By Boris Kagarlitsky
MOSCOW — In February the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) celebrated its fifth anniversary. In their commentaries on this event, Moscow's right-wing newspapers showed a striking unanimity: all were full of praise for party leader Gennady Zyuganov and his close associates. In the view of the newspaper Segodnya, the KPRF under Zyuganov had ceased to be communist and had become a social democratic organisation, respecting the new social order and devoted to private property.
Western-style social democracy, however, requires a flourishing western capitalism. Social democracy first arose in western Europe under conditions that included developed democratic institutions, a strong labour movement and extensive room for capital to manoeuvre.
Obviously, social democracy is possible only in the countries of the capitalist "centre", where the ruling class is able to make concessions to the workers because it controls additional resources on the "periphery". Russia is now part of the periphery of world capitalism, and for this very reason, efforts to construct western-style social democracy here have been doomed to failure.
So if the KPRF is not being social-democratised, what is happening to it?
When Zyuganov was elected leader in 1993, most observers were inclined to think that the party would shift abruptly to conservative and nationalist positions. But the congress delegates who voted for Zyuganov saw him as a decisive, combative leader, capable of doing what the other candidate — the moderate, sober-minded Valentin Kuptsov — was not.
The rank-and-file party members wanted action and struggle. The degree to which they were themselves ready to take part in struggle was another question — most of the registered members were of pensionable age.
Zyuganov and Kuptsov managed not only to restore the party's organisational apparatus, but also to sideline rivals who stood to their right and left. The main victims were the radical Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP) of Viktor Anpilov, and Lyudmila Vartazarova's moderate Socialist Party of Workers (SPT). The RKRP lost many of its activists, and the SPT a mass of passive pensioners.
With these additional supporters, the KPRF became able to wage a credible struggle for power.
Zyuganov's strength was thus his "will to power". It was this that united the fragments of the communist movement around him. But behind the striving for power there was neither a clear program, nor theory, nor a mass movement capable of taking power and effecting change spontaneously.
Perhaps sincerely believing that he was saving the party, Zyuganov in October 1993 took his distance from the armed defenders of the Supreme Soviet building. To be sure, he saved the party. What he saved it for is another question.
While the authorities stopped short of forcing the Communist Party underground, they made quite clear that it would have to respect the new rules of the game.
Other left organisations were subjected to much more serious victimisation, and the more radical groups were forced out of legal politics.
The radicals, however, lacked the boldness, the cadres and the resources for illegal struggle. There were not even serious acts of civil disobedience following the bombardment of the parliament building on October 4, 1993. The leaders of the radical opposition saved their lives and freedom, but at the price of political death.
Failing to win seats in the State Duma, and losing their positions in the trade unions and the organs of local self-government, the radical left organisations finished up out of the game.
Meanwhile, Zyuganov's fraction voted for the government's 1994 budget, showed no particular interest in the miners' strikes that broke out in the spring of 1994 and, in short, acted as a loyal "His Majesty's opposition". The authorities, in turn, relaxed their pressure.
Most workers in Russia are now disorganised and dependent on management, and many of them have been sent on forced leave. Consequently, speaking of a labour movement and even of a working class is possible only with serious reservations.
The social base of the KPRF consists not of workers, but of pensioners, managers of former collective farms and bureaucrats who have lost out from liberalisation.
While all these groups are in one degree or another hostile to the authorities, they cannot solve their problems through social and economic change, but only through the redistribution of resources via the state budget. Here we do not have angry masses, but "clients" who, in the Soviet tradition, are ready to put up with substandard treatment in the hope of obtaining state largesse.
If a change of regime is beyond the capabilities of the KPRF, the demand for structural reforms is not being pursued either. The problem lies in the party's specific "clientele". The only way the wants of such a social base can be satisfied is through lobbying; this requires good relations with the government.
Zyuganov's party is thus once again close to power, but in a sense quite different from that of 1993. From the spring of 1994, a solid working relationship grew up between the KPRF and Chernomyrdin's cabinet (all, of course, justified on the basis of the need to support the "best" elements in the government against the "worst").
The right-wing press has hailed this policy as "social democratisation", but the departure from a communist orientation has meant an equally clear break with social democratic ideas. Social democracy is oriented toward structural reforms, while the KPRF has not had — and cannot have — a reformist strategy.
The KPRF's actions might be excused on the basis that the parties in the west that call themselves social democratic have made a clear break with reformism and the workers' movement, going over to a strategy of pure lobbying. In this sense Zyuganov is indeed very close to politicians such as Tony Blair in Britain or Massimo D'Alema in Italy. If Zyuganov is no longer a communist, Blair and D'Alema are no longer social democrats.
Since traditional "communist" ideology cannot serve as a practical guide to action, while social democracy is not a real alternative, Zyuganov has been compelled to offer a third option. This has turned out to be the "ideology of state patriotism".
Patriotism is used to justify a rapprochement with the authorities, while at the same time it permits a stance of opposition with respect to the west. From being a social phenomenon, capitalism has been transformed into a geographical one. Continuity with the Soviet past has been maintained, but at the same time the KPRF has stressed its loyalty to "national entrepreneurs".
By the middle of 1994, the KPRF was not only the sole left party in the parliament, but thanks to the complete absence of an organised extra-parliamentary opposition, was the only serious party in the country.
Paradoxically, the effect was to radicalise the KPRF. Before the 1995 parliamentary elections, the feeling began to spread that however bad Zyuganov's party might be, there was no alternative to it. Support for the KPRF rose dramatically, and many people with radical views joined its ranks. In by-elections for the Duma and for local assemblies, the Communists scored many victories.
These successes encouraged party leaders in the illusion that they had a serious chance of winning power. The KPRF voted against the 1995 budget. There was less talk of patriotism, and more of Marx and Lenin. A program was adopted that included many direct borrowings from Soviet and Russian new leftists of the period 1989-1993. In the party leadership, people appeared who were clearly inclined toward struggle.
The 1995 elections were a triumph for the KPRF, but they nevertheless disproved any hopes that a renewal of the party had taken place. The preparations and the selection of candidates were conducted using pure "apparatus" methods.
Deputies who were suspected of disloyalty to Zyuganov lost their mandates. In various instances the KPRF conducted its campaign so as to ensure that independent leftists would not be elected, even at the price of guaranteeing victory to supporters of Yeltsin and Chernomyrdin.
In the 1996 presidential elections, Yeltsin made clear that democracy was permitted only within certain limits. A parliamentary opposition in a powerless Duma was one thing, but the presidency was something else entirely. A wave of hostile propaganda crashed onto Zyuganov and the KPRF.
Combined with ballot-rigging at the local level, the propaganda assault not only guaranteed victory to Yeltsin, but also showed the KPRF leaders that standing up to the government was not allowed.
After the summer of 1996 the "will to power" found its only permitted expression: rapprochement with the authorities. Once again the KPRF began voting for the budget and supporting "good" ministers against "bad" ones.
The only problem was that such an approach had little to offer the party's "clients", not to speak of the masses of workers. A crisis was ripening within the party.
The KPRF's turn to the right thus provides no grounds for talking of social-democratisation. What is really occurring is far worse. The KPRF is becoming part of the regime, one of the props of the existing order.
But in fulfilling this new role, it is fated to meet with serious opposition from the very social groups and individuals whom it has summoned to its banner.