Winter of uneasy calm
THE gathering socio-economic crisis in Russia has unfolded according to a novel scenario. One might have expected the 30 to 40% fall in living standards of the majority of the population - those who live on wages or pensions — in the past two years to be greeted by mass upheaval, the
International Viewpoint #243 March 1993 in the way of traditions of independent social life and self-organization, have been sucked into the maelstrom of the bureaucratic-mafia market usually without knowing how to swim.
birth of active social movements and the growth of workers selforganization. Indeed, most socialist organizations based their tactics on
People used to obedience and to working exclusively according to bureaucrathis assumption.
ALEXANDER BUZGALIN — Moscow, February 17, 1993
L IFE, however, turned out
otherwise. In the first place, the workers' movement has had a hard time making the change from organs of state to independent unions, while the nascent local and regional self-management bodies disintegrated almost as soon as they were born.
Secondly, the democratic political organizations on the left of the spectrum failed to break out from being small groups of activists, usually of a few dozen people in the big cities; even in the best circumstances they draw their grassroots support from the amorphous and passive mass of former Communist Party members. The left remains locked into a permanent division between the former "informals" (Party of Labour, left social democrats, Confederation of AnarchoSyndicalists, and so forth) and organizations with their origins in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), such as the Socialist Workers Party (SPT) or Russian Party of Communists (RPK).
And thirdly, the dominant force among the more or less active opponents of the regime has turned out to be not the democratic left but the so-called "redwhite" movement. This unites the orthodox Communists of the Russian Communist Workers Party and neo-Stalinists with the right bourgeois and even monarchist organizations. They mobilize around national/patriotic slogans and their programme is that of a revival of Russia as a great power.
Unlike the left movement, the powers-that-be have strengthened their 20 position in terms of laws and internal bureaucratic structures to such an extent that they can permit themselves an open factional struggle between two groups — the Civic Union on the one hand and the
Yeltsin-Burbulis-Gaidar team on the other.
This struggle, however, is not one between between political parties and organizations in the traditional sense of the word. The main conflicts take place in the bureaucratic structures at its different levels, from the directors of the state enterprises (now pseudo-joint stock companies), the heads of the regional administrations, to the various presidents and premiers (of whom there are several in the Russian Federation). The parties and movements on the right of the political spectrum have gradually turned into crowds of extras in this battle in the bureaucratic circus-ring.
This was the Russian political picture in autumn 1992.
1. General reasons for the decline of the left movement
An essential condition for the gathering crisis is the conformism of the majo rity of the country's population. This conformism is the product of decades of political stagnation, hardly stirred during the perestroika years and firmed up again in the past year or so in a new form. People accustomed to following government orders and subjection to the system of non-economic constraints of "really existing socialism", possessing very little tic rules but also to certain social guarantees have suddenly been hurled into a new reality.
Here both the old barriers and the guarantees are gone. Life now follows a new universal rule: everybody for themselves; the war of each against all. The bureaucratic guarantees have given way to the struggle of all against all on the market; one form of alienation has been replaced by another. However, unlike in a fully formed market system, this new world lacks any kind of stable new rules for social life. Property and prices, moral values and legal norms, prime ministers and borders all change with unimaginable speed and instability. People find themselves in an institutional and normative vacuum.
Some poorly defined clumps of dry land are to be found in this vacuum (or swamp). These centres of economic, social and political power subject the life of the "ordinary" person to their will. On these misty islands we can dimly make out the forms of the old state-party nomenklatura, newly decked out as directors of enterprises and firms, and the nouveaux riches - in their majority more or less directly connected to the former; in short the new political elite.
The economic crisis and the break-up of the country have only added to the chaos. It is not as yet so deep that the majority of the population have seriously suffered. Despite the fall in living standards, the majority of workers, peasants and intellectuals are not facing immediate hunger -OE poverty. The crisis, furthermore, is extremely uneven; a worker or engineer with one and the same qualifications can have a widely varying level of consumption depending on where they live and the nature of their enterprise. If we add to this the continual but unpredictable and rather arbitrary government handouts, the wide possibilities for speculation, and the general disorganization, we see how the crisis itself tends to
----- pull-quotes on this page -----
Dossier: RUSSIA
International Viewpoint #243 March 1993 increase division among the workers and their mutual alienation.
It is hard for the "ordinary person" plunged into this new world to come to an understanding of his or her basic interests. This remains the case even if we take into account some counter-factors; we have come out of a totalitarian system which contained, even if in a mutant form, real germs of socialism, for example, the striving for social justice and enthusiasm (the capacity to work collectively for the future), and traditions of collectivism and self-government. All these were and remain one aspect of Russian social psychology.
Furthermore, perestroika, whatever the minuses, brought into being, at least on a small scale, a real and durable tradition of anti-totalitarianism - the defence of democracy, glasnost and human rights. As a result the country has a layer of people capable of collective social creati-
The basic problems of the workers and social movement in our country over the past few years arise out of the tension between these two assertions; on the one hand the mass of workers, despite the crisis, remain passive, and are ruled by conformism and the desire to retreat into their own world; on the other there is a weak but persistent left democratic tradition of both a social and political charac-
2. The socialist movement's first attempt to overcome its crisis (the left on the eve of the Congress of People's
Deputies). In spite of the clear failure of efforts to make a big breakthrough towards forming a mass democratic left movement, in autumn 1992 Russia's socialists and communists were able to take a practical first step to make themselves into a real social and political force.
In the course of 1992 the first efforts were made to form left political parties. The post-Communist parties (the Socialist Workers Party - SPT and the Russian Party of Communists - RPK) were registered and the Party of Labour (PT) had its founding conference, while lett social democrats formed an organized
All these organizations are rather amorphous, drawing in a very broad spectrum of political views, but first steps were being taken and practical work was underway in the urban centres.
At the same time, the interminable attempts to achieve unity achieved an initial success on November 28-29 with the first Congress of the Democratic Left which brought together 1,200 delegates and 300 guests from all the major regions of Russia, from most countries of the CIS and the Baltic States and Caucasus as well as from Europe, Asia, America and Australia. The main left parties attended as well as groups of left social democrats and the nationalist Free Russia party associated with Russian vice-premier Alexander Rutskoy and a series of other democratic, socialist and communist-oriented organizations.
Furthermore, and especially important, leaders of the Russian trade unions, the Union of Work Collectives, and women's and ecological movements also agreed to take part as did nationally known figures from the worlds of culture,
This is more than just a question of reciting an impressive list. The conference signified a real breakthrough in terms of creating unity between the post-CPs,
"new left" democratic parties and social organizations. The endless pronouncements on the need to form a new social force in the country, fundamentally different both from the Stalinist "neo-Bolshevik" and "backwoods patriotic" type, and from the forms preferred by the liberal camp, had finally produced some practical results.
At the same time, the step forward had its ambiguities and the unity achieved is very fragile. The congress documents are the result of laborious compromises between different groups and are correspondingly flabby: the rare criticisms of the government are balanced by a diffuse positive assessment and an extremely vague dissociation from the great power
In both the SPT and the RPK, especially in the regions, the ideas of antiYeltsin unity and the recreation of the USSR as a force in which both we and our children could feel pride are quite strong. Such notions can have their positive side, especially for people not accusto med to a dialectical approach to national
The boundaries of the Movement of Left Forces are vague; on one side there is a pull towards the chauvinist "redwhites", on the other, their is the weight of the Civic Union bloc and other similar
Concluding on the eve of the Congress of People' Deputies, the Movement of the Democratic Left vanished for two weeks into the dust of the congress battle between the unstable majority, and the presidential team and its supporters in the congress. The Democratic Left did not, however, come out of those turbulent hours much different from when it went in.
3. Winter 1992-93: new opportunities for the democratic left? The People's Congress exposed the tragic political situation in Russia. Despite, or because, of its deficiencies, the
Congress was a mirror of the swamp in
21
----- photo credits and running heads -----
Gerd Arntz
International Viewpoint #243 March 1993 which Russia now finds itself. The majority of deputies did not and do not have a firm social-political position, reflecting in this the majority of the population, and were mainly concerned with the problem of their own self-preservation.
This majority eschewed the extremes it saw embodied in the adventurist course proposed by Gaidar from its powerful conformist reflexes rather than from any concern for democracy. This was in line with the passive and indecisive feelings of the majority of the population, able to frustrate and even depose leaders but extremely hesitant when it comes to taking any positive practical steps.
Confronted with the president's threat to dissolve the congress, the deputies took some extremely cautious steps towards a different economic course and imposed a change of premier and a number of retreats on President Yeltsin.
The "official opposition" to the Yeltsin-Gaidar line, the Civic Union (GC), wheeled and dealed in the corridors with the aim of getting its own people into key posts, in the sincere conviction that they were thereby fighting for the salvation of the fatherland.
The economic programme worked out by experts close to the GC would indeed be far more helpful in getting the country out of the crisis than Gaidar's monetarist experiments, but there is no guarantee that once in power the GC's leaders would pursue a qualitatively different line to Gaidar's.
The results of the opposition's intrigues turned out to be far more limited than expected: a new premier surrounded by the old ministers and under the control of the same president.
The hardline opposition to the president's line, which was one of the main currents in the majority, is comprised of extremely heterogeneous groups of people hostile to the government — from moderate "statists" to chauvinists, and from orthodox communists to "strong state" liberals. Despite the decisive weight of this force - both when they acted together among themselves and when they supported the majority on a specific issue, it was only a temporary phenomenon produced by a sense of common threat.
The result of the congress was a calm winter, a lull in which new and far more dangerous and important political battles have been brewing. There are a number of reasons for this lull.
Firstly, the coming to power of the new premier has somewhat checked the disintegration of the economy. This is not because there is a new leader. Rather, 22 there is a new leader because a powerful group of economic chiefs — specifically, the middle-ranking economic bureaucracy, above all directors of the big state
- could no longer put up with the attacks on their positions and had decided to launch a counter-offensive.
Unlike the Gaidarites, these leaders understand that the prevention of the collapse of industry is a condition for their survival. They have therefore taken steps in this sense, mainly at the expense of the workers and without getting to the roots
Secondly, an unstable compromise has been struck between two groups of protagonists of nomenklatura capitalism inside the elite — the supporters of an open economy, a monetarist policy and a drastic reform on the one hand and a faction oriented towards the preservation of the power of the government structures and a moderate reform and a slow drift from nomenklatura socialism to nomenklatura capitalism on the other. The political scene is shaped by the fact that neither side can get the upper hand.
Thirdly, "the people are silent". The majority of the population are not concerned with politics but with survival at a time of a worsening crisis of economic, social and even government institutions. The conformists have lost faith in the existing power structures and secretly long for a new strongman - an extremely dangerous mood in our country with its rich totalitarian traditions and weak democratic guarantees. The average worker hopes above all that he or she is not the next to be fired and that their wages will be raised again.
This poses certain tasks for the Democratic Left. In my view the lull offers a rare opportunity for the creation of unity of the different political and social forces grounded in the reality that the creation of a real democracy — one based on the effective rule of the people — is an indispensable condition for the country to find a way out of its crisis.
Will the chance be taken? There is time. We are entering a confusing period of political realignments, in particular through the refounding process of the Russian Communist party on the basis of the two post-PSU organizations and the preparation of the second Congress of the Democratic Left, which, let us hope, may bring into being collaboration between socialist-oriented political and social organizations.
The most important recent development has been the Second (Special) Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the refounding congress of the CPSU in Russia. At the moment of its founding the party had half a million members, according to the organizers — which would make it the biggest party in the country. However, from the moment of its birth this organization is torn by powerful internal conflicts.
At one pole are the rank-and-file
Communists, who feel the need to unite all forces in the struggle against the growing global crisis resulting from the policies of the Yeltsin team and a wish to
"restore socialism"
At the other is the absence of a precise political programme — the programme adopted contains nothing more than a few generalities - an absence of any answers to the question of why
"socialism" collapsed in the USSR (references to treachery at the top are only a proof of this, efforts to re-establish iron unity and the suppression of factions and other signs that the CPRF is full of people who have "forgotten nothing and learned
Furthermore, this party is very close to the National Salvation Front, the organization of the "statists" with a chauvinist, restoration of power, outlook. This was clear from the speeches of many congress delegates and the choice of Zyuganov, co-president of the NSF, as president of the party's central executive committee.
The issue of how to work with members of this organization is one of the main problems facing the Democratic Left. In the midst of the hundreds of thousands of members of the CPRF are many communist-democrats who can see no other viable left political force in the country. Democratic oppositions may well appear inside the CPRF. Time will
In any case the left spectrum can now be seen in terms of three forces. On one pole the RKRP and the neo-Stalinists, on the other the Democratic Left and in between the bigger but amorphous CPRF.
Indeed, the "dead devour the living"; there has been no revolutionary change to the social system in the country. The bloc of conformists and the nomenklatura has merely changed its form, and it is no surprise therefore that the political picture has many similarities with that which existed on the eve of the breakup of the USSR.
Nonetheless, the democratic left has learnt a bit in the past year or two; it is more firmly established and stronger. The scale of these advances will be measured in the coming months. *