The left: post-perestroika
International Viewpoint #258 July 1994
A BASIC knowledge of the history of the left in Russia from the time of Perestroika is vital in order to understand its present state. While its real impact on State policy has been small, its evolution and manifestations have been extremely varied and complex. In their second article our correspondents combine historical survey with analysis which focuses primarily on the obstacles (besides those "objective" factors already cited last month) to the democratic left acquiring a mass social base. POUL FUNDER LARSEN & DAVID MANDEL
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• RUSSIAN LEFT I
T WOULD not be entirely true to claim that the labour movement and the various left organisations and groups which emerged during and after Perestroika developed along totally separate paths. In fact, over the years, various attempts have been made by the left to forge links with the workers' movement. Following the miners' strike of 1989, their efforts met with some temporary success; in particular, there was considerable left influence at the founding of the Contederation of Labour in May 1990. However, the Confederation itself never really got off the ground.
Since then, apart from a few regional political groupings consistently oriented toward workers (such as Rabochii, a socialist association of workers' clubs in the Volga and Urals regions), and some groups of socialist intellectuals (such as the Moscow-based KAS-KOR Bulletin
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ДА
JAKT
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on the Labour Movement and the Committee to Support the Labour Movement), most left-wing organisations have gradually given up making systematic efforts directed toward workers.
In 'Movement in retreat, we tried to understand the isolation of the left by focusing on the politics of workers and their ("non-political") labour organisations. In this article, we will approach the problem from inside the left itself.
Before August 1991
THE "INFORMAL" LEFT
For the sake of clarity, we will treat separately the early stages of the development of the "informal" left from that of the left within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). These currents did interact to a large extent, in their political dynamics as well as in a direct organisational sense, since the CPSU and Komsomol (youth organisation) structures often gave tacit support (political and even material) to many of the "informal" groups, whose members were themselves frequently recruited from these structures. Nevertheless, until 1991, open and direct collaboration between the "informal" and "formal" structures was very limited, as the former feared manipulation and being discredited, while the latter were wary of encouraging potential competitors.
Many of the "informal" left groups had their roots in the pre-Perestroika era, when discontent with the regime was growing in intellectual circles. By the time Perestroika was put on the official political agenda in 1986-1987, many of these small groupings already had several years of discussion and even samizdat publication behind them. However, for obvious reasons, their practical experience of political intervention and campaigning was next to non-existent. When liberalisation made open political struggle possible, this lack of experience was telling, especially when it came to contest with the shrewd tacticians of the party apparatus (given that the average age of an "informal" socialist club member at that time was less than twenty-five).
1. P F Larsen & D Mandel, 'Movement in retreat, Intemational Viewpoint, no. 257, June 1994.
International Viewpoint #258 July 1994
The multitude of clubs and currents which emerged in this period was the manifestation of a genuine, if limited, anti-bureaucratic movement which posed vital social and political issues hitherto exclusively restricted to the jurisdiction of the bureaucratic authorities or completely outside the bounds of legitimate political consideration.
The formation in August 1987 of the Federation of Socialist Clubs was a major breakthrough for the "informal" democratic socialists. A key player in this was the Moscow Social Initiative Club, whose leaders included Boris Kagarlistsky, who had been arrested in 1982 as a leader of the Young Socialists, and Gleb Pavlovsky, a former samizdat journalist. The Federation was founded with the formal aim of "consolidating the left-wing of Perestroika", a phrase obviously designed to calm the fears of the authorities, but which also reflected the political outlook of many of the "informal" political activists in the "first wave". The declaration of the founding conference was carefully worded to avoid any head-on confrontation, but it nevertheless signaled the two concerns which would come to dominate the political struggles on the left in the following years: the struggle for democratic rights and the introduction of the market mechanism as a regulator in economic
Yet if the Federation of Socialist Clubs was a step forward, both in terms of its own organisational ambitions and the winning of somewhat broader public recognition for the left, it soon became obsolete due to its ideological and structural amorphousness in a period of extremely rapid political evolution and differentiation. In less than a year it vanished from the political scene.
As the "democratic movement" gained momentum, Popular Fronts ting heterogeneous groups and organisations which professed a democratic orientation - were created, first in provincial centres (where the political scene was less factionalised) and then finally in Moscow in the spring of 1988, where socialists played an important leadership role. These Popular Fronts typically had broad democratic, social and environmental programmes, uniting substantial layers of activists. However, they were unable to transcend their formation as coalitions for the defence of a radical version of Perestroika. Consequently, when against the background of Gorbachev's economic reforms official Perestroika entered its terminal phase in the winter of 1989/90, and a series of alternative, mainly liberal, options, came to dominate the political debate, their underlying basis disappeared.
Although the experiences of the
Popular Fronts varied from region to region, some general statements can be made about the problems faced by the lett operating inside them during this period. The forces involved in these movements were of such a heterogeneous, sometimes even mutually contradictory nature, that it was impossible to develop anything even resembling a clear political platform or ideology. This tended to restrict them to a "lowest common denominator", , which, in practice, would be the goal of winning concessions from the more progressive elements of the party apparatus. As Kagarlitsky, then a prominent leader of the Moscow Popular Front, stated: "We are realistic and don't demand the
We make radical but realisable demands." However, the movement did show some radicalism, and did have some success in setting the political agenda, notably in its single-issue campaigns, for example around the environment and the treatment of Soviet
Incoherence
The political incoherence of the sational structures. Further, despite a high level - particularly in the Soviet historical context - of rank-and-file activity in these movements, there was never any effective control on the leadership. As a result, when ideological and political winds blew towards liberalism, many "informal" leaders aligned themselves with the liberal forces which were coming to dominate the State apparatus and took with them sizeable parts of their organisations.
The rapid succession of events, the constant internal struggles within the Popular Fronts and their permanent organisational flux left little political space, time or energy for the socialist currents inside them to organize themselves efficiently. Thus, for example, even though the Confederation of Anarcho-Syndicalists had perhaps one thousand activists and the New Socialists several hundred, neither could pose a real alternative to the liberals when the Popular Fronts collapsed, as they had neither organised structure nor a regular
Despite attempts to link up with the emerging new workers organisations, the "informal" movement remained largely confined to student and intellectual circles in the major urban centres. The links made with the miners after the
1989 strike soon disappeared, and the attempt to give the "informal" movement a working class wing by creating
Sotsprof, "an association of socialist trade unions", ended with the left being ejected from Sotsprof and the national leadership aligning itself with the liberals.
THE LEFT WITHIN THE CPSU Contrary to the simplistic, latter-day liberal myth of a prolonged show-down, from 1987 onwards, between "communists" and "democrats", the real political process was far more complex, and even a partly symbiotic relationship between the members of the party-state apparatus and the democratic movement. Indeed. it was to a large extent initiatives originating in the party-state leadership which opened up the political space for the rise of the "informal" movement.
As the independent democratic organisations declined or became incorporated into the pro-Yeltsin Democratic Russia organisation, discussions on a socialist alternative continued mainly among the oppositional currents within the CPSU (although these often remained within a framework set down by the apparatus, which was still paying lip service to a "renewed socialism").
The conservative wing of the apparatus, which itself was a very heterogeneous entity, rallied around the so-called "Leningrad Initiative" for a "Russian Communist Party within the CPSU". This movement, whose key orientation towards a Russian CP already gave a foretaste of the nationalist tendencies which would later come to dominate it, was to a large degree a movement originating from within the apparatus, with its stronghold in Leningrad as well as in some provincial centres. However, it also attempted to organise its own "independent" popular base, notably the United Front of Toilers, a conservative front organization which borrowed its methods from the "informals", organising rallies, drafting petitions, distributing leaflets, and so on.
Yet despite the real support the conservative opposition to Gorbachev enjoyed both within the party apparatus and even among part of the rank and file, it failed to put forward a clear political programme. It tried to make up for this with nostalgia for the past and the promotion of traditional values of "statehood" and "recentralisation of the eco-
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International Viewpoint #258 July 1994 nomy". The lack of a concrete programme greatly facilitated the humiliation of this opposition, first by the Gorbachev leadership at the 28th Party Congress in the summer of 1990 (despite its strong presence among the delegates), and later by the liberal reformers who succeeded
During the months leading up to the 28th Congress, two other opposition currents were formed within the party: the Democratic and Marxist Platforms. The former united a broad range of supporters of "radical Perestroika", from Yeltsinites through social democrats to socialists. The latter was founded by Marxist social scientists from the Moscow University but soon came to be dominated by more conservative forces.
Although the Democratic Platform had the support of tens of thousands of Party members, it suffered many of the same problems which had made the democratic "informal" movement a dead-end for its left-wing participants. Its platform had been formulated in very broad terms in order to reconcile the diverse tendencies which co-existed within it, with the result that in its programme, the perspective of a "transition to democratic socialism" stood alongside the obviously utopian call to transform the thoroughly bureaucratised, ossified CPSU "into a modern democratic party". Such contradictions ruled out the Democratic Platform becoming anything more than a discussion club which loosely united oppositional delegates to the Congress, and once the major liberal leaders left, in July 1990, its influence quickly declined.
The Marxist Platform clearly distanced itself from both the liberals (at that time, still parading as "social democrats") who tended to dominate the Democratic Platform and the party conservatives, proposing a return to "classic Marxism". Most of the academic leftists in this group had actually joined the party only in the late 1980s. Before becoming active in the movement of Moscow party clubs, they had organised educational and research activity within the non-party Club of Marxist Researchers.
Nevertheless, soon after the publication of its manifesto, the Marxist Platform received a large influx of activists with a very different background: rank-and-file party members as well as lowerlevel functionaries who saw it as a way to voice their more conservative opposition to Gorbachev's leadership of the Party. While these new members strengthened the Platform in terms of num20 bers, they also rendered it useless as an instrument for crystalising a principled Marxist current within the party. This was confirmed in August 1991, when a significant minority of the Platform supported the conservative putsch. Although it was abortive, the Platform split as a result.
"Communist" orientation
All the organisations which arose after the dissolution of the CPSU and openly profess a "communist" orientation draw their membership overwhelmingly from the former conservative opposition within the CPSU. They all believe, at least to some degree, that the bureaucratic past was essentially a socialist one, even if they also admit that the system suffered from deformations. In contrast, the democratic socialists inside the CPsU failed to rally any significant forces after its demise.
There are several reasons for this, the main one being that in many respects the su was a microcosm of Soviet society, some of whose main traits we discussed in our first article.2 The CPSU had ceased to be a living party almost six decades earlier. Until Perestroika, it was devoid of even the suspicion of democracy, with no possibility of any independent rank-and-file activity. Even after Gorbachev relaxed the leadership's hold on the party, the vast majority of the rank and file remained passive. It has been estimated that at the time of the 28th Congress, of the 4,683 delegates, those from the Democratic Platform numbered little more than one hundred, while the Marxist Platform had only a handful.
The supporters of the two opposition platforms were by and large concentrated in Moscow, Leningrad and a few other major cities. Moreover, their social composition made it difficult for them to enter into dialogue with the millions of (generally politically inert) working class members of the Party. By 1990, the cPsu had some 19 million members, of whom approximately 20 percent were manual workers, 15 percent peasants, and 40 percent white-collar employees. The remaining 25 percent were pensioners and employees of the so-called "power ministries" (the repressive apparatuses). At a joint conference of the Democratic and Marxist Platforms following the 28th Congress, 30 percent of the delegates were university or institute teachers, and twenty percent party functionaries, while only three percent were workers.
After August 1991
With the elimination of Article 6 of the Soviet constitution in winter 1990, the CPU's claim to political monopoly came to an end. Dozens of new "parties" were subsequently created, typically being groups of a few hundred followers of a recognised leader. Almost all soon disappeared without trace. After the decline of the popular democratic movement, the serious political players remained the former nomenklatura cliques and their allied "democratic" luminaries. To a large extent it was the emergence of a liberal consensus within leading bureaucratic circles which profoundly altered the framework and tone of public debate.
As previously stated, the democratic left was ill-prepared for this rapid turn of events, which found its members isolated in small, more or less ideologically defined but badly organised groups. This was true both of those democratic left currents which came out of the "informals", as well as of the opposition in the CPSU. None of these groups numbered more than a few hundred members, nor did they have organic links with the workers' movement.
Several attempts were made to establish a broader framework for left-wing co-operation but had no success beyond common declarations. For example, while in autumn 1990, a Moscow initiative group "For People's Self-Management" brought together representatives of all major left groups — social democrats, socialists, anarchists, and the CPSU opposition - the meeting failed to take any decisions on united campaigns nor did it create an organisational framework for future discussions. Within a few months the initiative had petered out.
Meanwhile, the political scene was polarising between the liberals, who were increasingly gaining the upper hand in the central party-state apparatus (although their mass popularity had already peaked and their Democratic Russia movement was on the decline), and the conservative bureaucratic tendency which still retained strongholds in various regions and levels of the apparatus and was trying to organise a mass
The failure of the August 1991 "operetta putsch" gave a further impetus to this polarisation: the "centrists" of the apparatus (Gorbachev, Lukyanov, Pavlov) were rapidly outflanked by the libe-
2. International Viewpoint, no. 257, June 1994.
International Viewpoint #258 July 1994 rals, led by Yeltsin. Yeltsin's suspension and later outlawing of the CPSU in Russia following the putsch left the party's Central Committee apparatus in a state of paralysis. Not one prominent party leader called for the creation of a new organisation which could rally those party members who wanted to continue their political activity under the changed conditions. The Central Committee secretariat did not meet again until midSeptember and even then, according to one report, "the only problems being discussed are those linked to the creation of jobs for former party officials."
It would be another eighteen months before any group originating from the former Central Committee leadership took an initiative toward recreating a Communist Party within the Russian Federation. By that time, a majority of the former high party officials had already migrated to the Russian state administration or to business (and often to both) and had little use for a party which still identified itself, at least nominally, with "communism".
### Marginal
The breakdown of the old party leadership opened the way to a rise to prominence by formerly marginal forces and personalities. However, only two structures managed to acquire a broad following: the Russian Communist Workers' Party (RKRP) and the Socialist Workers' Party (SPT). The former's supporters were recruited primarily from the conservative wing of the CPsu. while the latter attracted many former middlelevel party functionaries around what could be termed a "left-Perestroika" platform.
The RKRP, founded formally in November 1991, soon became the organizational expression of a narrow but real enough mobilisation of activists and former low-level arty functionaries with neo-Stalinist, and often strongly nationalist, inclinations. This nationalism, which came to dominate all the political groups which came out of the CPSU, draws on widespread values of "statehood" (derzhanvnost), which trace their roots far back into pre-revolutionary times and was resurrected with a vengeance by the bureaucratic counterrevolution in the 1920s and 1930s, as well as on the reaction to the obviously comprador nature of the new Russian ruling circles, whose policies have led to the rapid decline of the country's economic and cultural wealth, not to mention its military might.
W HEN it was foun-
ded, the party had 5 thousand registered spring of 1992, its numbers had reached 50 thousand, making the RKRP the most important of the post-Psu formations. It was the driving force behind the creation of Toiling Russia, with affiliates in major cities, which front organisation united the neo-Stalinist "communist" organisations with the growing "patriotic" movement. Although it lacked any positive political programme — save for the resurrection of the USSR, possibly in the form of a Greater Russia - Toiling Russia was able to bring tens of thousands of people on to the streets in the aftermath of the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991 and the launching of "shock therapy" in January 1992. With access to broad-circulation dailies like Sovetskaya Rossiya, as well as having their own press (with a circulation of tens of thousands of copies), it could reach broad layers of frustrated and embittered former party members.
In 1992, the RKRP claimed that 30 percent of its members were workers. Certainly its leaders put much effort into the creation of its own workers' organizations, such as the Union of Workers of Moscow. Yet while the mass demonstrations in early 1992 undoubtedly had a working-class element (although the majority were pauperized white-collar employees and pensioners), its attempts to organise separate working-class structures largely failed. In many places these organisations still exist, but nowhere do they have more than a few hundred (albeit highly politicised) activists. Nor do they command any real authority among the broad masses of workers, who have ignored their frequent calls for
Indeed, the virtual hegemony of the RKRP in the political protest movement against "shock therapy" probably played a role in dissuading workers from participating in such activity. It predilection for abstract, patriotic slogans and the evident lack of seriousness on the part of its leaders (for example, the flamboyant Viktor Anpilov — former Pravda correspondent in Cuba — called for the overthrow of the "fascist" Yeltsin regime through a spontaneous uprising) did much to discredit the idea of a serious socialist alternative to "shock therapy". The RKRP's more concrete campaigns, such as the collection of a million signatures for a new "Soviet Constitution", left workers cold and did not show any way forward for the movement.
The SPT (Socialist Workers" Party) was also founded in the autumn of 1991, but had a quite different political and organisational profile. The Brezhnev-era dissident Roy Medvedev (who was semi-tolerated by the old regime) was among its founders, but it was dominated by former middle-level Party officials of the younger (35-50) generation who shared an orientation toward a regulated mixed economy, market reforms without "shock therapy", and moderate nationalism. The new party adopted the last draft of the CPsu programme, which had been endorsed by Gorbachev and the Central Committee a month before the demise of the CPSU.
The sPr had an official membership of 50-70 thousand, thirty deputies in the now dissolved Supreme Soviet of Russia (although they belonged to five or six different factions!), regular access to Pravda, and its own bi-monthly with a circulation of around 15 thousand. Nevertheless, it could not count on any significant active support from its membership, which, in any case, it made no serious attempt to mobilise, preferring instead to lobby in the corridors of power. Indeed, there was really little with which its members could identify, and so when the project for recreating a Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) was launched at the start of 1993 (by Valentin Kuptsov, former chairman of the Russian CP, which was created in 1990 and dissolved by Yeltsin after August 1991), over 80 percent left (as did most members of the smaller "communist" organisations) to join the
Network
The PRF immediately became the largest party in the country, with half a million members and a network of regional organisations. This new/old party was from the outset a compromise between moderate reformist forces from the old Central Committee apparatus (led by Kuptsov, a Gorbachevite) and an increasingly assertive nationalist current which also originated in the old Party apparatus but had close links with the entire spectrum of "patriotic" organisations, as well as with "nationally-oriented" businesses. In a clear sign of the shifting mood amongst the party's supporters, Gennadyi Zyuganov, a former Central Committee apparatchik who had become co-chairman of the ultra-nationalist Russian National Assembly and leader of the broad "patriotic" alliance, the National Salvation Front, beat Kupt-
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International Viewpoint #258 July 1994 sov in the leadership elections to the party's Central Committee.
Under Zyuganov's leadership, the KPRF adopted a rather conciliationist policy toward the liberal regime, presenting itself as a reform-oriented, but socially conscious opponent of "shock therapy". The party's leaders now claim to be "left social democrats", but with a higher profile around the issue of Russian "statehood". Judging by statements made by Zyuganov (and in today's Russia, the leader generally equals the party), it is difficult to qualify the KPRF as socialist in any traditional sense. For Zyuganov, the key concepts are not "social justice" or "popular democracy" but "statehood" and (Russian) "spirituality" (dukhovnost). His points of historical reference are more Peter the Great and Stolypin than Marx or Lenin. This shift to the "patriotic" wing of Russian politics has not hurt the party's popularity: together with the closely allied Agrarian Party, the KPRF took around 25 percent of the vote (by party slate) in the December 1993 elections to the Duma (the new parliament created by Yeltsin's constitution). (However, it is important to keep in mind that according to official figures 48 percent of the electorate did not vote, and the real figure is probably even higher.)
While the KPRF, and what was left of the SPT after the mass defections to the KPRF, participated in these elections, most of the smaller "communist" groups called for a boycott, arguing that participation would legitimate Yeltsin's state coup. This was one of the signs of a rapidly growing split between, on the one hand, those "communist" groups oriented to parliamentary activity and reform, and, on the other, those which have more radical goals and advocate more militant tactics. Moreover, although the "patriotic" current clearly dominates the "communist" camp, there are today some signs that certain elements of its more radical wing are reconsidering the wisdom of allying themselves with the nationalists. Crisis in the democratic left
While the organisations which came out of the CPSU could draw on inherited structures and networks, had access to a mass press ready to publicise their activities and positions and could rely on a pool of thousands of former party activists, the democratic socialists had no such resources. Faced with an official ideological climate completely hostile to any talk of democratic socialism or a 22
"third way" between an increasingly authoritarian liberalism and a potentially even more authoritarian nationalism (in official discourse, you are either "for reform", that is to say the liberals, or "against reform"), the small groups of the anti-Stalinist left reacted in various ways.
One tactic was to attempt to regroup their scattered forces within broader leftdemocratic coalitions. This tactic, which had already been tried in 1990-91 by the anarchists who founded the radical Green Party (which today has no discernible presence on the political scene), was chosen by socialists, anarchists and Marxist activists from the dissolved CPSU, who formed the Party of Labour (PI) in the aftermath of the August 1991 putsch. It was tried again in autumn 1992 when a broad range of moderate and more radical leftists (from the SPT to small Trotskyist groups) assembled at the first Congress of Democratic Left
Despite the fact that the Congress was a remarkable success in that it gathered over a thousand participants, it failed subsequently to develop any real activity. At present, elements in the PT are attempting to form a Union of Labour, including parts of the former trade-union apparatus, as a moderate coalition of left forces. Its immediate function would be to run candidates in the forthcoming regional and local elec-
To date, none of these attempts at broad democratic left coalitions have succeeded in their goals, that is, to win new adherents to their movement, establish lasting structures, or extend their influence beyond the essentially Moscow-based left-democratic intelligentsia. Their main contribution has been to raise the public profile of this current, which is still little known in the population at large.
A second tactic was to create small, ideologically well-defined propaganda groups. But this has hardly fared any better. Various anarchist and Marxist groups have been attempting to create their own small "parties", complete with national leaderships, programmes and minuscule presses. None have been able to reach out much beyond their original circle of founders. Most are actually on the decline, and none have national importance even in Russian left politics, although some have relative strongholds in one or two regions.
A third tactic, in the face of the failure to win a popular base, has been to try to win the support of more progressive elements in the former trade-union apparatus for what is termed a "British-style labour party". At various times, there were hopeful signs of a favourable response to such overtures made by the PT. in particular from the Moscow and Leningrad regional trade-union federations, but no progress was made, as the dominant circles in the union apparatus preferred more substantial, and less radical partners, such as the Civic Union, or even different factions from the ruling liberal elite. Thus, the head of the Moscow Federation of Trade Unions (and presently also of the Russian Federation of Independent Trade Unions, FNPR), Mikhail Shmakov, who was long seen as favouring a labour party, has apparently now turned in favour of developing some sort of working relationship with the Yeltsin regime, as he did earlier with the Moscow government.
CONCLUSION
In reviewing the fate of the Russian left during the past seven or eight years, it is tempting to try to assign responsibility to "objective" factors (the "masses" for reasons outlined in our first article, 3 simply not being ready to respond to a left alternative) or to "subjective" ones (such as the weaknesses and errors of the political left, some of which have been mentioned here). However, while this may be useful in terms of analysis, in reality they are all part of the same totality and ultimately merge. Put simply, the Russian left was not able to transcend the nature of the society from which it
Despite the upsurge of popular activism in the 1987-1990 period, almost no permanent, really popular democratic structures emerged. The impression held at the time by many Western and Soviet observers, that the Glasnost era was fast creating an independent civil society, with genuine social movements and organisations and a lasting space for public democratic debate, proved deceptive. As we noted earlier, sixty-odd years of Stalinism has bequeathed an atomised society, lacking any experience of self-organisation and with a deeply ingrained tendency among the population to look to patrons and "leaders" to act on their behalf. The sudden collapse of the former official ideology and the almost as rapid loss of the old social guarantees left people deeply insecure and disoriented
3. International Viewpoint, no. 257, June 1994.
In these conditions, a socialist programme based upon self-organisation and genuine popular democracy was unlikely to find many ready takers. Once liberalism had disappointed, nationalism (always a central feature of Stalinism) proved much more accessible to broad strata of the impoverished population. The majority of the remaining active elements of the former CPsU readily embraced this, further discrediting socialism as a real alternative in the minds of workers and leaving the democratic socialists to explain what socialism was really about from an isolated position. In one bizarre, but very telling twist, the leadership of the SPT opted out of a joint left-wing slate with democratic socialist groups in the December 1993 Duma elections to ally with a moderate nationalist bloc which included, among others, the Cossack Union and managers in the oil industry! (The list failed to collect the required number of signatures to present candidates.)
External
The weakness of the democratic left was to a large degree a product of these external developments and pressures. Yet equally most activists failed to appreciate the importance of these factors and to draw appropriate conclusions for what would have to be a long-term strategy in order to achieve success. The momentous developments of the Perestroika period stimulated a certain "spontaneist" tendency in the thinking of the democratic left, an expectation that increasingly broad layers of the population would (following their objective interests and in the wake of the loosening grip of the old structures), come to embrace their cause. With a few exceptions, most of the democratic left suffered from a related "vanguardism" which had its roots not only in its social and political isolation but also in inherited Soviet traditions.
This led to a very distorted view of the real correlation of forces and to a failure to appreciate the need for a longterm strategy involving organic organisational and propaganda work among the general population, and particularly among workers. Such a strategy was not of course very attractive to socialist activists given the rapidly evolving situation, since it could not hope to bear much fruit in the short term (for reasons we outlined in our first article.
Russia is in what will undoubtedly be a lengthy period of major social and economic upheaval, with no stabilisation yet in sight. The contradictions within Russian society are constantly deepening, and have yet to find their adequate expression in the political sphere. However, as bleak as the picture now seems for the democratic left, many ordinary people have gained, and are still gaining, valuable political experience, gradually shedding long-held illusions about the paternalism of State authorities and the rôle of political patrons and leaders — learning to distinguish between the promises of politicians and their actual practice.
The pent-up forces of popular dis content will eventually break troug! the present political demobilísation When this happens, new and broade possibilities should open up for Russian socialism. But the struggle will necessarily be a long-term one. *
23 International Viewpoint #258 July 1994