Socialist Action /April 2000
Russian Dissidents Denounce Western-Backed
'New Stalinism'
By GERRY FOLEY
The election of ex-KGB official Vladimir Putin to succeed Boris Yeltsin
as president of Russia was notoriously predetermined. This was not only
because he continues to ride a wave of chauvinism directed against the Chechen
people and because of his total control of the media.
All of the major components of the old Stalinist bureaucracy and the
new-rich pirate capitalists growing up in its shadow more or less combined
behind the new strongman, overcoming the split between the neo-Stalinists
and the "liberals" that has existed since the failed neo-Stalinist
putsch of 1991.
The Communist Party candidate, Genadi Zyuganov, Putin's major electoral
opponent, did not offer a real alternative. The CP has converged with Putin
on all his main policies, including the Chechen war.
The imperialist powers also welcomed Putin as a man of "order,"
who could guarantee the continuation of the process of restoring capitalism.
Thus, all the bandits plundering Russia united behind Putin, while the
victims atomized by the Stalinist dictatorship and impoverished by the Stalinist
bureaucracy's attempt to restore capitalism had no one to represent them.
It was no contest.
Increased political clarification
However, in one respect the Russian presidential elections represented
a step forward-that is, they represented an advance in political clarification.
They made it clear that the old Stalinist bureaucracy and the parasitic
new capitalists are a common enemy of the masses of the Russian people,
that there is no fundamental difference between the "democrats"
and the neo-Stalinists.
The forces that fought against the Stalinist dictatorship are beginning
to reorient toward fighting the new imperialist-backed parliamentary dictatorship
of the heirs of the bureaucratic system.
For example, in advance of the presidential elections, a group of dissidents
headed by Elena Bonner, widow of Andrei Sakharov, the most famous of the
Soviet-era dissidents, issued a declaration condemning "the new Stalinism."
The Italian left daily Il Manifesto published excerpts from this document
in its March 2 issue. They began with the following statement:
"The great paradox of recent Russian history is a form of Stalinism
that the West has supported by backing the democratic and market reforms
instituted by the various governments presided over by President Yeltsin."
The declaration continued: "Under the Stalinist system, about a
third of the population got only symbolic or fictitious payment for its
labor. Today it is two thirds....
"Under Stalin about 20 million people were shot or lost their lives
in labor camps, in exile, or from deprivation. Today, because of the disastrous
living conditions, the population is decreasing by a million persons every
year. And to this has to be added the number of victims of the two Chechen
wars and the terror instituted throughout the country by the Mafia....
"In Stalin's time press freedom was denied and free elections were
banned. Today, all this has been granted, but the price of papers, plus
the impoverishment of the population, has led to a 40 percent drop in the
circulation of the press. Moreover, almost all sources of information are
under the control of oligarchies linked to the state authorities."
These dissidents, who have fought their whole lives for democratic rights,
were not impressed by the "democracy" instituted by Yeltsin, with
the approval of the "democratic" Western powers:
"Under President Yeltsin, the government heads have been 'elected'
within the president's 'family.' The result of such 'elections' is the success
of KGB colonel Vladimir Putin. Under the Putin government, a new phase of
modern Stalinism has been initiated.
"Authoritarianism and militarism are gathering strength. Special
units like the FSB [the successor of the KGB) are being set up in military
detachments. Even the educational system is undergoing a reorganization
that involves reintroducing military training.
"Anti-Western and nationalist propaganda is playing a bigger and
bigger role, as are the state security services. ... The media portray the
civil liberties organizations as antipatriotic (especially because of their
positions on the war in Chechnya) and as linked to the interests of the
West. Three quarters of these organizations have been outlawed."
In Russia, "anti-Western" propaganda is not necessarily anti-imperialist.
The post-Stalinists have borrowed reactionary themes from the Slavophile
arsenal. The new Russian rulers, moreover, need a certain dose of anti-Westernism
to back up their nationalist credentials, just as the Western leaders make
hypocritical references to Chechnya to maintain their democratic and humanitarian
credentials.
By reintroducing military training into the schools, the current rulers
are returning to the example set by Brezhnev of replacing the vestiges of
socialist ideology with so-called military-patriotic education that involved
celebrating the victories of the Tsarist state, mainly against the "yellow
perils" from the East but also against invaders from the West.
The real position of the Western rulers, moreover, is evident from their
unconcealed satisfaction at Putin's electoral victory and their expressed
confidence that he is basically taking the country in the right direction.
"New-KGB" state
It is interesting that the "new Stalinism" in Russia is being
presided over by a relatively young former KGB officer. In Belarus, Lukashenko's
neo-Stalinist regime is essentially made up of cadres from the KGB. According
to opposition leaders I talked to in Minsk last August, even the old CP
bosses are afraid of them.
Certainly the CP trade-union leaders in Belarus are afraid of Lukashenko's
"young wolves," because the later are trying to do away with even
the principle of collective bargaining and replace it with contracts between
individual workers and their bosses. One wonders if Putin will try to follow
this pattern in Russia.
In the last period of the old Soviet system, the KGB, under Andropov,
tried to increase its effectiveness as a repressive body by refined psychological
techniques. In the course of this, it apparently developed the Stalinist
system's most sophisticated political operatives.
The rule of the bureaucracy became increasingly the rule of the political
police. This tendency seems to be continuing under the "new Stalinism"
and is based on an attempt to convert the old Stalinist bureaucracy into
a new capitalist class.
However, in Russia, this cynical political elite cannot restabilize the
state machine in any enduring way. The breakdown of the economy and the
political structure has gone too far. (In Belarus, the attempt to restore
capitalism has been much slower, and the opposition itself rejects privatization
on the Russian model.)
The regime is making attempts to harden up elite units of the army and
the police. But in general, all of the state forces have been demoralized
by the disastrous decline in the standard of living and the general dilapidation
of the infrastructure, which the decaying bureaucracy and the parasitic
new capitalists are not powerful enough to stem.
The campaign in Chechnya is symbolic of the relativeness of the restabilization
of the state under Putin. The army was able to take the Chechen capital
of Grozny, at the price of destroying it. But it has not been able to crush
the rebellion.
In the last week of March, the army lost 45 men to the rebels, one of
the highest tolls in the war. The Chechen resistance continues, and the
"new-KGB" state faces smoldering resistance from workers and oppressed
groups in many areas, which could easily burst into flame.
Socialist Action /April 2000 |