And Free To Sleep Under A Bridge, Too

AND FREE TO SLEEP UNDER A BRIDGE, TOO

Three activists of the Vanguard of Red Youth were detained on Sunday during a small rally outside the Federation Council in Moscow. The three, all of whom are participants in a hunger strike which began nearly two weeks ago, were protesting a bill that will replace social benefits with cash payments, which was just approved by the Federation Council. Another four participants in the rally were hospitalized with dehydration.

Ten days ago hundreds of communist protesters opposing the bill clashed with police outside the Duma building. At that demonstration protesters pressed up against police barriers, shouting at and scuffling with police. Some 15 members of the Red Young Advance-Guard and Union of Young Communists youth organizations pulled down some barriers. One man was knocked unconscious after being hit on the head.

Another demonstration featured a gray-haired crowd of more than 2,000 protesters -- many of them ill and impoverished and some in wheelchairs. The protesters rallied in the hammering July sun for more than an hour, holding placards that called the government's legislation "genocide." A World War II veteran waved a sign that read, "Hitler took our youth, Yeltsin and Putin took our old age." Pensioners and veterans were joined by disabled people and hundreds of Chernobyl cleanup workers, who were bused into Moscow from cities as far away as Arkhangelsk and Rostov-on-Don. They were exposed to heavy radiation when cleaning up after the 1986 nuclear disaster, and are currently entitled to free medical care, public transportation and vacations in sanatoriums. Another group came to raise awareness about the needs of those affected by another nuclear disaster, at a secret weapons facility known as Mayak in 1957. Leaning on a cane in the shade of the Lenin Museum, Alexander Kozlov said he was a young soldier stationed in Ukraine when a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded. Kozlov said he spent three weeks cleaning up the site, and slept every night just 30 kilometers away from ground zero. He felt fine for the first few years, but then he said he started feeling ill in ways he said he has difficulty describing. Though he is 48 he looks over 60, and his skin is covered with small discolorations. Two years ago he had a heart attack, which he blames on the radiation. "I'm sick, but I came here to tell the government not to change the social services," said Kozlov, who lives in the Moscow region town of Dolgoprud. "Without free transportation, these people won't be able to get to the hospital, much less buy medicine.”

Assuming Putin signs the law, as expected, millions of Russian war veterans, the disabled, pensioners, orphans, those who cleaned up after the Chernobyl disaster, and scores of others will see their access to free medicine, public transportation, telephone calls, free provision of artificial limbs, job guarantees for the disabled and, for many, free medicine and hospitalization vanish on January 1, 2005. The benefits -- currently received by 20 percent of Russia's population -- will be replaced by cash payments ranging from the equivalent of $5-$50 per month. The cash payments that are due to replace the benefits will not be indexed for inflation, meaning they will lose value over time. With memories of the hyperinflation of the 1990s still fresh in everyone's minds, that is not an idle concern.

Many wonder why President Putin -- if he believes the bill is such a good idea -- signed a law last month exempting the country's 2 million federal employees from its provisions. They will retain all of their benefits. "All the [potential] benefit recipients in my family -- those who should be getting benefits: my grandmother, (whose) six brothers -- died in the war, defending this country," said one of yesterday’s protesters. "I am standing here for those who survived, for those who returned from the front, for those who toiled in the rear, for those who did not perish from work, for those who were not killed by a German bullet. I am here for them. They deserve far more than these benefits. But they are trying to take away even these paltry benefits! [Former President Boris] Yeltsin isn't having his benefits abolished. The bureaucrats are keeping their benefits. But pensioners, war veterans, labor veterans -- their benefits are being taken away!" Sources: Moscow Times, Novosti (Russia), RFE, Interfax, Concord Monitor


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