11.07.1996

Yeltsin win brings sigh of relief

The second round of the Russian presidential elections took place on July 3. Once more the electorate of the largest country on earth went to the polls, this time to vote for either of two candidates - the incumbent president, Boris Yeltsin, or the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Gennady Zyuganov.

The election campaign for the second round was fairly lacklustre - Yeltsin and his followers moved swiftly to try and win over those who had voted for candidates defeated in the first round, especially the third placed general Aleksandr Lebed. Zyuganov tried to do the same, but his campaign was much less energetic than in the first round. Perhaps coming second in the first round inflicted a critical blow on his morale. Or perhaps Zyuganov was trying to come second all the time, hoping to inherit the Russian earth when Yeltsin finally shuffles off his mortal or political coil. Neither explanation is totally satisfactory, however.

Zyuganov did have a lucky break towards the end of the campaign. Yeltsin’s state of health was pretty appalling in 1995 but he seemed to be coping well enough in the first round of the election. However, in the latter days of the second round he began to disappear mysteriously, perhaps to have his dicky liver changed. This led to a flurry of speculation, especially in the western media. In the end it seems to have had little impact on Yeltsin’s vote, perhaps because most of the Russian media ignored or under-reported the Russian president’s unexplained absences.

When the votes were counted, Yeltsin was credited with 53.7% while Zyuganov had 40.4%. Even though Zyuganov won about 30 million votes in a country with a total population of 148 million, there has been the predictable flurry of comment about the ‘death of communism’ in the western media, not least the BBC. This is of course nonsense. Still, the issue requires closer examination.

Zyuganov did not stand on a communist platform. He was at the head of the ‘popular-patriotic bloc’ which encompassed not only the CPRF and smaller communist groupings, but also many other organisations, many of them of a more or less nationalist flavour. Zyuganov’s supporters showed a good deal of political diversity, not least in election broadcasts made by them in the media. For example, a fairly well-known playwright urged a vote for Zyuganov on the grounds that he was a “social democrat” rather than a communist. There is an element of truth here - Zyuganov’s public pronouncements are closer to social democracy than communism and they are blissfully devoid of any trace of revolutionary sentiment. Russian nationalism is a more consistent theme in his writing.

Nonetheless, Zyuganov heads a party that has the word ‘communist’ in its name, and in politics appearance can count as much as reality. Though communists might realise ‘where the crayfish sleep in the winter’, most consumers of the bourgeois media do not. The power-brokers in the west were perfectly unabashed in their support for Yeltsin. In fact, from their point of view Zyuganov’s nationalism would be just as much a source of concern as his alleged communism. Capitalism would not necessarily have found president Zyuganov impossible to cope with, but president Yeltsin is a safer bet for them.

Where now? Well, the Yeltsin supporters are currently convulsed with a wave of corruption allegations, especially in the defence ministry, where military conscript labour has been used, like convict labour, to line the pockets of various brass hats, to build them summer residences and so on. On July 9 with the election over, the Chechen war started up again, but then again it never went away. As for Zyuganov, he has accepted defeat gracefully enough, though he could face challenges from within the bloc he formed. There will probably be something of a lull in Russian politics until the autumn, when the extra spending Yeltsin relied on to buy votes begins to work through into other parts of the economy to create inflation, and possibly unrest.

Andrew MacKay