The veteran leader of Russia’s Communist Party has warned parliament that the country’s faltering economy risks stoking a 1917-style revolution and that the government needs to take urgent measures to correct its course.
“Communist” is afraid of revolution.
I understand (and even support) being internally critical of the government in order to squeeze out some reforms. But unless the fear of 1917 is a legal defense or some irony lost in translation, that’s discrediting to his own argument.
Ok so i’m going to play devil’s advocate here and ask you to consider the alternative: should he have said that the government should continue its present course, which he believes is making conditions worse for the working class, in hopes that this sparks a revolution?
This would be considered accelerationism, and the problem with this is that, when workers hear you say things like that, it does not make them like you and other communists more. It comes across as you advocating for their conditions to get worse so that you can achieve your political aims. This is incredibly cynical. People support those parties and politicians who show that they understand their concerns and are actively working to make them better. Even if this means appealing to the liberal-bourgeois ruling party.
In fact this is smart messaging and smart strategy. Because if the government refuses to take action and things get worse and people do start thinking about revolution, then you will be among those who the discontented flock toward to lead them, as someone who championed their interests and warned about the consequences. On the other hand, if the government does take action then you can sell it as your party having pushed them to do that, which also gains you credibility and respect as a political force.
There is also the factor that a 1917 style revolution at this point in time would be devastating for Russia and would have very little chance of success. You have to remember that even back then a coalition of a dozen imperialist nations invaded Russia to try and put down the revolution. And that was after a devastating world war that had exhausted practically all the other imperialist powers too.
Would the revolution have succeeded in defeating the white forces and the imperialist intervention if it had happened not in 1917 but in 1913? NATO is just waiting for any weakness in Russia to present itself, any internal conflict and they will immediately take advantage to try and implement their plan of subjugating and balkanizing Russia. There is a rabid and expansionist Neo-Nazi regime on Russia’s border with a large and battle hardened army. If there was a civil war in Russia, would the Russian army be able to continue to hold back the fascists? Would the revolutionaries be able to put together a new Red Army capable of stopping them?
The reason i’m asking this is because the main question that we need to consider here is this: would a rapid collapse in the conditions of the Russian people be beneficial for the potential success of a future revolution, or detrimental? One could argue that in the present circumstances this would make the revolution more likely to fail and socialists to get exterminated if the state collapsed. And this is probably also what Zyuganov is thinking. It makes more sense to bide time for now and build up the base of support of the communists by fighting for an improvement in their material conditions.
Eventually the neighboring fascist regime will be defeated and eventually US hegemony will also be gone. The imperialist camp will itself fall into crisis, which will lift the boot off the necks of all imperialized and besieged nations that are not yet socialist, opening up the geopolitical space for successful socialist revolutions.
is the economy actually doing bad (and do the people perceive it as such), or is he just saying this?
Honestly the CPRF is one of the greatest divides in opinion I have seen from our comrades on Reddit (storefront) and lemmygrad.
The truth, as usual, largely lies somewhere between the two extremes of “controlled opposition” and “based Bolsheviks 2.0”
The CPRF is hands down one of the single largest communist parties within Europe, holding around 160,000 members to this day.
It is also one of the most rapidly growing communist parties in Europe, with 1/3 of its members having joined the party in the last five years.
Most of the new members themselves are also relatively young (below the age of 30 in most cases.) which will need to be discussed in a bit so remember that.
The CPRF’s political wings can roughly be split into two cliques, the Zyuganov clique, and the Rashkin clique.
Zyuganov’s clique is largely the clique responsible for the CPRF’S social-reactionary position, as they actively reject social liberation of marginalised sections of the Proletariat (aka LGBTQ+ people) and instead seek to synthesise with conservative establishments, like the Russian orthodox church, as an example.
The Rashkinite clique is more socially progressive in comparison to the Zyuganov clique, rejecting social-reactionaries m and instead upholding the orthodox social positions of Marxist-Leninism (e.g. the liberation of the Proletariat regardless of there marginalised status.)
While the Zyuganov clique still technically “rules” the party, the mass induction of youth members whom noticeably lack the social-reactionary bias of a lot of older members of the party has led to Zyuganov’s clique to suffer a lot as they find themselves increasingly marginalised within the party.
(TL;Dr, Zyuganov’s probably going to get removed as party head soon, probably even sooner after this ngl.)
one of the single largest communist parties within Europe, holding around 160,000 members to this day.
160k is a depressingly number wtf
I think it should be noted that 60k of that membership emerged like, only 5 years ago, so it is rapidly growing, and probably will continue to do so.
For a communist party in Europe that is very sizeable. Also, not all parties take membership equally seriously. In the US membership in the Democrat and Republican parties is huge but it is virtually meaningless. Compare with Germany where the two largest parties CDU and SPD only have around 365-370k members.
In general, communist parties take membership much more seriously than most liberal bourgeois parties do. There is a higher standard set on members, there are requirements in terms of party discipline and theoretical-ideological education, and more obligations and expectations. Communist parties are vanguard parties. There are many times more sympathizers and supporters than there are actual members, and that’s the way it’s supposed to be.
But yes, even with all that, of course it is very diminished compared to what the CPSU used to be. One day, inshallah, that will come back.
Yeah, I’m not a member of my country’s communist party (bc I’m lazy and I’ve only listened to like a half dozen communist audiobooks) but I am in that “sympathizer” territory
And that’s perfectly fine and normal. We need as many sympathizers as we can get. You play a very important role.
I don’t think I can be a member of mine because of socially reactionary tendencies.
It’s up to you where you draw your red line. I would usually say that an imperfect communist party is still better than no party. And things can always improve over time, maybe with the help of progressive minded people like yourself slowly pushing them in that direction.
But obviously everyone has a limit to how much they can tolerate, and if the things that the other party members do or say make it really impossible for you to be around them, then that party is not for you.
I gotcha. But “can’t” in this context means “I doubt they’d let me.”
Some people will be organized members of the party. But even if you are not formally organized, if already follow what your local party and join them in events or demonstrations, you are indirectly organized.
Honestly, I do not know much about them, but I always assumed they were some controlled opposition before some of the posts here changed my view slightly. Pointing out the split between two factions is useful in better understanding this party.
Even without the split, Zyuganov’s reactionary positions on socio-cultural issues does not make them controlled opposition. It just makes them communists with reactionary views on those particular issues. Unfortunately this is not that uncommon for non-Western communists.
The fact that you have to recognize is that in the post-1991 period communism in Russia was severely weakened and it is almost a miracle that it managed to survive at all, when other post-Soviet republics virtually eradicated all of their communist movements.
For a long time the KPRF has had to make compromises and lay low to survive. Their political power is not non-existent but it is limited and they have had to act within the bounds of that power. Nevertheless they are and have always been a real opposition party.
Now with a growing youth membership, a drastically changed geopolitical situation, and a resurgence of popularity of socialist ideas and positive remembrance of the Soviet Union, new possibilities are starting to emerge for the KPRF to assert itself as a political force.
But you should temper your expectations: i would not bet on them completely dropping all of their reactionary positions on cultural issues, even with a generational change in leadership. A party reflects the cultural attitudes of its base, and unfortunately Russia is just a pretty conservative society right now.
So them being reactionary does make them controlled opposition (controlled opposition would include the democrats in America, right?). Got it.
How exactly did communism not get eliminated from Russia? I do not really know much about the period after the USSR fell and broke into many pieces, so it would be interesting to know how it survived in Russia and not in other places (I think Ukraine outlawed communism).
Russia is against LGBTQ+, right? That is definitely reactionary and indicative of the fact that Russia is very conservative.
For sure, really the whole “controlled opposition” narrative is just western propaganda to demonise non-western aligned opposition within Eastern European countries to be honest (the west utilised similar tactics against the Ukrainian Communist Party before Euromaidan for instance, as in they where controlled by le evil orks.) but that still doesn’t take away the fact that the KPRF and a lot of communist groups in the former USSR have or had highly social reactionary positions.
The origins of this can largely be traced back to the collapse of the USSR, when the Union collapsed communists in eastern Europe took on extremely hardline positions, while this did effectively obliterate revisionists in eastern Europe, it also led to many groups to embrace the social reactionary positions as positive rather than falling into the 30% of things Stalin fucked up on.
In many ways this harmed the formation of socialist opposition within many countries, as marginalised sections of the Proletariat, instead of rallying around the communist party, where forced to instead align themselves with the liberals.
This also acted as a excellent tool for western propaganda, as many anti-western states in eastern Europe, such as Ukraine (up until Euromaidan.) Belarus, and Russia, often embraced highly conservative and reactionary cultural traditions, which in turn made it easier for the west to delegitimise socialist groups in eastern Europe.
In the modern day, most socialist groups in eastern Europe have been either destroyed, coopted, or forced underground, with really only a few nations, such as Belarus and Russia, having significant socialist formations within there countries.
And, well it’s a bit of a tangent but let’s talk about why the liberal western aligned opposition failed in Belarus and Russia.
In 2020, there where significant attempts at colour revolution within both Belarus and Russia, largely spurred on by legitimate grievances the people had with both governments (well, more so Russia, But still.) these protests seemed at the time to be a potential sign of the collapse of these two countries respective governments.
Why did these colour revolutions fail, well, it was due to a few reasons, in Russia it was largely due to the failure of the liberal opposition to monopolise the protests, with the KPRF, LDPR (basically the nazi party but russian.) and a Just Russia effectively jumping on the bandwagon of the protests at the time, which in turn prevented the liberal opposition from effectively taking control over the protests.
In Belarus, it was largely due to a lack of legitimate grievances outside of the Belarusians governments suppression of Marginalised groups, while cultural issues such as gay rights are something all socialists should support, they themselves are not a sufficient enough concern for a majority of the population to act as a initial foundation for a revolution, this is why we, as communists, embrace class struggle over that of social struggle, but that’s besides the point, also when I mean lack of greivences, I largely mean the fact that Belarus largely maintained it’s economic structure from the days of the USSR, which notably means it is far less corrupt than in comparison to most eastern European countries, and also is fairly industrious, with Belarus playing a fairly important part in supply the russian military with munitions for the war in Ukraine.
Also obviously there was other reasons, the attempted colour revolutions in Belarus and Russia wasn’t exactly the CIA’s finest hour, but still.
In many ways this harmed the formation of socialist opposition within many countries, as marginalised sections of the Proletariat, instead of rallying around the communist party, where forced to instead align themselves with the liberals.
This also acted as a excellent tool for western propaganda, as many anti-western states in eastern Europe, such as Ukraine (up until Euromaidan.) Belarus, and Russia, often embraced highly conservative and reactionary cultural traditions, which in turn made it easier for the west to delegitimise socialist groups in eastern Europe.
I completely agree. Reactionary positions on social issues are self-sabotage on the part of communists. They make forming a united working class movement more difficult and give propaganda ammo to the liberal-imperialist enemy.
Also, excellent breakdown of the 2020 color revolution attempts in Belarus and Russia!
The possibility of russia returning to socialism is pretty decent. The war has only strengthened the image of the soviet union.
don’t give me hope…
