Although only a few people may stay in camp more than a few days or one week, every day there have been 20-30 participants in the camp. Only one mass meeting organised this far gathered 300 people in Zakamsk suburb of 100 000 inhabitants on Friday the 9th of July. This hardly can be called an uprising, but this number of participants is still unusually numerous for this area.

Background of the problem

In accordance with international disarmament treaties, Russia has to build a certain amount of factories to dismantle old missile engines and their fuel, in practice this is done with American technology and money. Not that we have anything against disarmament, but this must be done taking into account health and welfare of local people, which currently seem to have no any value whatsoever to military-industrial complex. 3 years ago in Votkinsk, they failed in an attempt, to build missile dismantling plant 8 kilometres from a city with 100 000 inhabitants, this time, according to plans, a similar extremely dangerous object is planned to be located right into 100 000 inhabitant suburb of a city with more than one million inhabitants! Officially, no one admits that the project in Perm will replace the Votkinsk project, which is currently freezed. In practice, missiles planned to be dismantled in Perm are the same which were planned to be dismantled in Votkinsk. Actually this is already the 3rd round of the fight, Votkinsk factory was originally planned to be located to Perm, but in late nineties these plans had to be cancelled due to local protests!

FGUP Perm Factory Mashinostroitel has been given a license to be the leading company in Russia in field of dismantling missiles using solid fuel, most importantly SS-22 Scalpel missiles which have flight radius of 10 000 kilometres and each of which may carry 20 nuclear warheads of 550 kilotons (46 times Hiroshima bomb). Missiles to be dismantled do not have nuclear warheads anymore, and although missile corpuses are also slightly radioactive, the main problem is the extremely poisonous fuel they are loaded with. They plan to build a site inside factory of S.M. Kirov, which currently both builds and tests engines of strategic missiles. Mashinostroitel decided to fulfil its task with means of anti-ecological direct action, considering necessary permissions and environmental impact assesments as a waste of time.

American funding, given in the framework of 13-year-old Lugar-Nunn legislation is very crucial for realisation of the project. Actually regional powers have already wasted lions share of the money given 7 years ago already, and currently social budget has to be shrinked in order to have project finally realised and not to have Americans asking to whose pocket this money ended up back then. The money is channeled through transnational Washington Group International ( http://www.wgint.com/). They are a huge corporation, operating in more than 30 countries with 26000 employers. American Congressman Richard Lugar himself visited Perm last autumn.

An unofficial enviromental impact assesment by NGO's and scientists was done to one of the 7 objects which are included to the project, a corpus for heat neutralising of solid waste was examined. Experts from Perm and all over Russia considered this object extremely dangerous and appealed against its construction - however, the construction is still going on. Company claims construction has been halted, but local people have reported that everything is following schedule.

Soon after finishing first expertise, officials realised that doing bogus enviromental impact assesments would be a better alternative than giving ecologists free hands to do their expertises. So in April, ecologists learned that a more important part of the project, store of missiles waiting to be dismantled was made and environmental impact assesment with conclusions to give green light for the construction. This expertise was done in Moscow, by specialists who were less qualified than those who did the first one. After big difficulties, ecologists managed to receive documentation of the latter expertise, and countless mistakes make it illegal and invalid. This assesment did not even included analyse on possible risks to surrounding enviroment, for example in case of a missile fuel explosion during time of storage.

Dismantling missiles having solid fuel happens in temperature of 3500 degrees of Celsius, according to Russian and American specialists poisonous dioxins will form in cooling stream of gas during the process. Even smallest doses of dioxins are poisonous; they easily accumulate in food chain, hurt embryos and cause cancer. They are chemically stable, and stay lethally dangerous during several decades. Technology for safe utilisation of missile engines using solid fuels just does not exist.

The goal of the protest camp is a total revoke of this criminal program to utilize rocket engines and their fuel in Perm. The protest camp will last until decisive victory, or at least until beginning of the September.

Research on attitudes of Perm inhabitants to missile dismantling

Already during first two weeks of June anarchists conducted a research on attitudes of Perm inhabitants towards missile dismantling project. This was first ever, somewhat experimental attempt in former Soviet Union to put radical ecological protest campaign on scientific foundation. Besides curiosity, purpose of the research was also to attract interest of the media. Although research was conducted by anarchists, it attempted to be as objective as possible and was formally done under cover of Institute of Sociology of Russian Academy of Sciences.

The research was conducted by telephone; alltogether 1200 people were called. Those who answered negatively to the first question "Have you heard about missile dismantling in Zakamsk" or refused to answer to this question, were not further questioned. Only 397 among questioned answered positively, which for sure gave a bias in favour of politically conscious people. Distribution of social status among sample fit pretty well with characteristics of the general population, only students were strongly over-represented (8.1% among questioned, whereas in general population they are only 4.6%). Most of the questions were open, since open questions tend to manipulate respondents less than closed ones.

The research involved questions on awareness of people on missile dismantling, on attitude towards missile dismantling, on priorization of different problems of the city in general, on awareness about activities of organisations and prepareness to participate to protest actions. Zakamsk inhabitants, where Kirov factory complex where dismantling is planned to be organised is located, were consciously over-represented in research, but their attitudes on dismantling in general did not differ from main population although they were more aware of the project and their opinions more polarized. This because some of the few who will benefit financially because of the project are living in Zakamsk themselves. 63.2% of the called Zakamsk inhabitants positively to first question, whereas from rest of the Perm only 24%. Whole Zakamsk suburb was built to serve Kirov and neighbouring factories, and many people have first-hand experience from dismantling, since factory still produces ballistic missiles and those with defects are currently burned inside factory.

78.6% answered that they attitude to missile dismantling is negative or very negative, 13.1% anwered that their attitude is neutral and only 5% considered project as positive or very positive. 82.6% of respondents considered dismantling as harmful to environment (4.5% as not harmful), 78.8% considered dismantling as harmful to health (8.1% as not harmful), 37.5% believed that dismantling will create new workplaces (30.0% believed that it won t) and 19.9% believed that financial gains from the project will help to solve social problems of the city (45.8% did not accepted this claim). Inhabitants of Zakamsk suburb were even more sceptical towards claims about positive effects of the project than rest of the inhabitants.

When respondents were asked to choice from four possible answers to question "which among next claims best of all describes your attitude towards dismantling of the missiles", 2.3% answered it is necessary to dismantle rockets, even if this has negative effects to Perm inhabitants, 37.8% answered that dismantling should be started only when there are safe technologies to do it , 53.9% answered dismantling should be moved to a safe distance from Perm and 4.6% answered let them do what they want, I do not care.

According to research, 28% of the respondents considered bad roads to be among three most urgent problems of the city, followed by ecological problems (25%), dirt and trashes in the streets (14.9%), low quality, high costs of municipal services (13.6%), unemployment (13.4%), bad transport system (12.6%), social-economical problems, low quality of life (12.1%) and crime (11.3%). Alltogether people named 98 different. During the last 15 years, ecological problems have been among main catalysts of social movements and according to this research, they still have not lost their relevance among minds of the public.

Although 46.9% of Perm inhabitants announced that they have heard about activities of environmental movement, only 4.5% could name some ecological organisations. Most known was local Anarcho-Ecological Resistance (8 persons, 2%), followed by abstract greens (4 persons) and anarchists (2 persons), several NGO s were named by individual persons. 52.4% answered that they would like to participate to protest campaign against missile dismantling, but among them 39.9% could not specify their preferred form of action. 33.8% preferred participation to a demonstration, picket or a meeting, 18.3% to subscribing a petition. All respondents were asked if they could subscribe a petition, 79.8% would have agreed and 9.8% would have disagreed. 46.3% could have participated to a meeting, and 17.4% could have participated to a protest camp.


First two weeks of the protest camp

Protest camp launched officially 2nd of July in Kirov district, where Zakamsk suburb is located. Camp was set up by Autonomous Action, Anarcho-Ecological Resistance, Union for Chemical Safety and Yekaterinburg Movement Against Violence. Soon members of Rainbow Keepers who joined the camp decided that Rainbow Keepers should be listed among camp organizers as well. Camp is located next to huge Kirov factory complex, in area where people have public gardens, which are crucial for low-income people to survive. Kirov factory is surrounded with a wall and three rounds of barbed wire, between which armed conscripts are patrolling. Campers have a small picket during 5-6 hours every day in front of movie theater Ekran in center of Zakamsk, in order to raise awareness about the problem and to gather food and money donations for the camp. Due to donations, there has not yet been need to buy food for the camp. During the first two weeks of the camp, activists of Russian indymedia and indyvideo also visited the camp; perm.indymedia.ru is result of their efforts. Hopefully local activists will further maintain it. Indymedia activists also organised movie screenings and training on video activism.

Yet camp has faced almost no repression, only few calls by municipal officials (sometimes presenting themselves as outdoor advertisement agencies or anonymous) demanding to clean area from posters inviting inhabitants to meetings of 9th July and 16th of July. 5th of July Vladimir Anatolevich Lukyanenko from municipal administration threated to halt electrity, water and gas supply of the camp unless posters are removed, not figuring out that camp has no electricity, water or gas supply in the first place. Soldiers also visited camp during first days.

6th of July vice-chief of State Administration of Nature Resources of Perm oblast Dmitry Klein finally agreed to pass to campaigners documents about decision to halt construction of closed burning rack for dismantling missiles, which should be accompanied with stove and storage for hazardous waste. This was after 5 months of struggle and threats to sue Klein to court. According to oral statements of anonymous supporters of protesters who are working inside Kirov factory complex, construction of these objects is still going on, and as a matter of fact burning rack is almost finished already. Since Kirov factory complex is a high-security military object, no participator of campaign has ever been allowed to check if decisions of Administration of Nature Resources are followed, and struggle for openess of information is as crucial as the question about missile dismantling in general. These documents have been scanned and uploaded to Perm campaign indymedia, perm.indymedia.ru

9th of July, camp participators and 300 Zakamsk inhabitants gathered in front of movie theater Ekran in center of Zakamsk suburb, agreeing to make an ultimatum to powers of all levels. Speakers included ecological experts, inhabitants of Zakamsk suburb and former workers of Mashinostroitel and Scientific Institute of Polymeric Materials, both of whom are located inside Kirov factory complex and are participating to missile dismantling project. Perm mayor Arkadi Kamenev and Oleg Chirkunov, which works as temporary Perm oblast governor now when Putin invited former governor and formerly anti-missile Trutnev to be minister of nature resources in his new cabinet, were invited but they did not appear.

In case of refusal to fulfill ultimatum, that means, if governor of Perm oblast O. Chirkunov, governor of Perm A. Kamenev, directors of NPO Iskra, Mashinostroitel and Scientific Institute of Polymeric Materials do not give documents that prove that project of deconstruction of solid fuel ballistic missiles in Perm area is halted, participators of the protest camp declared that they will rely on more radical methods. Participators promised to wait reply until 16th of July. Meeting was finished with a non-legalised march by streets of Zakamsk from movie theater Ekran to dislocation of protest camp in front of walls of Kirov factory. Demonstrators scanned "No to missiles!" , "Give us Trutnev to be dismantled!" , "Missiles away from Perm!" , "Petrovich made a good deal, Zakamsk will turn to a huge morgue!" and "Resistance or death!" . Before meeting, Kirov factory walls were sprayed with slogans "No to missiles!" , "Dismantle Trutnev!" , "Rights are not given, rights are taken!" and others to raise spirits of protesters. During next week, Perm center got its share of protests, when "No to missiles" , "Limousines to deputies, dioxines to Perm inhabitants" and other slogans were sprayed around administrative buildings in the center of the city. A banner "3 days are remaining" (to fulfill our ultimatum) was raised outside parliament of Perm Oblast in Tuesday 13th of July.

14th of July participators of the protest camp organised a performance in front of Perm oblast administration. For a moment, the square in front of the administrative building transformed into a scene of epic battle between good and evil, more exactly, between nature and dangerous factory. Dance of flowers, accompanied by smooth pop music, was disturbed by appearance of Bush and Perm oblast governor Chirkunov. Chirkunov was begging money from Bush, and having already received a pile of green dollars, kept demanding more and more. Soon workers brought in a missile dismantling factory with sign of chemical hazard, and Chirkunov set a missile on fire in the factory. Square was filled with smoke, and rather symbolic nature was coughing and died, while Bush was convincing everybody about safety of the project. Upcoming chair of the current governor, looking to be elected in autumn of 2005, was built on carcass of the nature.

In the evening of 14th of July camp participators and Zakamsk inhabitants got an urgent reminder why project of missile dismantling is so dangerous. A wagon of a train carrying hydrochlorig acid dropped from rails only 400 meters from dislocation of the protest camp. Although this particular train was not going to Kirov but to neighbouring factory complex, the very same rails which are in a horrible condition are to be used for carrying dangerous missiles to Kirov factory, in case dismantling project is to be realised. Pictures of the accident are soon available on  http://perm.indymedia.ru and  http://russia.indymedia.org

Contact of the protest camp:
 Lager_perm@mail.ru
Perm.indymedia.ru
+7-922 242 78 00