27.07.1995

One foot in the grave

A RECENT interview with Gennadiy Zyuganov, reputed leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, in the newspaper Kommersant-Daily (July 6) throws light on what now passes for ‘communism’ in Russia. The CPRF claims 500,000 members and is to contest the forthcoming elections for the State Duma.

According to Zyuganov, the collapse of the Soviet Union was purely the action of “criminals” in the higher echelons of the Communist Party/state bureaucracy, who suddenly “betrayed their country, allies, people, ideas”. Up until this near biblical ‘fall’, Zyuganov believes that the CPSU had had the “world’s best ideas of humanism, fraternity and justice”. Do we presume that JV Stalin’s abolition of the Comintern in 1943, his entire doctrine of ‘socialism/communism in one country’, was an example of the CPSU upholding the “best ideas” of humanity?

True to the narrow, parochial horizons of Russian ‘communism’, Zyuganov is concerned that inflation and high taxation are not conducive to a healthy business climate, and reassured the bourgeoisie that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation favoured a “proper balance between different forms of ownership.”

Zyuganov is inspired by the born-again social democrats in Eastern Europe, but adds a national chauvinist caveat: social democracy was all well and good for non-Russians, but in Russia “political movements had to take account of national, economic and cultural traditions”. On this theme, he added that the CPFR had not lost all hope of working with “patriots” like Rutskoy and hinted that alliances with all manner of  “patriotic” forces, such as the ‘Our Home is Russia’ bloc in the Duma and Spiritual Legacy (a loose association of intellectuals), was the way forward for ‘communists’.

This parody of communism was also on show at the 30th Congress of the Union of Communist Parties-Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU), which was held in Moscow July 1-2. The delegates at the Congress claimed to represent over 1,300,000 people. The largest parties present were those operating in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Tajikstan, Georgia, Belarus and Armenia.

The bulk of delegates’ speeches dwelt on the “distressing” state to which a “once prosperous and healthy society” has been reduced and a significant minority hankered for the “immediate restoration of the Soviet Union”. The majority advocated a “more realistic” approach - ie, the Zyuganov line.

The so-called communist ‘hardliners’ are, in reality, no better. Nina Andrey-eva’s All Union Bolshevik Communist Party aims at “restoring the socialist fatherland and the Soviet Union.”

Genuine revolutionaries do not gaze nostalgically into the past, seeing liberation in history - the ‘back to the future’ approach of Andreyeva and Zyuganov. Only through ruthless criticism from a Leninist perspective can the masses in the former Soviet Union really liberate themselves.

Frank Vincent