Whatever happened to the Soviet
Communist Party?
Yeltsin shows his teeth
RUSSIAN president Boris Yeltsin's botched attempt to impose a state of emergency on the rebel
Checheno-Ingush autonomous republic in the second week of November shows two things: firstly
USSR
THE ONCE all-powerful Communist Party of the Soviet Union that the "democrat" Yeltsin, like his
Stalinist predecessors, is ready to
(CPSU) was formally banned by a decree from Russian use force as the means of first resort president Boris Yeltsin on November 6, 1991. However, in to preserve the unity of the state.
reality its structures had already been dissolved by a fusillade
Secondly, and following the same of decrees from Yeltsin and Gorbachev on August 23-24, pattern as the crumbling of the conimmediately after the failed conservative coup.
servative coup in August, that he does not dispose of the means to
It took two months before any of the currents originating in impose his will. The Chechen prothe CPSU could absorb the shock and gather force to take new independence forces simply ignored initiatives in public. However, on October 26-27 several
Yeltsin's decrees, while the Russian parliament over-ruled his decisions.
conferences of former Communists took place in Moscow.
At the same time it became clear that Yeltsin does not have control of the state repressive apparatus. His minister of the interior, the man who would be in charge of any attempt to suppress the Chechen rebellion, P.
Barannikov, stated that both he and
Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to resolve the conflict by political, not military means.
In the minds of bourgeois commentators, Yeltsin's humiliation over
Chechen-Ingushia raises doubts about his ability to force through drastic pro-market economic reforms.
Gorbachev's support for political and economic pressure on the Chechens as an alternative to direct military force, meanwhile, is part of a bid to regain ground in his contest with Yeltsin over who is most worthy of the support of the West.
Yeltsin's drive to re-establish a strong state in Russia will continue.
Parties that opposed him on the
Chechen question have split, with pro-Yeltsin factions breaking away.
His vice-president, ex-Communist
General Rutskoy ( see the following article), is known as a Great Russian nationalist.
According to a Yeltsin aide, a successful breakaway by Chechen-
Ingushia foreshadows "the collapse of Russia". Conflicts between the
Russian government and the many non-Russian peoples under its rule can be expected to grow.
Resistance to repressive solutions to these conflicts will become central to the struggle to check Yeltsin's drive to establish a strong state able to push through draconian economic reforms. *
POUL FUNDER LARSEN
HE participants at the first congress of the Democratic Party of Russian Communists, headed by Yeltsin's vice-president, Alexander Rutskoy, met in the House of Cinema, while more than 300 delegates attended the founding conference of a Party of Left Forces, called for by, among others, former dissident Roy Medvedev — in the House of Culture of the Kompressor factory. The same weekend a smaller group of Communists in Support of a Party of Labour also held their first meeting.
Meanwhile attempts to refound the CPSU on the basis of a conservative programme are proliferating — with several competing projects being put forward by neo-Stalinist and "traditionalist" currents.
After the decreed "suspension of the activities of the CPSU" and the so-called "nationalization" of its property, the party — and what was left of its leadership — found itself in a state of utter bewilderment and rapid disintegration. It was only on September 5 (more than two weeks after the coup) that the Central Committee leadership managed to convene its first meeting. And even this meting did not issue any political guidelines for activists: "At the weekly meetings of the CC secretariat, the only problems being discussed are those linked to the creation of jobs [for former party work-
This is an indication of the profound crisis which gripped the CPSU even before the coup as a consequence of the break-down of the traditional bureaucratfor the management of Soviet society. In this uneven process, at least until the coup, party committees retained considerable influence at local and regional level, while the central party apparatus was politically side-lined in the struggle for power within the bureaucracy — with, for example, the once mighty Politburo being reduced to a second-rate consultative body after the CPSU's 28th Congress in July 1990.
This shift in the relationship of forces within the bureaucracy, and the advent of a democratic movement (increasingly dominated by the liberals), resulted in the weakening of the CPSU's position through the loss of influence and members, but also in growing pluralism inside the party.
Open challenges to leadership
In the run-up to the 28th Congress, for the first time in decades, platforms openly challenging the line of the party leadership were formed. The emergence of the Democratic Platform - primarily supported by liberal intellectuals, but with a few left wingers joining in — was a reflection within the party of the broad democratic movement in society as a whole. Meanwhile the Marxist Platform, initiated by a group of Marxist intellectuals in Moscow, went a step further than the general demands for a democratization of the party and society, attacking the predominantly liberal economic orientation nurtured by leading layers of the nomenklatura?. Both of these opposition platforms contained different political tendencies — the 1. Kommersant, September 16, 1991. 2. "Nomenklatura" is the Russian term used to describe the holders of the country's top jobs, occupan-
Cly or which was in the gif of the CPU's ruling cir. 3
International Viewpoint #217 • November 25, 1991
USSR Democratic Platform various brands of liberals and social democrats; the Marxist Platform both genuine socialists promoting self-managed socialism and more conservative currents.
However, neither of the two platforms was able to win a significant share of the delegates to the 28th Congress, which was as much as ever a congress of the apparatchiks. Following the congress several leaders of the Democratic Platform — including former spokesperson Vladimir Lysenko and the former head of the Higher Party School, Shostakovsky — went on to form the Republican Party, situating itself on the "moderate right" of Soviet politics.
But this initiative failed to attract substantial support among either the real leaders or the "democrats" (such as Yeltsin or Popov), who thought the formation of a bourgeois opposition party premature, or among broad layers of party members.
Broad front of democratic forces
The remains of the Democratic Platform tried to create a broader alliance of democratic "non-liberal" forces within the CPSU through the formation of a Democratic Movement. of Communists. was set up in November 1990 at a joint conference with some other currents — Marxism 21, Young Communists and the
But it remained largely an initiative on paper, since it was not based on any coherent programme of opposition to the party leadership and did not offer a pole of attraction to rank-and-file Communists, who remained throughout the whole period passive in front of the faltering increasingly pro-liberal policies of the leadership and the mounting social crisis.
The Marxist Platform, for its part, found itself paralyzed at several key moments because of the internal differences between its conservative and democratic wings.
After the 28th Congress, the decline in the CPU's membership accelerated. At the CC plenary meeting in July this year, the last before the coup, Gorbachev gave the following figures: "By July 1, there were - according to preliminary statement - 15 million members of the CPSU; the same number as in 1973. In a year and a hall, the membership nas dropped by 4.2 million people."4 The decline was especially steep in the non-Russian republics suffering from the centralist policies of the party/state leadership - provoking splits in many of the republican Communist parties — but also quite strong in a series of industrial regions of Russia hard hit by the social crisis.
It is highly likely that the real drop in membership was even more dramatic than Gorbachev admitted; in the first quarter of
41991, 1.3 million members did not pay
their dues — a sign of growing demoralization in the party ranks. Over the past year the party press has also been cut back, with the run of the central party daily, Pravda, being cut from 10 million copies a day to around 3 million.
Shortly before the coup, the Yeltsinites lashed out against one of the CPU's Cornerstones, prohibiting its organizations in the workplaces. This was an attack on the party, but also on the right to organize any kind of political activity in the workplace. "The desire to remove the political strug gle from the enterprises does not fit very well with the Russian president's professed democratism. On the other hand, considering the stifling of the work collective councils and the company character of the trade unions, this step gives even more arbitrary power to the management. Despite the conservatism, weakness and at times even fictitious nature of the primary organizations of the CPSU, some of them... in conditions of growing crisis could become centres for the crys tallization of protest in the work collectives. The attempts to prevent this, along with the desire to undermine the basis of the CPSU, were the basic motives of the
The rapidly progressing disintegration of the CPSU was accompanied by ever more fierce and open faction fights among the extremely disparate interests represented within the party — with politexpressions ranging from Stalinism to free market liberalism.
This in turn rendered the party increas ingly obsolete, even as a means of political expression, for leading layers of the nomenklatura, which in the present situation (even before the coup) had no interest in sticking to the ideological legacy of
Elite deserts Communist
Party
A whole layer of the elite (symbolized by figures such as Shevardnadze, Yakovlev and Volsky) was breaking away — moving towards the Movement for Democratic Reform founded at the start of July. A final attempt to turn the CPSU into a parliamentary party on a reformist basis was at the very heart of the new draft party programme presented by Gorbachev to the July plenary meeting of the CC after protracted discussions in the top echelons of the party (it was allegedly redrafted eight times).
The social democratic edge of the draft programme came in for criticism at the CC meeting (for example, from Leningrad party boss Boris Gidaspov and Andrei Prigarin of the Marxist Platform), but it was undoubtedly Gorbachev who expressed the position of the party's leading circles. "The fear (of a social democratization) of the CPSU is based on ideological disagreements which were created already during the revolution and after the civil war. At that time the Communists and Social Democrats found themselves on different sides of the barricades. It is a task for the historians to sort out the entanglements of that time, but it is quite obvious that the criteria for the contradictions that arose at that time -the attitudes to the use of force, the dictatorship of the proletariat and democracy, the role of socialist consciousness and the political vanguard — have lost their former importance. We have changed - and the Social Democrats have changed."
On top of this overture to a reformist "re-foundation" of the party, Gorbachev did not exclude the eventual renaming of the CPSU (as a "socialist" or "social democratic" party) but proposed to postpone
The question of the programme was to be dealt with at the end of this year by the 29th Congress, which will obviously now never be convened.
The strange silence of the putschists
It is a remarkable indication of the internal regime within the CPSU and its CC that none of the future "GK ChPists" (putschists) — who staged their coup only three weeks later, thereby paving the way for the liquidation of the party — made an intervention at the plenary meeting. Anatoly Lukyanov, the only person directly linked to the coup who spoke, stressed: "The party can't bear losing the President, as the President can't bear losing his party."8
The developments in the last weeks of August clearly changed the relationship of forces among the bureaucrats, involving an extensive reshuffling of personnel and an immense redistribution of money and property. It seems that the essence of this process is a re-alignment between leading layers of the party bureaucracy (as one part of the old nomenklatura) and the new elites.
A recent instance - one of many - is described by a socialist from St. Petersburg: "Where do the former party functionaries go now? Where can they get work according to their abilities? 'As a caretaker!' one angry radical shouts. But of course he misses the point. In the leadership of a joint venture, in a cooperative, 3. For additional research on the CPSU's 28th Congress, see International Viewpoint, no. 190. 4. Pravda, July 26, 1991. 5. For example in the Tyumen region of Westem Siberia (the main oil-producing region of Russia) 46,000 of 158,000 members (that is 29%) left the party in 1990 By July 1 there were 7.5 million members of the CPSU in the Russian Federation. 6. Nikolai Preobrazhensky, "The coup and after" in Socialist Alternatives, Montreal 1991 7. Pravda, ibid. 8. Pravda, July 29, 1991. 9. The Mayor of St. Petersburg, Anatoly Sobchak, is a prominent liberal who has been pressing for the creation of a free trade zone in the St. Petersburg area. Smolny is the former girls' school for the nobility used by the Petrograd Soviet and the Bolsheviks in 1917. Until the August coup it was the CPU's headquarters in Leningrad.
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Tel: (514) 987-4165 FAX (514) 987-4749 in the local administration' the shrewd person says. And he is right; this is indeed the beaten track for many. But there are also more peculiar variants. It is a well- known fact that right now the administration of the Mayor of St. Petersburg is moving to the Smolny.? However, it is not known to everyone that many of the persons in Sobchak's retinue are not entering the institute for noble ladies for the first time.
"One can for example take a look at the composition of the government of the notorious free trade zone - under the auspices of the Mayor of Leningrad - and compare it to the list of members of the last two assemblies of the regional party committee (Obkom)." It then turns out that of the fourteen members of this powerful council, eight have indeed in the recent past been in the leadership of the
CPSU in St. Petersburg. 1°
Yeltsin's henchman
The Democratic Party of Russian Communists headed by Alexander Kutskoy — a former army general and leader of the chauvinist "Fatherland" society, who has made a brilliant career as the henchman of
Yeltsin — is one political expression of this layer of middle and high-ranking bureaucrats in the party and state apparatuses (for example, enterprise managers)
opting for an alliance with the new ruling circles. Rutskoy was the leader of the group of CPSU deputies in the Russian parliament which, under the name Communists for Democracy, went over to the liberals in April this year, supporting extended powers for Boris Yeltsin. He was also a co-founder of the Movement for Democratic Reform and presided over the formation of an "independent" party of Russian Communists (still within the framework of the CPSU) on August 2-3. At this founding conference most of the remnants of the failed Democratic Movement of Communists joined Rutskoy's
At its first congress on October 26-27 the party could in a certain sense pose as the "ruling party" of Russia — or at least as a key element in the ruling coalition — thereby attracting many former CPSU careerists. On the whole the congress confirmed the party's pragmatic trajectory.combining firm support for Yeltsin's liberal programme with slogans of social protection to coat the pill: "Among the tasks that the party lists in its minimum programme are the following: the removal of all limits to the rise of legal incomes and economic initiatives of the citizen; a rapid privatization of the small enterprises; a legally guaranteed minimum wage above the subsistence minimum; a govemment programme of employment; a military reform involving a transition to a professional army; an effort to overcome the paralysis of power through the election of local self-management bodies and a Russian parliament on a multi-party
But in spite of the demand for free elections and the attempt to pose as a "left democratic party" Rutskoy has firmly supported the authoritarian drive towards a "strong executive power" - including the cancellation of elections for the local heads of administration (originally fixed for November) and the granting of wide-ranging "emergency powers" for Yeltsin on November 1. In order to further dissociate itself from its origins in the CPSU did not rule out the possibility to figure as a legal and financial "successor" of the CPSU - that is, to get a share of its vast fortune.
The fortune and property of the CPSU has clearly been a key issue in the whole post-coup period of manoeuvring on the political scene. It was from the outset clear that the decree on "nationalization" of the CPSU's property was not in tune with existing legislation: "the decree by the president of Russia on the handing over of the property of the CC of the CPSU to the Russian Council of Ministers, in charge of the Commission of Valuation, contradicts property and social organizations. These laws presuppose financial compensation for the owner of the nationalized property (in this case the CPSU) if the court has not proven either the illegal economic activity of the owner or the illegal acquisition of the property. It is not certain that this can be proven for all parts of the CPU's property."2
Laying claim to CPSU's fortune
Therefore both the party of Rutskoy and the initiative taken by Roy Medvedev were laying claims to parts of the CPSU's fortune — while the "democratic" victors of August immediately started to fight over the distribution of the main pieces of
The stakes in this game are indeed considerable. In an interview Yuri Petrov, a close aide of Yeltsin, tried to estimate the party's fortune: "By January 1, 1991, the value of the CPSU's basic means amounted to 5.2 billion roubles... the real estate of party committees and party adminıstration, the economic, organizational and educational establishments of the party amounted to 2.7 billion roubles... on the current accounts in banks and in the cashiers' offices of the party are 5.4 billion roubles.... In safe custodies and credits there are 2.4 billion roubles, while various kinds of securities amount to 5.8 billion involved in large-scale business operations: "The means of the party transferred to the Auto-Bank, the Bank of the Trade Unions, the Commercial Bank of Youth, the corporation Union-B and others (all in ill 24 commercial operations) amount to 10. Igor Pykhalov, "Communists return to Smolny" unpublished article, October 1991. 11. Izvestiya, October 28, 1991. 12. Kommersant, September 30, 1991. 13. Argumenty i Fakty, no. 40, October 1991. 14. Ibid. 15. Izvestiya, November 5, 1991.
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International Viewpoint #217 • November 25, 1991
USSR
According to a recent statement this figsignificantly higher: "We have been informed that the means of the CPSU placed in several bank accounts, in various small enterprises, joint ventures and joint stock companies have been withheld. More than five and a half billion roubles have so far been collected. "15
This is obviously a touchy issue since the commercial operations of the CPSU involve a series of companies, liberal luminaries, and former nomenklaturists now condemning the crimes of the party that yesterday fed them. At the same time the scale of CPSU involvement in private business sheds at least some light on the whole process of nomenklatura-mafiaization of the economy through wild privatizations, shadowy deals and simple fraud. One recently disclosed case featured the Leningrad regional party committee (Obkom) in a joint venture with some British investors, in which considerable amounts of CPSU property (including two hotels and a car park) were transferred to a new private company. This transaction was found illegal by the St. Petersburg city court as "a breach of the CPSU's regulations. "16
Party funds channeled
In the Soviet liberal press, considerable attention has been paid to the international financial network of the CPSU and its attempts to channel funds into foreign companies (including those of several "sister parties"). In an internal document of the secretariat of the CC, dated August 23, 1990, the logic of these operations is formulated in a very frank manner: "...As the lessons of the communist parties of Eastern Europe have taught us, if we do not in time take steps to re-organize the property of the party in accordance with the demands of commercial activity, comTaisin i particularly under conditions o-
— particularly under conditions of a transition to the market — the party will inevitably face serious consequences.
In the document a series of concrete steps are outlined in order to considerably expand the commercial ventures of the
CPSU - including large-scale investments in international syndicates, joint enterprises and the founding of a "bank controlled by the CC of the CPSU with the rights to conduct operations in hard currency." The leadership structure envisaged is a strongly hierarchical (and secret) one resembling that of a multinational corporation: "The final aim is, via the commercialization of the existing party property, to systematically found structures of an "invisible" party economy; to this work only a narrow circle will be admitted by the General Secretary of the
CPSU and his deputy. "18
Throughout the post-coup period, the indignant campaign of the Yeltsinites against the shadowy transactions of the party has obviously served a political purpose: to pave the way for a ban on the CPSU, thereby once and for all outflanking the remnants of this party and acquiring its fortune. The fact that rank-and-file members over the years have contributed large sums to the party through their dues does not seem to interest the liberals. When directly asked about the size of this sum Yuri Petrov had to admit: "For the amounted to 1 billion 245 million roubles." When the interviewer went on askconsidering returning the money to the rank-and-file members now that the party is being liquidated?" it drew the immediate reaction: "In my opinion this is in order to support the case for a ban on the party a so-called "open hearing on the role of the CPSU in the coup of August 19-21" was held by the Supreme Soviet of Russia on October 21-22. This hearing produced some rather far-fetched suggestions and accusations. For example, Izvestiya "sensationally revealed" on its front page that former hardliner Yegor Ligachev had helped organize the coup in his Siberian home town of Tomsk - an alle gation flatly denied by Ligachev himself and most other sources.20 The thrust of the campaign was no secret to anyone: "In talks with the correspondents from Nezavisimaya Gazeta, members of the commission of inquiry [into the CPSU] did not make a secret of their conviction that such a decree [banning the party] was only a matter of time. And this is only the beginning. In the future, the theme of the hearings in the Russian Supreme Soviet will be extended and involve not only the complicity of the CPSU in the events of August 19-21 but also its responsibility for the erection of of a totalitarian dictatorship in the country.
"The result of these hearings, according to the members of the commission, should be the adoption of a special law by the parliament about the banning of all communist activities in the country."21 Presumably the self appointed Yeltsinite judges will be the ones to decide what parties and movements can be labelled "communist activities"
New Communist party gets vague start
Whether this will apply to the initiative for a Party of Left Forces taken by the anti-Stalinist historian Roy Medvedev and a group of former CPSU deputies at the start of October, remains unclear. The statement calling for the party's formation is extremely vague: "Today there is the possibility to found a strong party independent of the apparatus, consisting of people united by healthy ideas, honest good fellowship (tovarisjestvo).
This will be the party of Freedom, Truth,
Morality, Justice."22 The ideological reference point of the initiative is the abovementioned new programme of the CPSU ("Socialism, Progress") drafted at the July plenary meeting. In several Soviet newspapers it was even reported that Mikhail Gorbachev "as an individual, but not as President" had expressed his support for the project in a conversation with one of its leaders, the people's deputy Anatoly Denisov.
Apparatus support for new
The initial declaration of the party was endorsed by some regional party leaders such as the former CPSU first secretary in Nizhni Novgorod (formerly Gorky), plus a string of deputies. At the founding conference on October 26-27 the majority of the 324 delegates seem to be former lower- and middle-ranking CPSU functionarparticipating being workers.2 The average age of the delegates was well above 40, and the general picture not very with endless discussions revolving around the party's name. In the end it was christened the Socialist Party of Workers (SPT), while several delegates from the conservative wing of the CPSU demanded in vain that the designation "Communist" be retained. The party is going to convene its first congress in December, and though it distances itself from the totalitarian past of the CPSU, the new party wants to figure as one of its suc16. Kommersant, November 4, 1991. 17. This document, signed by Vladimir Ivashko, Gorbachev's deputy, was published on the front page of the independent liberal newspaper Nezavisimaya Gaze20. Izvestiya, October 23, 1991. 21. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 24, 1991. The absolute majority of deputies in the Russian Supreme Soviet (including Boris Yeltsin) were members of the CPSU when they were elected in March 1990. The log ical conclusion of the outlawing of the party would then, one should think, be the dissolution of parliament 22. Pravda, October 3, 1991. 23. These figures were given in an oral report to the mandates commission, October 26, 1991. 24. In most non-Russian republics, parties originating from the CPSU and the Republican CPs have also been formed. At the beginning of September the former CP of Kazakhstan was re-named the Socialist Party of Kazakhstan, while Nursultan Nasarbayev resigned as its first secretary. On October 26-27 a Socialist Party of Ukraine, comprising parts of the former CP of Ukraine, was set up at a congress in Kiev. According to Pravda, October 28, 1991: "The ideolog ical foundation of the party is scientific socialism. The Socialist Party of Ukraine wants to take all valuable experiences from the CPSU and CP of Ukraine, from the spiritual storehouse of the Ukrainian people and from international social democratic thinking." 25. It was an ominous sign of rising discontent and chauvinism that Shirinovsky managed to come third (after Yeltsin and the CP candidate Ryzhkov) in the Russian presidential elections this June with his right wing chauvinist rhetoric. He suggested for example that the vocal opponent of Baltic self-determination,
Viktor Alksnis, be made governor-general of the Baltic 26. Kommersani, September 16, 1991.
November 25, 1991 • #217 International Viewpoint cessors. 24
Several groups from the conservative wing of the CPSU have declared their intention to form "Communist Parties" carrying on the bureaucratic traditions of the CPSU. These conservative tendencies had a certain rallying point in the Russian Communist Party set up by June 1990 — but politically they have been on the defensive for a long period. In Moscow, their main political activity after the coup seems to have been a permanent picket outside the Lenin museum demanding its preservation. Some of the conservative currents are flirting with Great Russian chauvinism while, for example, the right populist Liberal Democratic Party, headed by Shirinovsky, has allegedly seen a considerable influx of disillusioned right wingers from the CPSU.25
The neo-Stalinists of the Bolshevik Platform in the CPSU (founded by mid-July this year) and the Unity society, both led by Nina Andrejeva, are convening a congress at the end of this year to "revise the decisions of the 28th Congress of the CPSU, carry through a new 28th Congress" and "create a truly Bolshevik party."26 Another conservative current, Communist Initiative (the former Leningrad Initiative Congress), which may enjoy broader support than the troops of Nina Andrejeva (but far from the "four million communists" they claimed to represent at their second congress in June this year) has also announced a new party as a successor to the CPSU:
"At the end of November this year they plan to carry through a founding congress of the new party. Its basic aims are, seemingly, the struggle against the 'counterrevolutionary upheaval' and the rebuilding of a socialist system in the USSR - envisaging the supremacy of the public ownership of the means of production, the co-existence of planning and market mechanisms in the economy, power to the soviets organized on the basis of production, and the maintenance of the Union as a federation.
Support for return to past system
However, in practise, this organization supports any steps towards the return to 'socialism' which is identified with the past system or with any act oriented towards the re-building of the old, bureaucratic regime.
"Important elements in the practical work of the Communist Initiative are support for political leaders who are known to advocate an "iron-fist policy" • and defence of the unity of the USSR, in reality by all means, including violent ones. In the activities of this organization you also find a clear touch of anti-semitism and a tendency to make alliances with neo-Stalinist and chauvinist organizations. After the coup the Communist Initiative has scarcely revised its positions. "27
Meanwhile the coup and up of the Marxist Platdencies have come out of this process - two of them declaring their intention to found new Communist parties, while, the third (the left wing of the Platform) has endorsed the Party of Labour profirst tendency, headed by Aleksei Prigarin, called for the formation of an organizing committee for Communist party, named conceptions of this organizing committee are close to the ideas of the Communist Initiative but with some "extenuating circumstances" — that is without the chauwithin this group there is still support for the idea of re-founding through the use of bureaucratic methods. This fundamentally supporters of Prigarin from the other ini-
The second tendency emerging from the Marxist Platform is headed by Anatoly Kryuchkov.
Socialism and the development of democracy
It also has called for the formation of an organizing committee for a new Comviable socialist option and communist perspective presupposes the develop ment of democracy (people's power) in economics, politics and national rela-
The third tendency, led by Alexander Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov, supports the initiative for a Party of Labour. declared our withdrawal from the coordinating council of the Marxist Platform, because the movement in reality had drifted far away from its original prog rammatic conceptions and had become one of the neo-conservative forces in the country, particularly as regards the important question of relations between the nations. Though we basically support the programmatic conceptions of the group of Kryuchkov we think that the formation of a new Communist party — and certainly one considering itself a successor to the CPSU (such an idea can be found in the declaration of the Kryuchkov group) — will lead to the formation of a narrow, sect-like group isolated from the socialist mass movement, no matter how worthy the intentions of the initiators. Because of this we started organiz-
USSR ing the initiative 'Communists in support of a Party of Labour' "29
With the decree of November 6 banning the CPSU in Russia, Yeltsin has tried to take an axe to the juridical stalemate around the party property, while hoping to rid himself of one potential pole of opposition.
But given the socio-economic chaos and the evident perplexity and disunion within the liberal camp, he could soon face much more serious challenges — as the trade union demonstration on October 23 and the small but significant demonstration on November 7 indicate. A liberal newspaper noted with alarm some of the demands put forward by one of the ex-CPSU groups:
"(They) call on the authorities to guarantee the right to work, the right to strike, protection against unemployment, free medical care, truthful information, the right to travel freely. Besides, the document also contains some new programmatic ideas which — in the opinion of the orthodox - would save the country both from capitalism and stagnation: workers' control, re-introduction of planning into the economy, tough anti-inflationary measures. 30 It won't be the last time the Yeltsinites are confronted with such
In the present situation, it would be rash to rule out in advance the possibility of some of the groups emerging from the ruins of the Communist Party gaining a following in time. However, the building of a broad, truly democratic, socialist movement today would certainly require a revival of the struggles and social movements — notably the workers' movements — in the republics of the former Union. * 27. Alexander Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov, "The structure of the left forces in the USSR after the coup of August", unpublished paper, Moscow, October 1991. 28. See /V, nos. 213, 214, 215. 29. Buzgalin and Kolganov, op. cit. 30. Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 24, 1991.
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7
The collapse
International Viewpoint #217 • November 25, 1991
USSR of a giant
ON September 27-28 the Soviet
Consequently all students are in practice dependent on their parents — while more and more take on part-time jobs or engage in different types of street trading. Many newly educated specialists are in a hardly better position, receiving no more than 2-300 roubles a month.
At the bottom of society a sub-proletariat of young people is emerging given the organization's past and its bad reputation among most young people.
Dmitry Solonnikov represents another tendency, the Federation of Socialist Youth (FSY) which has close ties to the Socialist Party.
They came out of a broad, democratic opposition current, the "Surgut Alternative" which emerged before Komsomol's 21st Congress. * 1. According to the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions the subsistence minimum is 510 roubles a month. Furthermore the system of indexation lags far
Communist Union of Youth (Komsomol) held its 22nd and last congress in Moscow. One weekly referred to the event under the headline "At the funeral arrived the vampires"; since the main issue at the congress was not discussion of the situation of Soviet youth, but that of dividing up the organization's huge fortune. POUL FUNDER LARSEN
N FACT, this colossus, which by the mid-80s numbered 42 million members and still by the turn of the year retained, at least on paper, more than 20 million, vanished overnight. In its place republican youth unions are being created on a non-political basis. But by now most of Komsomol's funds and property have already gone, channeled in private companies and businesses headed by former bureaucrats.
For many decades, membership in Komsomol was effectively compulsory for students and young workers. Among youth it played the role of an "agent" for the CPSU and "socialist construction" (from Magnitostroj in the 1930s to the BAM-magistral in the 1970s); a relay for social control, an organizer of leisure activities and a distributor of benefits. During the perestroika years, the organization became increasingly discredited among broad layers of youth as the always subservient fellow traveller and symbol of the bureaucratic system, fraught with corruption and nepotism.
As Komsomol lost its monopoly on youth activities at the end of the 1980s, the organization's apparatus had to find new ways to secure its subsistence. Therefore the bureaucrats in the central, republican and regional structures of Komsomol became the vanguard of the spreading "turn to business". This was made easier by laws giving special tax relief to enterprises registered by Komsomol.
Soviet youth has been strongly affected by the social crisis of recent years. Most students get between 90 and 130 roubles a month in state grants, but today you need at least 4-500 roubles to subsist.
school drop-outs, demobilized soldiers and so on. When the privatization process gets going, hundreds of thousands of young unemployed, receiving only a ance, may join them. allowmeagre temporary The extreme shortage of housing is a permanent feature of Soviet life, often compelling young people to live with their parents, even when they have their own families. It is hardly likely that the announced privatization will change anything in this respect, since young people do not have the money to buy a flat — or for that matter a flat they are entitled to buy.
The crisis affects all spheres of life: There are cut-backs in education, and the range and quality of leisure activities for youth has been reduced — while the lack of contraception and scant housing make life very difficult for young couples. In some areas, for example Moscow, the number of abortions is now said to be higher than that of births.
Throughout the last period, Komsomol has been politically quite passive, in spite of this tide of problems, sticking to the old bureaucratic routines while trying to build a commercial empire.
In recent months embryonic struggles have emerged among students protesting about their social conditions and the impact of privatization on education. Youth have also played a role in some strikes —notably in the miners' movement, but this is not a general trend.
However, there have been attempts, including within Komsomol itself, to form oppositions to the mainstream bureaucratic liberalism. Below we publish interviews with representatives of two such currents.
Igor Malyarov is a leader of the Youth Movement Communist Initiative, which drew much attention in the Soviet press for picketing the last Komsomol congress with demands for a democratic discussion within the organization before any decision on its dismantling. Their perspective is for a "rebirth of Komsomol" as an organization containing all kinds of socialists. However, it seems doubtful if this is a viable perspective behind the inflation rate, which is more than 10% a month. 2. The average allowance in Moscow is 265 roubles a month - but after seven months of unemployment one only gets 45% of the previous wage and after one year nothing at all. Argumenty i Fakty, no. 44, November 1991.
"A congress of
the bureaucrats"
IGOR MALYAROV IS a post-graduate student at the Institute of Economics at Moscow State University and one of the leaders of the Youth Movement
Communist Initiative which wants to set up a
Communist successor lo
Komsomol.
The following interview was given to Poul Funder
Larsen in Moscow at the beginning of October.
A SHORT time ago the 22nd
Congress of Komsomol decided to abolish the organization — what was your impression of this last congress?
The 22nd Congress was convened by the Komsomol bureaucrats violating the organization's rules. These demand three months notice being given for a congress and the election of delegates by ballot — this was ignored. So the congress consisted 90% of Komsomol functionaries, the average age of the delegates was very high and the views of rank-and-file members were not heard before the dissolution of our organization. Our group picketed the meeting with placards, and at the con-
----- photo credits and running heads -----
8
East European soldiers begin to organize
November 25, 1991 • #217 International Viewpoint gress we put forward an alternative line to that of the leadership. We want the rebirth of an organization which can unite young socialists. This position was supported by around 20 delegates.
USSR
AT THE conference of European conscripts held in the Netherlands this September (see /V 216), there were a number of soldiers representatives present
• What tasks would such an organifrom Eastern Europe.
zation face?
Right now a narrow circle of intellectu-
Before the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 it was impossible for conscripts to als, who already constituted a parasitic organize themselves. It was therefore a hopeful sign that at the 1989 meeting layer during the "years of stagnation"
of the European Conference of Conscripts Organizations (ECCO) there were
[under former party leader Brezhnev] are also conscripts from the Soviet Union and Hungary. Although they were sent getting richer and consolidating their by the army leadership, it was a start. At the recent conference in the Netherpower. The part of society that is most lands, there were a number of Eastern European delegations. There was, howexposed to this process is the youth. It is ever, no delegation from the Soviet soldiers' organization, Shield, because of necessary to channel their protest into the coup.
organized forms; to help people to create
Already during the Prague Spring in 1968 there was a soldiers' organization new jobs, get protection in case of layin Czechoslovakia. This organization, Svaz Vojenské Mládeze (SVM), was offs, preserve free education, kindergartdissolved after the Warsaw Pact invasion, but re-established in 1990 after the ens and so on. If we can do that we will fall of Stalinism. The SVM has about 5,500 conscript members and 100 other attract broad layers of young people.
members. These "other members" are professional soldiers with big influence.
Working people have to learn to protect
Until now this has not posed problems, but it is a strange situation for a contheir rights — no one will do it for them.
scripts' organization. SVM defends the social and democratic interests of conscripts. In Hungary a spokesman system is being established according to the
• What happens now with the Komstandards in the ECCO programme. The Hungarian Ministry of Defence sent somol's property?
two conscripts to the Netherlands to gather experiences and information from
The property has formally been handed other countries. There were also two conscripts from Slovenia who were interover to the joint stock company "Cooperaested in establishing an organization in the near future.
tion" which is the trustee of the Komso-
As in all East European countries, the situation of conscripts in Yugoslavia mol's assets — its print shop The Young was very bad. Slovenia is trying to build a national army out of the militias.
Guard, the publishing house Echo, build-
Some conscripts are also trying to create a soldiers' union, to concern itself ings, cars and so on. In reality it has been both with democracy and working conditions. At this moment there is already a made over to former Komsomol functionfour-day working week and legally conscripts have the right to refuse an order aries turned businessmen.
that is dangerous for their health.
We think that a considerable part of the
At this moment the Czechoslovak and Hungarian army leaderships are trying property is being used to create profits for to regain control after the chaos and power vacuum. For them there is no big those leaders. For example, the Second difference between barracks Stalinism and authoritarian capitalism. The SVM
Secretary of the Komsomol CC has announced that it was trying to organize an East European conscripts meeting.
become the director of the Young Guard
- Ron Blom * joint stock company. These commercial firms give money away to various "independent" funds — and in the management of these funds you find the very same
Komsomol functionaries who, previously, as "Komsomol activists" handed over the money.
• At the congress, some of the delegates from the non-Russian republics saw the decision to abolish
Komsomol as a kind of "Great Russian" conspiracy.
The fact is that the Russian Komsomol organization took the lion's share of the property. This created discontent among the other delegations. The decisions of the congress were by and large dictated by the
Russian Komsomol, which was pressing for dissolution. In this process, Rutskoy's organization (see article on p. 3), the
Democratic party of Russian Communists, now re-named The Party of Free
Russia - played a dubious role. To a large extent this organization consists of former
Komsomol apparatchiks, who now want to get Komsomol over and done with.
• What is the social base of the your opposition current?