CLASS TERRORISM IN BASHKORTOSTAN

RUSSIA

    Aleksei Danilovitch Ribalko was born in 1947. He worked for many years in the equipment construction factory of the city of Ufa. He is a highly skilled worker. At present Aleksei Ribalko is one of the leaders of the workers' union «Zashita truda» («Defense of Labor»). The workers elected him as representative of the Soviet of the district of the city of Ufa. He carries on an active struggle to organize the workers against the adoption of the new anti-worker labor code by the bourgeois-fascist authorities. Ribalko was one of the organizers of the general strike on May 17 this year that was carried out by the workers' union «Zashita truda» against the adoption of the new fascist labor code by the Russian state Duma.
    In 1994 Aleksei Ribalko was one of the organizers of the first strike in his factory. As a result of this strike the workers' Soviet was formed. The work collective elected Aleksei Ribalko as president of the workers' Soviet. The organized workers rose up in a determined manner against the administration of the factory, which was only interested in sabotaging production. As result the director of the factory was dismissed. The work collective chose a new director from among the bourgeois specialists. The factory avoided bankruptcy.
    The workers' Soviet cooperated actively with the new administration of the factory in their desire to save the company from bankruptcy. At this time the workers united with the interests of the bourgeoisie. However the factory fell little by little under the control of the commercial mediators, fictitious firms, all kinds of commercial structures.
    Such is the reality of the bourgeois economy!
    The workers saw in practice that they and their bourgeois leaders had opposite interests. The class struggle is the result of life itself, of the real situation, of objective form and this is inevitable in class society. The proletariat and the bourgeoisie are two irreconcilable classes and are implacable enemies.
    It was life itself that made them take account of this, but it was too late. While the workers naively believed the promises of their new owners, in fact they helped them to take control of the factory.
    The main causes of this problem have been the petty-bourgeois naivete and the inadequate political preparation of the workers and the activists. For this reason even Aleksei Ribalko was once a member of a bourgeois party, the misnamed Communist Party of the Russian Federation headed by Zyuganov. However thanks to his proletarian intuition he consistently defended proletarian positions. This circumstance led to serious conflicts with the leadership of the misnamed Communist Party.
    The organized workers have returned again to the struggle against the new administration of the factory. Aleksei Ribalko is heading this fight.

GANGSTER'S ATTACK ON THE WORKING LEADER

    The authorities of Bashkiria have again used brute force against opposition. This time their victim was one of the leading activists of workers and communist movement, the co-chairman of Executive Committee of trade union «Defense - Workers Resistance» of Bashkortostan, a deputy of the October district council of Ufa Aleksei Rybalko, a worker from a factory in Ufa who organized numerous protest actions at the enterprise and the city level.

    On April 5, around 6 p.m., Aleksei Rybalko was attacked in the street by people in police uniform, who without any warning and explanations grabbed him from behind, broke his arm and pushed him into the car, the assaultants continued to beat him badly. As the result of this blow he temporarily lost vision and orientation. Obviously, the attackers did this so that Aleksei could not identify them afterwards. Once in the car, three thugs began methodically beating their victim with clubs, trying to hit him in the head. They beat Aleksei Rybalko until he lost consciousness and then threw him out of the car in front of an apartment building.
    There he was very quickly «found again» by a police patrol. The policemen (I. R. Yusupov, I. Z. Shaikhinurov and R. N. Bayev), at first, tried to hand Aleksei over to the sobering-up station. When its personnel refused to admit him, they told Aleksei to go home, even though his eyes were injured and swollen, he could hardly see anything and his right hand was broken after he tried to protect himself from beating. Only when he mentioned his deputy status and requested medical help the police officers agreed to transport him to the hospital. However the physicians of Hospital № 22 (traumatologists Muslimov and Suleimanov and neurosurgeons Islamov and Saubanov) refused to provide Aleksei with medical attention, prescribed another doctor, and sent him home. Only after Rybalko's wife had seen the condition of her husband and refused to receive him in such condition and called medical emergency, he was taken again to the same hospital where the first medical aid was given to him and the X-ray of his head and hand were made. However the phisicians refused to give Rybalko the medical evidence about his injuries and the X-ray pictures. When two days later Rybalko's wife came to the hospital looking for the evidence of her husband treatment in the admittance records and the X-ray. She was denied access to the evidence.

    Comrades! This is not the first case of Baskortostan's powers to be using brute physical force against opposition. The former editor of oppositional newspaper «Together» Victor Shmakov and Artyom Tikhonov, a 15-year's son of the chairman of the movement «Workers Bashkiria», were beaten cruely. However, the guilty ones were never found. I am sure that the investigation of this case also will be sabotaged by authorities. If we allow the perpetrators of this crime to go unpunished cases like this will soon become the norm everywhere. Do not ask who fell this time, this also affects you.