Moscow, July 20, 1998

NEW POLITICAL ORGANIZATION HAS BEEN CREATED: "CLUB KHRAMOV - ASSOCIATION FOR LIBERTARIAN REFORMS", THE FIRST RUSSIAN NATIONAL POLITICAL FORMATION OF ANTIPROHIBITIONISTS AND LIBERTARIANS

During the constituent assembly which had passed on July 17, 1998 at National Press Institute and in which have participated more than thirty active members of Transnational Radical Party, Antimilitarist Radical Association (ARA), Radical Antiprohibitionist Coordination (CORA) and Committee of Soldier's Mothers of Russia, new social and political organization has been created: "Club Khramov - Association for Libertarian Reforms".

Participants of the meeting have adopted the statute that defines the aims of the new organization as "realization of the liberal, libertarian and liberist reforms in politics and state government, economics and social life of Russia, defense of personal and civil rights, assertion of freedom, principles of secular state and Rule of Law, the Right to Life and the Life of Right". The Club's statute is the first in Russia statute of a political organization wholly constructed on libertarian principles: a year's span of membership stipulated by payment of the annual membership fee and automatically expiring at the end of a calendar year; possibility of double membership - in the Club and, at the same time, in any other electoral association; impossibility of expulsion from the Club or rejection of a new member.

For the term of one year the Club's statutary bodies were elected. Nikolaj Khramov, Russian Coordinator of the Transnational Radical Party and secretary of the Antimilitarist Radical Association (ARA), has become the President of the Club. Anna Zaytseva was elected to be the Club's Treasurer. Among the other members of Directorate (with total count of 15) are: Lev Levinson, Secretary of Human Rights Chamber by the President of Russian Federation; Ludmila Obraztsova, member of Coordination Council of Committee of Soldier's Mothers of Russia; Archbishop Nikon (Lamekin), head of the True-Orthodox (catacomb) church; Michail Kukobaka, lawyer, former Soviet political prisoner; Nikolaj Gudskov, president of Public Russian Esperanto Movement (PREM); Michail Osadchev, chief of Public Committee for Protection of Freedom of Conscience.

The constituent assembly of the Club have adopted its General Resolution that schedules the following nearest political priorities of new organization: in the course of drug antiprohibitionism - legalization of cannabis, depenalization for personal use of any drugs, controlled distribution of heroin among drug addicts under medical control; in the course of antimilitarist struggle - the immediate adoption of the law on alternative civil service, as well as the urgent abrogation of conscription and the transition to professional armed forces' recruitment; in the course of anticlerical initiatives and the protection of the secular state principles - revision of the new law "On freedom of conscience and religious organizations"; in the course of the struggle for expansion of self-government - introduction of the institute of the public (civil) legislative initiative on the federal level.

The constituent assembly have also adopted the resolution to support the future nomination of the Club's President on supplementary elections of the State Duma's deputy at electoral region #195 (Lublino) on December 6 of this year.