage of the old, paralysed stalinist command economy, has brought predictable disaster.
One Russian enterprise in five is now bankrupt, with up to 12 million unemployed as the collapse continues.
Tens of millions of workers are owed months of unpaid wages. The latest tally shows that government enterprises owed workers a massive 4.2 Right on queue: Yeltsin's reforms have forced up prices trillion roubles (about £1 billion) by October, with the debt rapidly increasing.
Some workers are still owed wages from the spring, while others are being paid in goods such as carpets or cloth for lack of hard cash, as the economy slides downhill into chaos.
The October 27 protests ganisation and orchestrating the were co-ordinated by the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, which claims 59 million members among the 66 million Russian workforce.
It coincided with a no confidence' motion in the Russian parliament moved by Communist and nationalist deputies against Yeltsin's Prime Minister Viktor Cherrights, environmental issues, nomyrdin. The motion won a hefty majority, but fell short of the absolute majority needed.
For Russian workers, neither a nostalgic turn back to the "good old days' of ossified, repressive stalinist rule, nor the illusory promises of 'modernisers' to leap into a free-market capitalism offers any solution.
In the unions a fight for workers control of production, of planning and of the economy as a whole otfers the only real alternative to the reactionary policies of Yeltsin and the equally reactionary grasping of the oid Communists seeking to recapture their lost power and privilege.