Print

Print


In a statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two,
and listing Nazi war crimes, the WFTU declares:

'Winter of 1941. In Katyn (Belarus) under the control of the German Nazi,
thousands of Polish Military Officials were executed and buried in mass
graves. In April 1943, the Nazis tried to turn their crime into a
provocation against the Soviet Union by claiming that they discovered
graves from people killed by the Red Army. This provocation is still
utilized by some today. '

Amongst those who must be included as 'still using this provocation' has
been, since 1990, the Russian Government, including its President, Vladimir
Putin. For a detailed account of this Soviet massacre, see Wikipedia,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre.

This apologia for a terrible war (even genocidal) crime, ordered by Stalin
and carried out by his NKVD, appears in the regular news bulletin of the
WFTU, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?shva=1#inbox/14d395a10593b7f3.

The statement provides evidence that the WFTU is not simply a Communist
organisation - for which ample evidence and argument exists - but a
Stalinist one.

This is, however, unlikely to lead to disaffiliation by either the the
affiliated Indian AITUC or CITU union centres, the Peruvian CGTP or various
South African COSATU unions which have recently affiliated to the WFTU.
Nor, for that matter, is it likely to lead to any public or even
confidential complaints to the General Secretary of the WFTU, the prominent
Greek Communist, George Mavrikos.

The CGTP has long provided the WFTU with its Deputy General Secretary,
Valentin Pacheco. And South African affiliates - which are simultaneously
affiliated with the social-reformist International Trade Union
Confederation - are likely to feel (or even privately state) that they are
in the ITUC for practical reasons, in the WFTU for ideological ones.

Such ideological reasons themselves amount to the WFTU's rhetorical
anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism - a rhetoric which does not extend to
the capitalism developing in Communist Vietnam or the imperialism exhibited
in Tibet by Communist China.

Peter Waterman, The Hague

*Disclosure:* I worked in the Education and Solidarity Department of the
WFTU in Prague for two years or so in the later-1960s, leaving after the
Soviet invasion of Prague, 1968. This invasion was initially condemned by
the WFTU Secretariat, a position later buried by a WFTU Council Meeting,
Berlin, late-1968. I have written on the WFTU and the Soviet invasion. Most
recently this has been in my 'Itinerary of a Long-Distance
Internationalist: From Coldwar Communism to the Global Emancipatory
Movement' (2014), available online and free here:
<http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-peter-waterman-on-labour-social-movements-and-internationalism-the-old-internationalism-and-the-new/>http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism
_to_the_global_emancipatory_movement.
<http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism_to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/>




   1. 2014. From Coldwar Communism to the Global Justice Movement:
   Itinerary of a Long-Distance Internationalist.
   <http://snuproject.wordpress.com/2015/01/02/1987-e-reader-ed-by-peter-waterman-on-labour-social-movements-and-internationalism-the-old-internationalism-and-the-new/>http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism
   _to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/from_coldwar_communism_to_the_global_emancipatory_movement/>
(Free).

   2. 2014. Interface Journal Special (Co-Editor), December 2014. 'Social
   Movement Internationalisms'. (Free).
   <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>
* <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>*
   3. 2014. 'The Networked Internationalism of Labour's Others', in Jai Sen
   (ed), Peter Waterman (co-ed), The Movement of Movements:
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/>Struggles
   for Other Worlds  (Part I).
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/the_movements_of_movements/> (10 Euros).
4. 2012. EBook: Recovering Internationalism
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/recovering_internationalism/>.  [A
   compilation of papers from the new millenium. Now free in two download
   formats]
   5. 2013. EBook (co-editor), February 2013: World Social Forum: Critical
   Explorations http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/world_social_forum/
   6. 2012. Interface Journal Special (co-editor), November 2012: *For the
   Global Emancipation of Labour  <http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/>*
   7. 2005-?
   <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf>
   Ongoing. Blog: http://www.unionbook.org/profile/peterwaterman.???. Needed:
   a Global Labour Charter Movement (2005-Now!)
   <http://interfacejournal.nuim.ie/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Interface-1-2-pp255-262-Waterman.pdf>
   8. 2011. Under, Against, Beyond: Labour and Social Movements Confront a
   Globalised, Informatised Capitalism
   <http://www.into-ebooks.com/book/under-against-beyond/>(2011) (c. 1,000
   pages of Working Papers, free, from the 1980's-90's).