THE GENERAL MOTION OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY OF "CLUB KHRAMOV - ASSOCIATION FOR LIBERTARIAN REFORMS"

Moscow, July 17, 1998

We, citizens of Russia, participating in civil battles of the Radical Party and the Antimilitarist Radical Association for freedom, Rule of Law, for liberal and libertarian reforms, against militarism and prohibitionism of drugs, for absolute priority of the personal rights, for assertion of the principle of the Right to Life and the Life of Right, being guided by the methods of non-violence inspired by Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King,

have made the decision to create - for the first time in our country - the Ghandian nonviolent, democratic, liberal, libertarian, laicist, antimilitarist, antiprohibitionist, antipartycratic, antiauthoritarian, anticlerical Russian national political organization: "Club Khramov - Association for Libertarian Reforms".

We are setting ourselves a task of achieving the particular reforms of legislation in Russia, reforms that will ensure the priority of personal and civil rights, the triumph of the secular principles and principles of Rule of Law, maximum freedom limited only by freedom of other people, maximum participation of citizens in state government on principles of the direct democracy, minimum interference of State into personal, social and economic life. We reject statism: the State is a service, and it should not be obtrusive.

Establishing new Russian political association, we hope that it will help to crystallize and to consolidate in Russian society "the fourth force" relying on ordinary citizens who are tired of the everyday political, economic, information and criminal violence, who can't find in any of the existing Russian political parties the force that expresses their interests and asserts their rights - whether the matter is in the general violent call-up to the rotten and fatally dangerous Russian army, or in the repressive policy on drugs that promotes incomparable prosperity of drug addiction and brings the whole generation of young Russians into authority of the police-and-drug mafia.

We consider today the problem of fighting against drug addiction (but not against drug addicts!) as one of the key problems in the world and in our country.

The Constituent Assembly of the Club declares its support to the antiprohibitionist campaigns and initiatives of Transnational Radical Party, taking the obligation to give it concrete expression and support at national and regional levels. We demand from Russian politicians and statesmen the denial of the criminal policy of drug prohibitionism in favour of the pragmatical approach, in the name of the priority of personal responsibility and the freedom of choice, in the name of personal rights, including the right of drug addicted citizens to receive medical treatment and the right of physicians to have therapeutic freedom.

As the prime tasks in this regard we confirm the necessity: to legalize the production, sale and use of cannabis and its derivatives; to eliminate criminal and administrative punishment for personal use of any substances and the related acts (purchase, possession, transportation without the purpose of sales); to spread over Russia the Swiss experience of prescription of heroin to drug addicts under the medical control in dispensary conditions, that already have proven itself to be positive; to update or denounce the UN international conventions on drugs of 1961, 1971 and 1988.

We welcome the first particular step in this direction: the successful completion of the initiative of Radical Party and several Russian parliamentarians to collect the signatures of 95 deputies who represent all the parliamentary groups of the State Duma without exception, under interrogation to the Constitutional Court that asks whether the federal law on drugs is in accordance with Constitution. We declare our determination to fight for the abrogation or the antiprohibitionist revision of this law that is advantageous only to the drug mafia and the "anti-drug bureaucracy" who share the common interests, as well as for entering the appropriate amendments into the Criminal Code and the Code of Administrative Offences.

We declare our devotion to the antimilitarist struggle started in Russia by the Radical Party in late 1980s and continued by the Antimilitarist Radical Association. We state ourselves the resolute opponents to the conscription that is, in our opinion, not compatible neither with principles of freedom and human rights, nor with military and political reality of the end of the second millennium. We believe that only the free people can effectively protect their freedom and principles that they're devoted to.

As very first and necessary step we consider the urgent adoption of the federal law on alternative civilian service, foreseen by the Constitution and already approved by the Parliament in first reading in December 1994, confirming the position declared by ARA in 1996: "Abrogation of conscription since 2000, alternative civilian service - immediately".

We declare our support to the struggle of thousands of Russians who refuse the military service on reasons of conscience and, following the Constitution, demand the realization of their right to replace the military service with an alternative civilian one. We are determined to promote the expansion of the mass nonviolent "civil obedience campaign" to the Constitution, we call on all the Russians of the call-up age to join this campaign by declaring their conscientious objection and thus moving the center point of the struggle into thousands and dozens of thousands of judicial halls all over the Russia.

We are disappointed in a maximum degree by the obstructive position of leaders of the State Duma that reflects an aspiration of militarist forces in Parliament and Government not to permit the adoption of the law which is vitally important for millions of young Russians and their relatives, as well as for the progressive military reform in Russia. Concerning this, we declare the start of preparation, together with ARA, of the wide nonviolent action in Ghandi style: "Satyagraha", the mass hunger strike for dialogue between citizens and Duma's leaders, with the purpose of the soonest introduction of the proposed law on alternative civilian service in its second reading.

Considering the outlook of fighting for the freedom of conscience and the secular state in Russia, we express our extreme anxiety about the offence of the civil rights and the principles of secular state from the freedom's enemies who have created an orthodox-bolshevist alliance in order to restore the governing state ideology, suppress the opposite thoughts, establish the clerical regime under the accompaniment of exaggerated "anti-sectarianist" hysteria and, finally, to assert the mercenary interests of leaders of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC). On this matter we declare our obligation to open a new front of the anticlerical, secular, civil, non-violent struggle against the suppression of the religious opposition in Russia, against the encroachments on principle of separation of church from the state and school from the church, against the anticonstitutional privileges of the ROC and its attempts to become the part of the state machinery. In particular, we are going to achieve the abrogation or revision

of the reactionary, antiliberal and, in the end, antireligious law called "On the freedom of conscience and the religious associations".

We also call on all the laicist, liberal, socialist forces in Russian society to keep vigilance regarding the possible offence of the women's rights from the clerical forces who demand the legislative prohibition of an abortion.

Being the supporters of the maximum participation of each and every citizen in state government, we call on the parliamentarians and the President of Russia to amend the Constitution in order to ensure - by analogy with several European democracies - the right of the legislative initiative directly to the citizens who, as it stated in law, deliver their signatures (50 thousand, for instance) in favour of some legislative proposal, which, in this case, is compulsory for the Parliament to be considered. The similar request we address to the deputies of the legislative institutions and the heads of the executive power in the parts of the Federation. We consider this right of the popular legislative initiative not less important than the right of citizens to adopt or reject the laws independently on referendum.

We declare our non-ideological choice as a matter of principle: we are the "party" of the concrete initiatives, concrete campaigns, concrete reforms. We not only call on to these, but we also take the particular obligations on organization of the wide civil campaigns. In this sense we declare our absolute openness and readiness for cooperation, whether on single campaigns or on wide range of problems, with any political forces, any parties, any politicians, with deputies from any parliamentary groups.

Founding today "Club Khramov - Association for Libertarian Reforms", we are calling all the friends of freedom, opponents of the militarism and the drug prohibitionism, human rights activists, liberals and libertarians all over the country to support, to join and to participate: our aim is creation of the wide all-Russian political movement for libertarian reforms that relies on participation of civil activists.

Now we are "party of active minority". But nevertheless we take the courage to affirm that we represent the interests of considerable majority of the Russian citizens. This is exactly what will give us strength in our civil battles for freedom, for the Right to Life and the Life of Right.