#13 - JRL 8220 - JRL Home
pravda.ru
May 24, 2004
Russian Communist Party in crisis

The stagnation of Russian Communist Party can be compared with the crisis of McDonalds restaurants in Russia.

There are no lines of customers near McDonalds as it used to be in the beginning of its work in Russia in the end of the 1980s, and Russian Communist Party has already no support of many millions.

Public learned some unfavorable facts both about the activity of Russian Communist Party and the work of McDonalds. While bringing McDonalds down for low quality of its foodstuffs and low sanitary conditions does not hurt people much, discrediting Communist Party has different outcome. If the person"s ideals and the ideology he/she pursues, are discredited, this can oppress the person for life. And it currently happens. There is no other explanation to the fact that the people who earlier supported Communists, voted for United Russia at the Parliamentary Elections in December 2003 and for Vladimir Putin at the Presidential elections in March 2004.

Russian Communist Party and McDonalds have similar problems of top management. Americans themselves should decide why more and more people stop going to McDonalds and eat at other cafes and restaurants. But the Communist Party representing the opposition, is an absolutely different matter for us, and PRAVDA.RU is concerned about it.

The party leader Gennady Zyuganov manage to persuade people that Russian Communist Party is the successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union prohibited by the Decree of Russian President Yeltsin in 1991. For this reason the supporters of Communism in the Soviet period still continue to vote for Russian Communist Party. Ironically, Russian Communist Party became well-known in the country after it abandoned Lenin"s principle to ignore the "Parliamentary game" and took part in the Duma elections in the fall of 1993 after Yeltsin attacked former Russian Parliament - Council of People"s Deputies - with tanks. While working in the Parliament, Russian Communists abandoned 80 more percent of Lenin"s legacy.

Coming 10th Congress of Russian Communist Party will be not devoted to the problems of the left movement, but - how boring - it will be about the disputes among the party leaders willing to stay in power. It was the party leaders who did all possible for the party"s slow dying, with other people laughing about it.

According to the planned scenario, the unfavorable election outcome will be explained by the Communist Party leaders as follows: ) the anti-people"s regime was libeling Communists, b) the party branches in Russian regions were working badly, c) other enemies were undermining the party. However, if Lenin had been the party leader, he would have started analyzing ideas. Lack of ideas is the main problem of Russian Communists. Any statement contradicting party leader Gennady Zyuganov, is banned from the party press. There is no sign of the discussions like those the party had in the time of the revolution and later.

Because of the policy of the Russian Communist Party leaders, Russia will have to forget the idea of Socialism for long, and the reasons why Socialism should be pursued. One has to think: while Russia has the major party which is supposed to promote the ideas of Socialism, Russian people are not aware what Socialism is about. For this reason, people cannot decide if they should support the party calling itself "Communist".

It is time to think about the causes of the party degradation, and the party leaders. In December 2003 PRAVDA.RU wrote the editorial "With no Leader". We still have the same opinion: the party should urgently find a new leader having no ties with the current leadership which went bankrupt in terms of ideology.

Petr Ermilin