RUSSIA: The elections, the crisis of the CP and the new left

December 10, 2003
Issue 

BY BORIS KAGARLITSKY

MOSCOW — A year ago, political life in Russia was like a stagnant swamp. President Vladimir Putin's victory in the presidential election had solved none of the country's problems, while providing ample demonstration that looking for solutions within the existing political set-up was pointless.

The "official" Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) was fully reconciled to the fact that it would not be allowed to take power. The well-known journalist Anatoly Baranov observed that the KPRF was not even a party, but a state-licensed monopoly charged with providing opposition services to the population. Nor can the KPRF be described as left-wing in any but a highly conditional sense.

While declaiming in ritual fashion about the miseries of the population, the KPRF leaders have no inclination to summon anyone to struggle. Instead of socialism, they speak of "great-power patriotism", and view Russia's main problem as the excessive number of Jews among the country's capitalist oligarchs. This is all strikingly reminiscent of fascist propaganda.

Even in repeating the slogans of Russian nationalism and of anti-Jewish pogroms, the KPRF leaders have managed to seem doleful and ritualistic.

The party chiefs are a group of apolitical, ageing men; their hopes are first of all to serve out their time in a sham parliament formed on the basis of rigged results, and then to retire on generous pensions.

Unfortunately for these people, by the middle of Putin's first term in office his team had decided to recast the political landscape. The new people who had taken over the Kremlin following the departure of Boris Yeltsin were experiencing acute frustration. Several years had gone by, and they had not managed to steal anything of consequence. The time had come for a redistribution of property.

The oligarchs who had stolen factories and oil wells from the population would have to share some of their booty with the new team, which had been too late to catch the first wave of privatisation.

There was, of course, no question of nationalising property or of handing it over to the population. Nevertheless, the squabbling between the oligarchs of the first and second waves was destabilising the political space.

Managing democracy

As the members of Putin's team began redistributing the plunder, they decided to start tightening the screws. Yeltsin had preferred to rule through the chaotic manipulation of a multitude of warring groups.

Putin, by contrast, understands the managing of democracy in strikingly simple terms. The struggle between parties is reduced to competition for the sympathy of a single voter — the president. The number of seats a party gets to hold in parliament corresponds to the number of points scored in this contest.

Trying to retain the remnants of its independence, the KPRF would not be drawn into this game. And so, the Communists were stripped of their posts in the Duma committees.

The scale of the electoral fraud increased dramatically, and provincial governors who earlier had been considered "red" hurriedly crossed over to the presidential camp.

However, the oligarchs who had lost favour with Putin began making generous financial contributions to the KPRF, seeing it as a defender against presidential arbitrariness.

Even after receiving money, unfortunately, the KPRF was in no state to resist the Kremlin. The party proved incapable of political struggle. Worse still, it had lost its usual supporters — apolitical old people pining for Soviet times, or young careerists hoping for a warm and not too burdensome post in a regional parliament or the federal Duma, where they could serve out their time until collecting a handsome pension.

Society moving left

Russian society is moving to the left, as is shown both by surveys of public opinion and by the growing print-runs for translations of radical texts, from the works of Noam Chomsky and Naomi Klein to those of Herbert Marcuse and Georgy Lukacs.

The KPRF, with its monopoly of opposition, has been the main obstacle to the development of the left movement in Russia. The party regularly receives 25-30% of votes, a very impressive result, but surveys show that as many as 60% of people in Russia espouse left-wing values.

Left-wing parties in Europe and Latin America find most of their support in large industrial cities and in university centres, while the KPRF receives most of its backing in the countryside and in small towns. The international left is traditionally strong among young people, while the KPRF puts its stake on pensioners. The left normally rests on workers and on the broad layers of the intelligentsia (people like health workers and teachers), while these groups firmly reject the KPRF.

Despite the spread of left-wing moods among young people, and especially students, finding young people to fill the ranks of the KPRF remains an unsolved problem, since joining the party is something that young leftists simply will not do.

Ideologically committed leftists can be found almost anywhere — in the environmental movement, in human rights organisations, and in Trotskyist groups, but not in the KPRF.

In some voters, the KPRF arouses memories of Stalinist repression, while other people are alienated by the party's nationalist rhetoric. For large numbers, the KPRF is too moderate, and most importantly, ineffectual.

The left-wing sectors of the population tend not to vote at all, or as is possible in Russia, to record a vote against all the candidates. The increasing numbers of non-voters, and of those who reject all the candidates, is a reflection not just of dissatisfaction with the political system and with electoral fraud, but also of the fact that the leftward shift that has been observed in the country has found no expression on the political level.

KPRF 'modernisation'

Naturally, the leaders of the KPRF have concluded that "modernisation" is essential. Their utterances, which even in the past were not noted for their logic, have become completely post-modern. To give the party a new face, the "political technologist" Ilya Ponomarev was invited in; Ponomarev then set about desperately trying to repair the KPRF's image.

The party was supposed to become young, left-wing, modern, radical, fit to appear at the European Social Forum and attractive to voters who had grown tired of constant deceptions.

The efforts of Ponomarev and his team, however, shattered on the bankruptcy of the party's bureaucratic structures. All talk of giving the party a new face was stilled at the sight of the dismal group of people with whom the KPRF went into the parliamentary elections, to be held on December 7.

A blatant contradiction had appeared. On the one hand, there was Ponomarev, speaking of joint actions with anti-globalists, and young party members discussing the ideas of the Frankfurt School with Trotskyist contemporaries. On the other hand, there was the party slate, featuring in second place the name of former Krasnodar governor "Papa" Kondratenko, renowned for his fiery speeches against Jews, and for his attempts to oust the Meshety Turks from the territory under his control.

There were fresh stirrings in the stagnant swamp of party life. The creatures that had crawled out into the sunlight, however, were far from attractive. Fights began erupting between the groups within the KPRF. Ideological differences were less important than the question of who would finish up with money. Arguments about the sale of positions on the party slate became commonplace, with the average price of an "electable" spot exceeding a million dollars.

Nevertheless, the fact that the KPRF was coming apart placed the independent left in a difficult position. Earlier, it had been possible simply to criticise the opportunism and crude post-modernism of the party leaders. Now, leftists had to react somehow to the "dialogue" and "modernisation" that had been proclaimed within the KPRF.

Golitsyno forum

On June 20-22 the first Future of the Left forum took place in the town of Golitsyno, near Moscow, lending impetus to the process of political regroupment. The gathering aroused a good deal of enthusiasm. More than 130 people attended, representing both the new left and "renovators" from the KPRF.

The common ground that was observed was described by the left social democrat Viktor Militarev as the "Golitsyno consensus". The participants joined in condemning authoritarianism and totalitarianism, recognising democracy as a fundamental value. They declared that renewal needed to be carried out on anti-capitalist and socialist principles.

The left would have to revive internationalism, and restore the working-class character of its politics. Unity, meanwhile, presupposed respect for differences; the optimal form of unification would be an alliance or united front that allowed different tendencies to coexist. This political idyll, however, has not come to pass.

In November, inspired by the Golitsyno success, the left gathered for a second forum, but no agreement was achieved. The problem lies not only in ideological disagreements (and at times, a lack of elementary political culture), but also in the weakness of the movement at the grass-roots level.

Instead of forging links with the workers' movement, leftists still prefer to take part in pointless electoral contests whose outcomes are rigged in any case. The authorities make no secret of the fact that they regard elections as tools for punishing the opposition. Any and all means will be used, including the falsification of results. Meanwhile, the KPRF meekly awaits its fate.

All the same, there is cause for optimism. The present crisis is opening up prospects for the formation of a new left movement, free of nationalist demagogy, cowardice and provincialism. These opportunities, of course, will only be exploited if the left devotes less attention to pseudo-parliamentary scheming and more to genuine work among its social base.

From Green Left Weekly, December 10, 2003.
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