The trouble with youth
* Russia Most of the Russian Communist Party's few young supporters have just left. Boris Kagarlitsky and Renfrey Clarke The Fourth Congress of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), held in Moscow on April 19 and 20, looked like a triumph for party leader Gennady Zyuganov. He managed to avoid having to explain the loss of last year's presidential elections, or the more recent decision by the party leadership to back a state budget, which even the government now admits was unrealistic. Nor was Zyuganov called to account for the party's decision to endorse Viktor Chernomyrdin as prime minister. In the concluding stages of the congress, he was re-elected as general secretary with, he boasted, only one delegate voting against.
Zyuganov's triumph was a victory for bureaucratic gagging and arm-twisting. In no sense was it an advance toward building a united, massive opposition to the Yeltsin regime. This became clear in the week after the congress. At the end of April, leaders of the 21,000 member Russian Communist Youth Union (Komsomol) declared their organisation politically and organisationally independent of the party.
Zyuganov had been under heavy criticism from left-wing elements of the KPRF for several months. Representatives of regional party organisations were particularly dissatisfied; many deputies who had been elected from territorial constituencies defied party discipline and voted against the budget. Tight control
Virtually none of this dissatisfaction emerged in the congress. As far as possible, delegates who were thought likely to raise awkward questions were first "sifted out" at provincial conferences. Then, almost all the dissenters who made it to the congress were blocked from speaking. Known dissidents were kept off the new Central Committee.
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Zyuganov's main response to discontent in the ranks was to call on KPRF members to turn out massively for anti-government demonstrations planned for May Ist, Victory Day (May 9th) and the November 7th anniversary of the 1917 revolution. With large numbers of the KPRF's worker pensioner members living in semi-starvation, Zyuganov could not afford not to support
But any illusion that the party leaders were really seeking to lead mass struggles against the government's policies should have been dispelled in the davs after the congress, when representatives of the KPRF Duma (parliamentary) fraction met with Vice-Premier Anatoly Chubais to discuss amendments to the state budget. Chubais was demanding further cuts to spending on social needs, health and education, while rejecting measures to support industry and agriculture. The Communist fraction agreed to most of his proposals. Parliamentary cretinism
Zyuganov and his colleagues do not deliberately serve Chubais's goals. But the KPRF leaders fail to mount serious resistance to the government's attacks because they have driven themselves into a strategic dead-end. Without experience of working with mass movements - and with little wish to do so - the KPRF leaders are showing all the symptoms of "parliamentary cretinism." Fearful of losing their Duma mandates and places in the various parliamentary committees, they are accepting any compromise so long as the dissolution of the parliament is avoided. This submissiveness is undermining the Party's influence and reducing its chances should early elections be held. This in turn multiplies the party leaders' fear of elections and their weakness in the face of government pressures.
Ironically, pro-business news organs are often ready to point to the confusion and spinelessness of the supposed Red menace. "The gulf between the radicalising masses, who are demanding prompt improvements in their situation, and the mild, ineffectual actions of the KPRF leadership is creating a deep crisis in the left opposition," the newspaper Vek observed recently.
For the KPRF leaders, the "triumph" at the congress is already looking more like the prelude to catastrophe. On 29 April, Komsomol leader Malyarov told the English-language Moscow Tribune, that the Komsomol had "an independent position", and was not "an appendage of the KPRF". "The conflict is expected to grow," he said.
At the same press conference Anatoly Baranov, deputy editor-in-chief of Pravda, attacked the KPRF for failing to carry out its role of opposing the government's strategies. "The official opposition, represented by Gennady Zyuganov, has lost its spirit and can no longer fulfil its function," he complained,