Wednesday, January 29, 2014
UNCOMPROMISINGLY DEDICATED TO TRUTH
An interview lead by Srećko Pulig, a journalist of Novosti from Zagreb, with Dimitar Anakiev, the president of the Association of Erased Workers (ZID – Združenje izbrisanih delavcev)
SREĆKO PULIG: Our readers know about the Slovenian phenomenon of the Erased. Would You nevertheless shortly repeat the course of events at the origin of the Erased?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: First, let me thank You and the readers of Novosti for the interest in the phenomenon and movement of the Erased. Next to this I immediately give you the preamble of my answer and this is that the question of the interpretation of the event is of key importance here and heavy battles are fought around this interpretation for more than a decade. The thing is in trying to hide the class character of the erasure. You see: On February 26, 1992, eight months after the independence, Slovenian government with a secret act erased from the official books 25.671 people with origin from other parts of Yugoslavia. From this number there were more than 6000 children, born in Slovenia and many other adult Erased, also born in Slovenia. To all of them was denied the already gained right for permanent residence in Slovenia. With this right they immediately lost also all the other rights and as such, people without documents, without identity, without addresses and numbers, without history and future, they couldn’t be a part of the succession agreement between former Yugoslavian states, and this means that they were robbed, they lost their homes, because they couldn’t buy them, they lost their retirement pensions, they were deprived of social rights, rights for schooling and similar. Then evictions and deportations followed. In Slovenia managed to stay less than half of the Erased, mainly people from mixed marriages, which needed ten years to find out, that they were victims of a calculated criminal action of the state and start organizing and struggling. All Slovenian governments, left and right, from the beginning until today, have almost the same relation to the erased.
SREĆKO PULIG: The phenomenon was very quickly positioned in the logic and section of civil societies, organizations were formed, which dealt with rights of the erased as citizen rights.
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: Right, but even before the industry of civil societies caught us and tried to recycle and compost us into a nonpolitical problem, there were some infiltrations of people, working for organs of state, into the organizations of the Erased. They were here officially for “help”, but their goal was to politically subordinate the movement of the Erased, to redirect and canalize the energy of the movement into harmless directions and to create a smokescreen through which it was impossible to see the hearth of the problem. I call this process: the “zombization” of the movement, because the activists of the Erased are turned into zombies one after another. People that don’t know what are they doing but are doing, “liberating”, “participating”, giving statements controlled by this people. If you ask them “what fighting program do they have”? they have no idea, they show the beer in their hand or they blow the smoke of their cigarette into your face. After the phase of "zombization", came the phase of recycling, of the movement and the phenomenon of the Erased itself. The recycling was done by the industry of the civil sector. This phase is about the intellectuals (with left provenience) creating the terminology that was necessary for successfully composting the problem, so that we became ecologically clean and pleasantly smelling, outgrown with ivy and moss, ready to enjoy the achievements of the capitalistic democracy. I have to confess, that some of the Slovenian left-wingers were imaginative in inventing the terminology. So it could be heard that the Erased are a problem of “profane citizenship”, for some others this was the problem of “lateral citizenship”. Those less imaginative mounted the wind of mainstream and pushed us in stereotypes next to “European migration”, in the same basket with Lampedusa and the Roma in Slovakia and Romania and similar.
UNCOMPROMISINGLY DEDICATED TO TRUTH
An interview lead by Srećko Pulig, a journalist of Novosti from Zagreb, with Dimitar Anakiev, the president of the Association of Erased Workers (ZID – Združenje izbrisanih delavcev)
SREĆKO PULIG: Our readers know about the Slovenian phenomenon of the Erased. Would You nevertheless shortly repeat the course of events at the origin of the Erased?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: First, let me thank You and the readers of Novosti for the interest in the phenomenon and movement of the Erased. Next to this I immediately give you the preamble of my answer and this is that the question of the interpretation of the event is of key importance here and heavy battles are fought around this interpretation for more than a decade. The thing is in trying to hide the class character of the erasure. You see: On February 26, 1992, eight months after the independence, Slovenian government with a secret act erased from the official books 25.671 people with origin from other parts of Yugoslavia. From this number there were more than 6000 children, born in Slovenia and many other adult Erased, also born in Slovenia. To all of them was denied the already gained right for permanent residence in Slovenia. With this right they immediately lost also all the other rights and as such, people without documents, without identity, without addresses and numbers, without history and future, they couldn’t be a part of the succession agreement between former Yugoslavian states, and this means that they were robbed, they lost their homes, because they couldn’t buy them, they lost their retirement pensions, they were deprived of social rights, rights for schooling and similar. Then evictions and deportations followed. In Slovenia managed to stay less than half of the Erased, mainly people from mixed marriages, which needed ten years to find out, that they were victims of a calculated criminal action of the state and start organizing and struggling. All Slovenian governments, left and right, from the beginning until today, have almost the same relation to the erased.
SREĆKO PULIG: The phenomenon was very quickly positioned in the logic and section of civil societies, organizations were formed, which dealt with rights of the erased as citizen rights.
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: Right, but even before the industry of civil societies caught us and tried to recycle and compost us into a nonpolitical problem, there were some infiltrations of people, working for organs of state, into the organizations of the Erased. They were here officially for “help”, but their goal was to politically subordinate the movement of the Erased, to redirect and canalize the energy of the movement into harmless directions and to create a smokescreen through which it was impossible to see the hearth of the problem. I call this process: the “zombization” of the movement, because the activists of the Erased are turned into zombies one after another. People that don’t know what are they doing but are doing, “liberating”, “participating”, giving statements controlled by this people. If you ask them “what fighting program do they have”? they have no idea, they show the beer in their hand or they blow the smoke of their cigarette into your face. After the phase of "zombization", came the phase of recycling, of the movement and the phenomenon of the Erased itself. The recycling was done by the industry of the civil sector. This phase is about the intellectuals (with left provenience) creating the terminology that was necessary for successfully composting the problem, so that we became ecologically clean and pleasantly smelling, outgrown with ivy and moss, ready to enjoy the achievements of the capitalistic democracy. I have to confess, that some of the Slovenian left-wingers were imaginative in inventing the terminology. So it could be heard that the Erased are a problem of “profane citizenship”, for some others this was the problem of “lateral citizenship”. Those less imaginative mounted the wind of mainstream and pushed us in stereotypes next to “European migration”, in the same basket with Lampedusa and the Roma in Slovakia and Romania and similar.
SREĆKO PULIG: In Your public statement you described the formation of the Union of Erased Workers (ZID) from the Association of the erased of Slovenia as a result of ideological and political
disagreements between people on this scene.
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The formation of the Union ZID is a result of political maturity of an important group of activists of the Erased. You have to consider that we have the experience of living 20 years of our lives out of the law, on the edge of society or under the edge of society, deportations, evictions, threats and various humiliations and more than 10 years of political activism, political confrontations. The secretary of ZID is for example a woman, an activist, a former worker in agro-industry, a single-parent with four children, who managed to bring up the children alone and without documents-parallel to political struggling. I, for example, have the experience of deportation. But there are even more drastic cases among our members. You can conclude that from such experience it is not possible to bluff, our political philosophy is directly connected with existence and our experience of the struggle is historically and priecelessly valuable – this experience made us politically mature. We are not only a voluntaristic group that takes Marxism as a wedding decoration. We concluded that we are playing a cheated game in which the referees change rules during the game and so we wished to create the conditions for a real political struggle, which would justify the scorching life deadlock in which we found ourselves. And a real political struggle, the main lesson of our erased internship, is not possible without Marxism – only a class struggle is a real struggle. We saw that the new terminologies, made around us, have for their goal the disabling of sociologic and Marxistic analyses. Finally, we found out that the erasure of Yugoslavian workers in Slovenia is an exclusive act of counterrevolution. The working class in Slovenia, likewise on all Balkan and eastern Europe, had to be nationally divided in order to rob it and deprive it of rights. In the circumstances of brotherhood and unity, the mafian privatization would not be possible, neither the counterrevolution and counter-reforms as a whole. It was very easy to find out which road to take. The alternative is the "zombisation" and recycling with composting.
SREĆKO PULIG: It is a very interesting approach that a group of people, that were until recently civil victims of a system, of the Slovenian country, recognize themselves as workers of the former common country of Yugoslavia, robbed of their rights. Why didn’t the Slovenian intellectuals ever conceive the problem like this?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: It is not easy to be an independent intellectual in Slovenia, because the state is small and controls everything. If you are employed in the civil sector, you work in a state university, you cannot be independent. On the "Sunny side of the Alps" (Propaganda slogan for Slovenia in the time of getting independence from Yugoslavia) is operating maybe the biggest academic center in Eastern Europe for recycling and composting Marxism. In fact I don’t know what kind of revisionism is stronger in Slovenia: left revisionism ("extreme left") or right revisionism ("opportunist left") . Both revisions of Marxism, left and right, are in Slovenia elevated to the level of a national sport, that goes side by side with skiing, or it’s even more important than skiing. I believe that this is the real role Slovenian intellectuals got in the EU, after leaving socialism. A perverse role, but adequate, because the Slovenian country was formed in the course of NOB (National Liberation Struggle, 1941-1945) and the Socialistic Revolution. Who is therefore more called to theoretically discredit the Marxism of Slovenian intellectuals? The imperialists of EU know the ways they need to distribute roles to their vassals. It is obvious that in such climate nobody dares to use a Marxist argument, even if it’s self-evident and necessary-or maybe exactly because of this.
SREĆKO PULIG: The mainstream media are concentrating everything on the problem of the compensations that Slovenia, under the pressure of the EU, has to pay to the impaired persons, like this is just another not yet solved succession problem?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The case of the erased went, under some "unfortunate coincidence", on the European court for human rights. We were already buried alive and lamented, because in Slovenia,
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The formation of the Union ZID is a result of political maturity of an important group of activists of the Erased. You have to consider that we have the experience of living 20 years of our lives out of the law, on the edge of society or under the edge of society, deportations, evictions, threats and various humiliations and more than 10 years of political activism, political confrontations. The secretary of ZID is for example a woman, an activist, a former worker in agro-industry, a single-parent with four children, who managed to bring up the children alone and without documents-parallel to political struggling. I, for example, have the experience of deportation. But there are even more drastic cases among our members. You can conclude that from such experience it is not possible to bluff, our political philosophy is directly connected with existence and our experience of the struggle is historically and priecelessly valuable – this experience made us politically mature. We are not only a voluntaristic group that takes Marxism as a wedding decoration. We concluded that we are playing a cheated game in which the referees change rules during the game and so we wished to create the conditions for a real political struggle, which would justify the scorching life deadlock in which we found ourselves. And a real political struggle, the main lesson of our erased internship, is not possible without Marxism – only a class struggle is a real struggle. We saw that the new terminologies, made around us, have for their goal the disabling of sociologic and Marxistic analyses. Finally, we found out that the erasure of Yugoslavian workers in Slovenia is an exclusive act of counterrevolution. The working class in Slovenia, likewise on all Balkan and eastern Europe, had to be nationally divided in order to rob it and deprive it of rights. In the circumstances of brotherhood and unity, the mafian privatization would not be possible, neither the counterrevolution and counter-reforms as a whole. It was very easy to find out which road to take. The alternative is the "zombisation" and recycling with composting.
SREĆKO PULIG: It is a very interesting approach that a group of people, that were until recently civil victims of a system, of the Slovenian country, recognize themselves as workers of the former common country of Yugoslavia, robbed of their rights. Why didn’t the Slovenian intellectuals ever conceive the problem like this?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: It is not easy to be an independent intellectual in Slovenia, because the state is small and controls everything. If you are employed in the civil sector, you work in a state university, you cannot be independent. On the "Sunny side of the Alps" (Propaganda slogan for Slovenia in the time of getting independence from Yugoslavia) is operating maybe the biggest academic center in Eastern Europe for recycling and composting Marxism. In fact I don’t know what kind of revisionism is stronger in Slovenia: left revisionism ("extreme left") or right revisionism ("opportunist left") . Both revisions of Marxism, left and right, are in Slovenia elevated to the level of a national sport, that goes side by side with skiing, or it’s even more important than skiing. I believe that this is the real role Slovenian intellectuals got in the EU, after leaving socialism. A perverse role, but adequate, because the Slovenian country was formed in the course of NOB (National Liberation Struggle, 1941-1945) and the Socialistic Revolution. Who is therefore more called to theoretically discredit the Marxism of Slovenian intellectuals? The imperialists of EU know the ways they need to distribute roles to their vassals. It is obvious that in such climate nobody dares to use a Marxist argument, even if it’s self-evident and necessary-or maybe exactly because of this.
SREĆKO PULIG: The mainstream media are concentrating everything on the problem of the compensations that Slovenia, under the pressure of the EU, has to pay to the impaired persons, like this is just another not yet solved succession problem?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The case of the erased went, under some "unfortunate coincidence", on the European court for human rights. We were already buried alive and lamented, because in Slovenia,
and in the EU, there was no political option interested in a practical solution of this question. On the
contrary, you could see that it had to be so, for the reason of defending the ideology of the new
world order. Then some Italian communists from il Partito della Rifondazione Comunista came
occasionally by and, most of all Roberto Pignoni, who is connected to Slovenia in family, found in
Rome a specialized lawyer office that made its job pedantic and professionally. After the state put in
the complaint at the senate of that court, the action was organized by the »left« government of Borut
Pahor, two Italians, Lana and Saccucci, grinded and also in a public competition on the court totally destroyed a
team of nine Slovene government lawyers. Pahor’s government was prepared to defend its “right”
to ruin the Erased in Slovenia, but they didn’t succeed. Slovenian politics was caught in a
dirty business and this is the most important thing of the judgment of the European court, because it
showed who the bad guy is: the middleman authority of Slovenia, all its governments. Till then the
country of Slovenia continually promoted the Erased negatively, like national enemies and bandits.
This had to change. However, the judgment of the European court is pointing only on a few most
important violations of human rights and not on the problem as a whole. The ideology of
chauvinism is not problematized. Said in medical terms, the thing is in symptomatic therapy. They
are breaking the fever, but the antibiotics are not prescribed. So the government decided that is best
to continue composting the problem and represent it as something else. This is a constant tendency
against which we are unevenly struggling. The so called politics of “compensation” continues the
segregation of the erased on the national basis. I don’t believe in any changes in this sense, at least
until the EU rules Europe and until Slovenia is its member. Because chauvinism is not some natural
emotional state of being, but a well-known imperial strategy.
SREĆKO PULIG: What is the current situation in your union and what intentions does it have for the future?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: We are dealing with complex problems, but the quality of our struggling group is really exceptional. I am proud of these people, living in this destructive war of low intensity for 20 years and struggling on with full strength, vitality and intelligence. Being a member of this exceptional group of people is for me one of the nicest and most important experience in my life, which can’t be compared with anything. We are dealing with constant obstructions from the side of the state, which is a stumbling block at every our step and for every, even the smallest little step, we have to invest a lot of energy-they are exhausting us continuously for 20 years, generations of state professionals, paid to stumble us, changed in front us and we struggle and take away from our mouths, our children and families. We are dealing also with out-of-court sentences (via the secret services and their associates in the civil sector) to some of our members that are preventing them to receive their pensions or to seek justice on higher instance. On the other hand, we have before us a clear and rigorous program of Marxist struggle, classical in character, which helps us to see things clearly and easily recognize our goals. And the most important thing in a struggle is to have clear goals. Besides the publishing of our internal bulletin, we will soon start with a periodic e- zine called “The truth” because we consider educational work very important, if not the most important. This is also the purpose of the films. Our priorities for the future are to connect with our comrades in Slovenia (the syndicates) and with activists from the laborers movement, who are fighting against the neo-colonial occupation of the Balkans, Europe and the world. We participate, therefore, in the creation of a united class front. I am, as the president of ZID (Union of erased workers), a co-organizer of the European conference of workers in Paris, which will be held in March this year and our workers from Slovenia, the delegation ZID, will participate in this work. We will present the situation on the Balkans and in Slovenia to our comrades from Europe and exchange knowledge and struggling experience.
SREĆKO PULIG: Educated as a physician, you were in poetry, and then, under the circumstances of being unemployed, or that the digital technology made it possible, you became an independent filmmaker. How did that actually come about?
SREĆKO PULIG: What is the current situation in your union and what intentions does it have for the future?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: We are dealing with complex problems, but the quality of our struggling group is really exceptional. I am proud of these people, living in this destructive war of low intensity for 20 years and struggling on with full strength, vitality and intelligence. Being a member of this exceptional group of people is for me one of the nicest and most important experience in my life, which can’t be compared with anything. We are dealing with constant obstructions from the side of the state, which is a stumbling block at every our step and for every, even the smallest little step, we have to invest a lot of energy-they are exhausting us continuously for 20 years, generations of state professionals, paid to stumble us, changed in front us and we struggle and take away from our mouths, our children and families. We are dealing also with out-of-court sentences (via the secret services and their associates in the civil sector) to some of our members that are preventing them to receive their pensions or to seek justice on higher instance. On the other hand, we have before us a clear and rigorous program of Marxist struggle, classical in character, which helps us to see things clearly and easily recognize our goals. And the most important thing in a struggle is to have clear goals. Besides the publishing of our internal bulletin, we will soon start with a periodic e- zine called “The truth” because we consider educational work very important, if not the most important. This is also the purpose of the films. Our priorities for the future are to connect with our comrades in Slovenia (the syndicates) and with activists from the laborers movement, who are fighting against the neo-colonial occupation of the Balkans, Europe and the world. We participate, therefore, in the creation of a united class front. I am, as the president of ZID (Union of erased workers), a co-organizer of the European conference of workers in Paris, which will be held in March this year and our workers from Slovenia, the delegation ZID, will participate in this work. We will present the situation on the Balkans and in Slovenia to our comrades from Europe and exchange knowledge and struggling experience.
SREĆKO PULIG: Educated as a physician, you were in poetry, and then, under the circumstances of being unemployed, or that the digital technology made it possible, you became an independent filmmaker. How did that actually come about?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: Filmmaking made it possible for me to struggle and earn money outside the local system of represion, which did, unprovoked, declare war on me and on many other people of this
country. Medicine and poetry couldn’t pass this exam of history. Medicine because it doesn’t
include struggling and poetry because of the national character of its language-the language of film
is universal, it is the language of reality and life itself. Filmmaking also made it possible for me to
come to a deeper understanding of the problems in the world around me.
SREĆKO PULIG: Is there any connection between your organization of the Erased and your film activism?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: Political organization and activity and my filmmaking are most directly related, they are parts of the same aspiration for self emancipation and liberation and are as such complementary, they serve each other and together they serve the goals that I see in front of me.
SREĆKO PULIG: On what do you intend to work, as an artist, in the future?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: An artist, filmmaker, author, is nothing but a philosopher in a special language (the language of art, here a film language). My development path as a director proceeded from the philosophy of anarchic rebellion in my first films to films with accurate and precise Marxist analysis, as is the case with the film "Slovenia my country", which, by the way, was removed from Slovenian Film Festival and wasn’t popular in Europe either. Trough my mature art in this way speaks Marxism. Your question can be reformulated as follows: "What movies do you intend to do in the future as a Marxist?" Answer: "All those essential to our fight."
SREĆKO PULIG: What can the Yugoslav working class still or again make, unified on the matter of its self-liberation?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The Yugoslav working class has already brought a historical perspective and importance to the Yugoslav nations, which lack today because we again became servants of foreign countries. The thing is in a re-entry of a historical scene that could be brought to their nations only by the working class. The time of the first historical uprising of the Yugoslav working class is the time of Stalinism, which became predominant in workers movements all around the world. Today Stalinism is dead and so is the Soviet Union, whose influence was crucial for the success of the liberation struggle of Yugoslav nations. This lack of an actual world power that would support the way out of Yugoslav nations on the historical scene could be compensated only with the widest front of connections of the working class. This is our only perspective, the unification of the proletariat at least to the level of unification of the world capital. And secondly, in the time of Stalinism the Yugoslav workers movement didn’t have time to deal with elemental truths, because it was immediately thrust into battle. Now it’s time for this, to discover the real original Marxism. The historical maturity of the Yugoslav working class will be reflected primarily in a relentless dedication to the socio-political truth. And this means moving from provinciality to avant-garde. The Soviets started the revolution with “Pravda” (The Truth) and we started the revolution a few decades later with “Borba” (The Struggle). We skipped a very important phase of dialectical foundation on basic principles, which was later in Stalinism not allowed. We talk exactly about the democratic origin of Marxism, its dialectic character. It is not surprising that we are not familiar with many important things from Marxism, even when they are related to the Balkans itself. Has anybody here, for example, heard about the biggest Marxist from the Balkans and a friend of Engels: Christian Rakovsky? Engels has written some of his important works using the texts of Rakovsky for example the study by Rakovsky of the tsarist Russia. We don’t know Rakovsky, but instead we know and praise the Stalinist - Dimitrov. There is no doubt that our picture of Marxism is somewhat distorted. So, now it’s the time to turn to “Pravda”, to truth, and to start all over again, ennobled with the light of a shiny fighting history of the Yugoslav and world working class.
SREĆKO PULIG: Is there any connection between your organization of the Erased and your film activism?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: Political organization and activity and my filmmaking are most directly related, they are parts of the same aspiration for self emancipation and liberation and are as such complementary, they serve each other and together they serve the goals that I see in front of me.
SREĆKO PULIG: On what do you intend to work, as an artist, in the future?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: An artist, filmmaker, author, is nothing but a philosopher in a special language (the language of art, here a film language). My development path as a director proceeded from the philosophy of anarchic rebellion in my first films to films with accurate and precise Marxist analysis, as is the case with the film "Slovenia my country", which, by the way, was removed from Slovenian Film Festival and wasn’t popular in Europe either. Trough my mature art in this way speaks Marxism. Your question can be reformulated as follows: "What movies do you intend to do in the future as a Marxist?" Answer: "All those essential to our fight."
SREĆKO PULIG: What can the Yugoslav working class still or again make, unified on the matter of its self-liberation?
DIMITAR ANAKIEV: The Yugoslav working class has already brought a historical perspective and importance to the Yugoslav nations, which lack today because we again became servants of foreign countries. The thing is in a re-entry of a historical scene that could be brought to their nations only by the working class. The time of the first historical uprising of the Yugoslav working class is the time of Stalinism, which became predominant in workers movements all around the world. Today Stalinism is dead and so is the Soviet Union, whose influence was crucial for the success of the liberation struggle of Yugoslav nations. This lack of an actual world power that would support the way out of Yugoslav nations on the historical scene could be compensated only with the widest front of connections of the working class. This is our only perspective, the unification of the proletariat at least to the level of unification of the world capital. And secondly, in the time of Stalinism the Yugoslav workers movement didn’t have time to deal with elemental truths, because it was immediately thrust into battle. Now it’s time for this, to discover the real original Marxism. The historical maturity of the Yugoslav working class will be reflected primarily in a relentless dedication to the socio-political truth. And this means moving from provinciality to avant-garde. The Soviets started the revolution with “Pravda” (The Truth) and we started the revolution a few decades later with “Borba” (The Struggle). We skipped a very important phase of dialectical foundation on basic principles, which was later in Stalinism not allowed. We talk exactly about the democratic origin of Marxism, its dialectic character. It is not surprising that we are not familiar with many important things from Marxism, even when they are related to the Balkans itself. Has anybody here, for example, heard about the biggest Marxist from the Balkans and a friend of Engels: Christian Rakovsky? Engels has written some of his important works using the texts of Rakovsky for example the study by Rakovsky of the tsarist Russia. We don’t know Rakovsky, but instead we know and praise the Stalinist - Dimitrov. There is no doubt that our picture of Marxism is somewhat distorted. So, now it’s the time to turn to “Pravda”, to truth, and to start all over again, ennobled with the light of a shiny fighting history of the Yugoslav and world working class.
Translated into English by Ines Hvala
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