Beware! The mega-post in several big chunks is coming! ;-)

(The English translation has been provided by my sister, Elena Izyumenko, to whom I’m very grateful!)

The previous few weeks were intense green in color. It started early in the Saturday morning (Dec. 2), when me and Tomas went to the Green Party’s office. We were going to attend the courses organized for new party members. There were about ten participants besides us. To my own surprise, I didn’t have to bother Tomas much about the translation – owing to the course guide Lise Nordin’s (of course, a good acquaintance of Tomas! :-)) clearly understandable speech. I understood almost everything (well, like 70%—80%, maybe) and even dared to make remarks in Swedish from time to time. After a short breakfast and introduction of all the participants (they came not only from Lund, but from nearby cities and towns as well) we dived into the green political stuff…

Lise started the course with presentation of the green ideology: history, thinkers, main landmarks of development, today’s situation, positioning of the Green parties (Sweden’s Miljöpartiet De Gröna in particular) in politics among the left, right, center, green and “gray” parties and movements. A great deal of what we had been learning during the last Environmental Governance course has suddenly came out again… Abstract theories reconnected with political reality; it became clear how it was working in real life, and what it was needed for… After that Ulf Holm (#1 on the Skåne electoral list from the Green Party in last September’s elections; he was re-elected as a member of the national parliament of Sweden, Riksdag) made his presentation for us. Ulf told us about the history of the Miljöpartiet: its emergence, formation, development and reforming, then he told about the situation after the recent elections.

Then we had a dinner – a treat from MP for its new members. There was a choice between European, Chinese and Indian restaurants, I equally liked the latter two. So me, Tomas, Zeynep, Robban, and Ruthger found ourselves in the Chinese place. Before I had been passing by it often and wondering, what it was like inside. It turned out to be very nice, tasty and even not really expensive (if I’ll have to pay from my own pocket in the future ;-)). Roasted rice with vegetables, roasted vegetables and cashew with spices, plain rice, orange juice, mmm… Thanks to our new friends Robban and Ruthger and my “old” (but young! ;-)) friends Zeynep and Tomas, the dinner was filled with interesting discussions (we even got back to the office a little late)!

It was even more interesting at the afternoon presentations. Ulf spoke again at first, he told us about the actual issues of the Swedish national politics and the Miljöpartiet’s stances in them. One of the most interesting things I’ve heard there was this: ‘The climate policy should determine the financial policy (including the national budget)’ and ‘The struggle against climate change is the most important task!’. Wow, impressive! It would be great if all parties and governments of other nations followed this!.. It was a little difficult for me to understand Swedish sometimes, so I was switching my attention between Ulf and Tomas; the latter was zealously translating into English for Zeynep.

And then there was a brilliant presentation of Lotta Hedström, the member of the Riksdag and the Miljöpartiet’s speaker/representative (or språkrör in Swedish) in the past. Here I want to digress and describe who are those språkrör. Actually I’m not sure how to translate properly this Swedish word which consists of two parts, each of which separately means ‘speech’ and ‘voice’. The case is that there is no leaders and chair/wo/men in this party, but there are something like ‘representatives’ (they always come in duo: a woman and a man), whose task is not to lead the party and not to ‘make politics’, but to bring expectations of ordinary members to the highest political level (that’s Riksdag) and to be the ‘face’ and the ‘voice’ of the party. Their standard term is four years, but their mandate should be confirmed by voting at party congresses every year (it means that if people, the ordinary party members, are not satisfied with the språkrör’s work, they may vote for her or him to quit before the term finishes). It is also forbidden to be a språkrör for more than a fixed number of terms in succession (it is 2 or 3 now, I’m not sure). The current speakers/representatives are Maria and Peter, and now they’ve just had their first four-year term coming to an end). Thanks to this rotation system a lot of party members manage to serve as språkrör during their life in the Miljöpartiet.

Oh yes, so despite having her hair white, Lotta is still a very active politician, and she is also very radical (that’s why she and Tomas are good friends). Her speech was about fundamental green ideology (how it is nowadays) and it inspired me a lot.

I remember, how I started to think about the Green party for the first time, when I started reading Pacific Edge by Kim Stanley Robinson. I’ve studied an experience and activities of the Green parties all over the world (my favorite ones are Swedish, New Zealand and German; and from not long ago a Canadian one, witch started to give signs of hopes with the election of its new leader, Elizabeth May). I remember, how enthusiastically I accepted the decision of the Russian environmental movement to create its own independent Green party. I tried to participate in this process, I even was a delegate to the congress, wrote a part of their political party program… But personal ambitions, authoritarian and backstage methods of struggle for power (as if green politics was limited to the struggle for power!), Soviet-style of discussions with opponents – all of these poisoned my enthusiasm. I regarded politicians and politics in general with great suspicion before (my work at Greenpeace + anarchism + experience of the Russian politics = it was difficult to avoid cynicism, you see), but, oh boy, a short experience of working and communicating with our “green” politicians in Russia has almost killed my interest in Green parties in general and for good. Well, I want to hope that our very own Green Alternative (GROZA) made up of young Russian political greens could one day become the first real and independent Green party in the history of Russia…

To be continued…