Democrats arrested, beaten
By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Three leaders of the Party of Labour were arrested and savagely beaten as the regime of Boris Yeltsin moved to suppress the democratic opposition.
Around 11 p.m. on October 3, Boris Kagarlitsky, Vladimir
Kondratov and Alexander Segal were arrested near Botanichesky Sad metro station in the northern suburbs of Moscow. They were held in a local police station, and only on the following evening were they allowed to contact relatives.
The three were beaten at regular intervals until they were released after journalists inquired about their welfare.
The Party of Labour is a political group affiliated to the Congress of Democratic Left Forces. Kagarlitsky and Kondratov are deputies to the Moscow City Council, and Segal is press secretary to the chairperson of Russia's largest union body, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR). Both the Party of Labour and the FNPR issued sharp statements condemning Yeltsin's September 21 decree abolishing the Russian parliament.
Kagarlitsky, a 35-year-old sociologist, is well known in the West as the author of widely read books on contemporary Russian society and politics. In recent months he has worked as an adviser to the leadership of the FNPR.
In August 1991 all three were active in opposing the attempted coup against Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. Kondratov was part of a committee which organised the defence of the Moscow City Council building.
For Kagarlitsky as well, there are ironies in the fact that he has been jailed by the Russian government that arose out of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1982 and 1983 he served 13 months in a Soviet prison for his membership in a student dissident organisation.