Below we publish an interview with Alexander Buzgalin, a leader of the Marxist opposition in the CPSU who has expressed his support for the Party of Labour project. In the next issue of IV we will publish an interview with the editor of the Moscow trade union's newspaper, Andrei saye, one of the originators of 9 the project. *
International Viewpoint #214 • October 14, 1991
Leave? Does the possibility of disappearing from political
VieW attract you?
Finally, there are the supporters of the creation of a Party of Labour.
• Why have you decided to support conspirators"
The answer cannot be given in two words. The
CPSU has not been a real party for 60 years. It was no more and no less than the Party of Labour option rather than the organization of a new party that would appear as a successor of the CPSU?
Some members of the coordinating
IN THE last issue of International
Viewpoint we published an appeal for a
Party of Labour issued by a number of well-known socialist personalities in
Moscow. Support for this initiative has also come from a minority of the Marxist
Platform in the CPSU. In the following interview, which appeared in Pravda on
September 20, 1991, Alexander Buzgalin, a founder of the Marxist Platform, talks about this tendency's perspectives.
DOCUMENT
WE are not conspirators" - this was the comment by Dr. A. Buzgalin. "On September 9, the Soviet press agency TASS distributed a report about an illegal meeting of Communists. Pravda, judging by the note in its number of
September
11, has conscientiously avoided spreading this misleading report. I and my colleagues are grateful for this."
• So what in fact happened?
In actual fact, what was taking place was a meeting of the coordinating commajority considered that a new party of
Communists was needed. This current in turn had two groups within it. The first, in my view, inclines towards the centralist positions of A. Prigarin's Communist Ini-
The leader of the others is A.
Kryuchkov. They put the accent democracy and not only on socialist choices and communist perspectives.
A minority ( among them myself) supported the initiative by leaders of the
Socialist Party, anarcho-syndicalists and
Moscow trade unionists for the formation of a Party of Labour. The aims of this organization are the defence of the interests of the wage earners, and the development of producers and territorial self- management.
• How do you see the general situation of the Communist movement today, after the suspension of the activities of the CPSU? Meetings of the Central Committee and the regional and civic committees are suppressed. The apparatus has disintegrated, and the CPSU has disap-
10 peared from sight. Should we accept the ban and remain silent?
one of the most important props of the bureaucratic system. "Ordinary" Communists were nearer to the ordinary citizens than to the party/state nomenklatura. Nor was the CPSU in reality ideologically monolithic. You could find everything there, trom
Nina Andreeva [a hardline neo-Stalinist] to Boris
Yeltsin. In crisis both neo-
Stalinists and liberal democrats have left the party.
The collapse of the apparatus has paralyzed the CPSU. Now the paralysis is passing. The fingers and toes of the CPSU are beginning to stir, and, in the spirit of the times claim the right to absolute independence and to go their
Firstly, there has already appeared the
Democratic Party of Communists of Russia (DPKR), with the Vice-President as its leader. In accord with the thinking of its organizers, this party in essence aspires neither to be Communist nor even social democrat and will become a traditional liberal democratic organization.
Apart from this, the DPKR can become a centre of attraction for careerists.
Then there is the diametrically opposite tendency of conservatives (the Communist Initiative), who in fact want to recreate the old centralized structures in unreconstructed form, as well as the neo-
Stalinists of Yedinstvo ("Unity").