The Russian Elections and the Democratic Left
The Russian left is divided in its response to the upcoming presidential elections. As an illustration of the debate, we publish this piece by
Alexander Buzgalin, Andrei Kolganov and Renfrey Clarke.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS IN RUSSIA ARE taking place in a context of continuing socioeconomic crisis. GDP fell more than 3% in the first quarter of 1996, in spite of the real reduction in inflation. There is a maturing crisis of state finances, a growth in social polarisation and a continuing decline in the real incomes of the majority of working people. The decline in production may be much more than official statistics indicate. Only the growing exports of fuel and raw materials are "balancing" the recession in machinery, light industry and food processing.
The main feature of social and economic life in Russia today is the struggle between different corporate clans. These clans are interconnected with industry, finance, agriculture and also with the federal and regional state elites.
Some clans are based in finance, real estate, and commerce: sectors where speculation is well developed, particularly concerning the resale of energy sources, raw materials, non-ferrous metals and steel. The elite of such clans tends towards a pro-Western orientation and attempts to carry out the recipes of advisers from the International Monetary Fund. These layers are oriented toward a continuation of the radical marketisation of the Russian economy, a continuation of privatisation and the creation of widespread private property. They are closely interconnected with the modern ruling elite by corruption, and through personal ties from the old, nomenklatura days.
Other clans are based in the machinery and agricultural sectors, sometimes in the military-industrial complex. Their style of management is bureaucratic and paternalistic. These clans are stronger in the provincial cities of central Russia than in Moscow or St Petersburg (formerly Leningrad).
While workers in enterprises under the control of clans of the first type tend to be relatively well paid, those in enterprises controlled by clans of the second type are aflen in dire poverty.
The new Russia's social classes are not vet fully formed, as economic and social relations are still in a process of transformation. But we can already clearly identify, huge numbers of lumpenised, extremely poor people. This layer includes exprisoners, people made jobless as a result of neo-liberal reforms, a growing number who have been homeless after being swindled out of their apartments, and invalids and old people on tiny pensions. These people lack class consciousness, and are liable to support any political demagogue, from ultralett to ultraright, who voices attractive slogans.
The working class in modern Russia is not the traditional proletariat, made up of workers who freely sell their labour power to capitalists. They are still partly slaves of paternalistic bureaucracy, dependent on enterbosses for prise housing and other necessities. Seventy of history years weighs heavily on workers' these consciousness. Their self-consciousness as is only a class beginning to form.
is a huge
There differentiation within working class, the because of the varying ability of different clans to maintain the standards of living
"their"
workers.
Active trade unions barely exist, and the level of self-organisation among workers is very low. Inside the intelligentsia there is a deep contradiction between their belief in abstract democratic liberal values as the road to the status of Western-style educated middle class, and the impoverishment of the working intelligentsia as a result of shocktherapy reforms.
The so-called middle class in Russia, as measured by income, is strikingly small.
Those who "make it" include employees of foreign-owned firms and joint ventures;
senior bureaucrats; top employees of the financial and commercial sectors, and racketeers. This stratum in Russia has a strong pro-capitalist and pro-Western orientation.
The so-called New Russians are not a normal bourgeoisie. Some are former members of the nomenklatura, preserving many elements from the past in their socioeconomic and political behaviour. The second group in the new elite is partly recruited from the commercial and financial structures, and partly connected to the criminal world and the shadow economy.
Russian society is witnessing a strong growth of nationalist and great-power chauvinist sentiments as a result of a series of factors. The most important of these include destruction of the Soviet Union and the "Third-Worldisation" of Russia; the lumpen-
SO...YOU WANT TO KNOW THE SECRET OF MY SUCCESS? isation of the population and the lack of class self-consciousness; the tradition paternalistic statism and of subservience to higher authority.
As a result, the two main presidential candidates, the incumbent Boris Yeltsin, and the Communist Gennady Zyuganov now speak of restoring the "strong Russian state" in line with national traditions. Over the past two years Yeltsin and Zyuganov, supposedly political opposites, have converged in this respect. They now stand next to one another
International Viewpoint 11
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Russia
- back to back, if not face to face - on the and issues great-power of statism chauvinism.
a situation there is little
In such and economic, social ideological basis for the growth of democratic left forces in Russia. Russian working people are faced with a series of very bad choices. Either they support
Yeltsin and a continuation of his policies of primitive bureaucratic capitalisation of the country, or they paternalistic support bureaucracy in the hope that
"good Tsar"
and a new
"father of all Russia" will solve their problems.
Left-Centrist
Candidates
Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to play the role of a centrist candidate, proposing democratic policies. His typical slogan is that each of us has both left and right hands; and so society too has to have both left and right political and social forces. He himself would like to be the head, ruling both hands. For "democrats" Gorbachev is too socialist; for socialists he is too liberal. As a result, and despite the real democratic element in Gorbachev's position, he will not find support on the left or the right of the Russian political scene. He draws support only from the section of the intelligentsia that enjoyed some benefits from the first period of perestroika.
Gorbachev's popularity in the West is much higher than in Russia, where many people cannot forgive him for the destruction of the Soviet Union. For many orthodox communists, Gorbachev is also a symbol of the destruction of socialism and of the
Communist Party.
candidate is
Svyatoslav Fyodorov, the famous eye surgeon. He is also the director of a huge centre with high-technology equipment and real elements of self-management and employee ownership. His corporate socialism, program includes
"convergence" between capitalism on the basis of collective labourowned enterprises and social regulation of the market. There is also a good deal of social populism in his program. In the past his idea have been different. Two years ago he said
Russia needs "Jesus Christ in Pinochet's uniform". The most positive element of
Fyodorov's program is its emphasis on the crucial role of creative labour in the building
12 International Viewpoint of a new Russia, the necessity to supersede wage labour and create a situation in which every worker is a co-owner of the means of production and of the results of labour. He also stresses that the main goal development is not capital or money but the free, harmonious development of the personality, the happiness of ordinary people. He is popular among the new generation of engineers and technicians, but not among the majority of ordinary Russians.
main opposition candidate is Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the largest party in Russia and the accepted heir of the Communist party of the Soviet Union. Formally, Zyuganov is the candidate of a whole bloc of "patriotic" forces. In reality he is above all the representative of the orthodox Communists, and of older Russians for whom nostalgia is a dominating sentiment. Secondly, he is the candidate of various nationalistic, statist forces including Cossacks, orthodox religious believers, and of people who have lost their prosperity and self-confidence as a result of the reforms. Thirdly, and most importantly, he is the candidate of corporatist clans of the second, industrial type, led by paternalistic bureaucrats.
His program is a mixture of social democratic ideas in the sphere of economic and social life with statism, nationalism and sometimes even Christian Orthodox values in the sphere of ideology. He stands for the "regulated market economy". He is in favour of the renationalisation only of enterprises which were illegally privatised. He is a supporter of free prices in the main spheres of the economy. His program also includes some elements of Wester-style selective regulation and industrial policy. Of course, there is a lot of social populism and promises of state support and subsidies to numerous social forces if he is elected president.
In the political sphere he stands formally for the continuation of democracy and for a reduction in the powers of the presidency. But these promises accord poorly with his autocratic impulses and with his past in the bureaucratic apparatus of the Soviet Union.
In the ideological sphere Zyuganov's program is a mixture of common words on the need to revive the strong national state as the central goal, plus narodnik-socialist ideas, some ideas from the orthodox church, and elements of Russian great chauvinism.
For the democratic left, whether or not to support Zyuganov is a big problem.
Unfortunately, he is the only real alternative
Gorbachev's rating among potential voters is 1-2%, Fyodorov scores no more than 5-7%.
Zyuganov's (reluctant) supporters on the democratic left stress that it is necessary to prevent the re-election of Yeltsin, who would lead Russia into a deepening socio-economic crisis, who is responsible for the war in
Chechnya and could easily start other "local" war. A continuation of Yeltsin's power could lead to new, bloody sacrifices by working people in Russia.
Furthermore, they argue, a victory for Zyuganov would constitute a shift to the left, and might lead to some improvement in the conditions of life of working people in Russia. A third argument is that if Zyuganov wins, ordinary people will feel that they can change something through their common efforts - that the power of the state depends at least partly, on them. Many people would feel that a victory for the left candidate meant that changes in their interests were on the way, and that if these changes failed to materialise, workers were entitled to mobilise and demand that they occur. A Zyuganov victory would thus tend to set off a radicalising dynamic with potential to extend well beyond anything that Zyuganov himself had in
Other democratic leftists argue against supporting Zyuganov. They point to the threat of neo-Stalinism and the growth of authoritarian tendencies and great-power chauvinism. There is the risk that after a certain time Zyuganov would become a parody of Stalin, and that Russia could lose even the minor elements of democracy it enjoys at present. Zyuganov's policies will lead to the discrediting of communism and socialism, because his real policy priorities will not radically improve the situation for working people. Zyuganov's strategy is not based not on the self-organisation of working people but on the paternalistic bureaucracy his main supporters. And finally, these lef opponents argue, Zyuganov's power will lead to the preservation of state-bureaucratic quasi-capitalism, and not of socialism. This will undermine the potential for a democratic socialist modernisation of Russia.
What can the democratic left do in such a situation? First, it can use the election information and for agitation in favour of socialist ideas. "Scholars for Democracy and Internationalists" have taken some real steps in this direction, including pickets, seminars, radio and TV interviews. Second, the left can agitate for a vote in the first-round elections against all right-wing and centrist candidates. In the second round of elections, we have to agitate for a vote against Yeltsin or any other right-wing candidate.
For the democratic left, of course, history will not end with the elections. The polls must be seen as a stage in a continuing struggle to raise consciousness, educate a basic cadre and begin the process of building organisations that accurate reflect the interests of working people in Russia, and that can begin the work of leading a fight
Yeltsin and the country's nomenklatura-capitalist rulers. *