T. Khabarova's speech

at a rally of Soviet citizens in honor of the Day of the formation of the USSR
on the square Sverdlov in Moscow on December 30, 1994.

Dear comrades,
In order for our entire rally process to be of some use, we need to at least recall at each of our new meetings: what, in fact, did we have last time? - and try to sum up some results of the work done.

Especially on the problems of the Soviet Union, we last met on October 7, at a rally in honor of the Constitution Day of the USSR. And there it was adopted - as you may remember - several resolutions, in one of which we called on all opposition parties, movements and groups to recognize the effect of the de jure Constitution of the USSR of 1977, without any Gorbachev-Yeltsin "amendments", and bring their program guidelines in line with the main articles of the USSR Constitution. And in another resolution, we asked our opposition press to publish in good faith the documents adopted at the rallies.

Well, as you might guess, none of the parties and groups responded to our call, and as for the publication, this request of all the opposition newspapers was fulfilled only by the Garden Ring, which placed our materials in its 8th issue.

One might ask: well, is it really that important? What, in fact, will change because we recognize, purely symbolically, the operation of the Constitution of the USSR? After all, from this she really does not begin to act?

Yes, of course, it won’t start right away, but the prospect for the future will become very much clearer, and a clear perspective for the future means new and new reference points for work in the present. But it is precisely them, these reference points, from which to push off, that we are sorely lacking today.

Let's see what it will give us if all the participants in our today's drama, on this and on the other side of the front line, will know that the first decree of the Resistance forces upon their coming to power will be the decree on the restoration of the de facto Constitution of the USSR?

First of all, we guarantee ourselves against the danger that some Russian Lukashenka or Kuchma will come to replace Yeltsin, who will promise three boxes in the elections, and then trot along the beaten track all the way to the same International Monetary Fund.

Secondly,
there are whole, so to speak, contingents of actors in this story, to which we never turn, but in vain. Here is one such contingent, quite extensive, - gentlemen, foreign investors who are now buying up "shares", in quotation marks, of our plundered enterprises. These gentlemen have an obviously wrong idea in their heads about the future fate of their "property", also in quotation marks, in the USSR. And we should have enlightened them a long time ago on this point, telling them something like this:

NOT dear gentlemen! Well, don't you understand that for us - citizens of the USSR - those "laws", in quotation marks, simply DO NOT EXIST, according to which you plunder our property? Do you really not understand that by the very first decree of the restored Soviet power, all this property will be returned to its owner - the Soviet people, the Soviet state, and no one will investigate any of your claims and claims, no one will compensate you for any of your losses? You did not come here as partners in equal economic relations, you came as marauders following the occupying Vlasov army, and as marauders, you will be dealt with. Do not be flattered by "freebies", do not participate in the crimes of the regime, the history of which will end with a months-long criminal trial. Against those of you who during your stay in the status of "owner" of someone else's good caused harm and damage to this good, criminal prosecution will also be initiated. Do not blame then that you were not warned about this.

There can hardly be any doubt, comrades, that if we had carried out such “explanatory work” with purpose and perseverance, some of this audience would certainly have brightened up in their brains, and perhaps they would have made efforts to the brains of the leaders of their states, which are now possessed by excessive euphoria about the supposedly irreversible collapse of the Soviet colossus.

The same applies to the so-called "national capital". Where, Lord, does “national capital” come from in a country where there have been no capitalists for 70 years? Has he been lying in a stocking since 1917? Where does the “capital” of a modest Soviet employee, administrator, director of a retail outlet come from? It is not necessary to call the stolen "capital". There is no need to invent a “diversified economy” for these people. The economy in the country will be one-structure - socialist, as written in the Constitution of the USSR. If they want, let them work honestly. If they don't, that's their problem. And there is no need to direct people to continue theft.

And finally, in the remaining time I want to talk about those foreigners who are not gentlemen, but comrades. These are millions of ordinary Americans, Frenchmen, people of various nationalities, who more than once, by their unanimous protest, put up a barrier to the colonialist adventures of their governments. Older people probably still remember the brave Frenchwoman Raymond Dien, who in 1950 threw herself on the rails to stop a tank train for the American-French war in Vietnam. A quarter of a century later, American aggression in the same Vietnam was stopped, again, by mass indignation and protest against this war by the American people. And we cannot use such a huge potential in our favor. And why? Yes, for a very simple reason: because we ourselves do not qualify what is happening in our country as a WAR - as an aggression against a state called the USSR. We are talking about some kind of "systemic crisis", about the restoration of capitalism, God knows what. And there is WAR. People cannot protest against the systemic crisis in our country, and even against the restoration of capitalism. And they would protest against the war. And when, because of this war, our own chair under Clinton and Kohl would shake, when it would become socially punishable for any Western leader to hobnob with Yeltsin, then it would be easier for us here to cope with him. This is a huge minus in our struggle, that today Western public opinion as a whole is not on our side, because of the inadequate formulation of the issue by us.

Therefore, I once again call on the members of various parties, groups, and movements present here: put before the leadership of your organizations the question of the need to start in all your work from the fundamental documents of the statehood that really existed in our country, primarily from the Constitution of the USSR. And one more document, the effect of which de jure must certainly be recognized by all of us, is the 1922 Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. With this approach, there is no need for the so-called "denunciation" of the Bialowieza agreements, since legally they are simply invalid from the moment they were concluded. If we, for the most part, firmly take these positions, you will see how our cause will immediately noticeably move forward.