08.02.1996

Russian elections: for or against capitalism?

Communist press

Socialist Worker told its readers:

“There is nothing to celebrate in the increased support for the Communist Party. The Russian Communist Party (CPRF) is not leftwing. Its leader, Gennady Zyvganov, is an admirer of both Stalin and the Tsar. The party has been prepared to work in alliances with Zhirinovsky’s fascists. The Soviet regime was the opposite to genuine socialism. It was a ruthless state capitalist order, which exploited workers every bit as brutally as bosses in the west. So why have the communists, driven out in 1991, gained such popularity in Russia? The answer lies in the failure of market reforms ... Although the CP played on discontent with the market reforms during the election, it is not opposed to privatisation and the market.”

The New Communist Party is rather more upbeat on the whole affair. It told readers of the New Worker: “Workers across Russia showed what they think of capitalism by voting for communist candidates ... Millions trudged through snowdrifts and bitter cold to vote for candidates identified with socialism and the Soviet Union.”

Significantly, the NCP, unlike the SWP, mentioned the campaign of the Communist Workers of Russia (CWR) which, we are told, “stands for the complete restoration of socialism. Despite being denied all access on television, the CWR was in sight of 5% of the vote required for parliamentary representation.”

Militant also chose not to mention the CWR. Its reporter from Moscow wrote:

“All the parties in the election in reality supported capitalist ‘reform’, even the CP. Parties differed on the pace and extent of reform. President Yeltsin’s economic policies have been refuted but no clear alternative was put forward ... the interests of the neo-liberals have merged with those of the old nomenklatura bureaucracy which once formed the social basis of the Stalinist regime.”

By way of contrast, the International Leninist Workers Party is even more heartened than the NCP. It argues:

“So now the trend is towards voting for communism again - to the total humiliation of Western anti-communist propaganda.

“Communist societies were supposed to be the most deprived hell-holes on earth which no one would ever vote for given a choice in ‘free elections’. But now that the former Soviet Union has been foisted with this sick-joke ‘democracy’ system, it is communism which has become the overwhelming choice.”

Julian Jake