Despite attempts by both the Tory Party and the BBC hierarchy to stifle its investigative reporting. Panorama has lost none of its cutting edge. On Monday 10 June, Jane Corbin filed an excellent documentary report on the situation in Russia and the resurgence in support for the Russian Communist Party. By the time you read this the outcome of the Russian presidential elections will of course be known— what is almost certain is that if Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov doesn’t beat that arch “democrat" Boris Yeltsin, he will nonetheless have come close to doing so.
The Communist Party, banned after the 1991 attempted coup but since legalised again, is now a real political force to be reckoned with. Its programme of state control, agricultural "collectivisation" and Russian nationalism has attracted millions of Russian workers disheartened by the failures associated with the move towards a more private enterprise-based capitalist economy. The reason for their dismay at conditions in modern Russia is obvious. Over six million Russians are officially unemployed. industrial production has plummeted, real wages have fallen catastrophically for most and the shelves are emptier in many shops than they were in the worst days of the old regime. In addition. Russia is now plagued by crime, gangsterism, prostitution, drug abuse and spreading epidemics. The Russian working class, and what remains of the peasantry, have clearly sunk into the pit and Panorama demonstrated that few apart from the rich capitalists and aspiring petty-bourgeoisie have benefited from the move towards the free market.
In view of this it is hardly surprising that millions long for a return to the "old days" of state subsidies, guaranteed minimum wages and state repression of criminal elements. The yearnings of these workers are often accompanied by nationalism and anti-semitism, together with an indulgence in conspiracy theories about international banking cartels, the United Nations and the role of the CIA in domestic Russian affairs. Gennady Zyuganov himself displays virtually all of these tendencies and. as such, can be said to be a man truly in touch with his core supporters. He is an unrepentant Stalinist among unrepentant Stalinists whose main priority is the reformation of the USSR and the re-establishment of "socialism"—in reality the re-awakening of almost full-blooded state capitalism and the extension of the Russian empire.
State capitalist class
Zyuganov represents more than just the discontented mass of Russian workers though—in fact he only represents them subjectively, in terms of their objective interests he doesn't represent them at all. What he represents instead is the old state capitalist class built up under Communist rule with its power base in the bureaucracy and military. Part of this social strata took the opportunity, on the disintegration of the old regime, to use its privileged position to turn itself into a private-enterprise bourgeoisie, but as this wasn't possible for them all. the others want to return to the old nomenklatura system of state privilege. These will be the real beneficiaries of any return to state capitalism under the dictatorial rule of the Communist Party.
The dreams of old Stalinists notwithstanding, state capitalism offered the working class nothing but poverty and repression under the old system and a return to it will not improve their situation one bit. Indeed, many of the problems of the Russian economy were first kindled during the days of the USSR, the system itself being so inefficient that it virtually collapsed under the weight of planned over-staffing, an unsustainable armaments programme and a declining rate of profit caused in large part by state subsidy of inefficient units of production. That the free market has not been able to solve Russia's problems comes as no surprise to us—it was something we warned Russian workers of at the time. But it is pleasing all the same for Panorama to have acknowledged this basic fact where others would have attempted to deny it with the smoke-screen of the return of private enterprise and the success of McDonalds.
Jane Corbin's report showed us some of the 25,000 who sleep homeless each night on the streets of Moscow and queue up every morning at the soup kitchens run by the Starvation Army. It highlighted the plight of those workers who have seen their incomes reduced to one fiftieth of the level they once were and who now only avoid starvation through eating potatoes grown on allotments. It revealed the barren shop shelves—barren that is of commodities most Russian workers would be unable to afford anyway.
Can it be any wonder that the benefits of the free market—so loudly trumpeted by the Western bourgeoisie—are imperceptible to the average Russian? Of course not, but there can be no solution in the old dreams either. State capitalism was the system which failed so pitifully before and there is no reason for believing it will, succeed now under Zyuganov or anybody else. That the Communists do not offer real communism or socialism at all is the great tragedy for the Russian working class—for it is more apparent than ever that only production for use and free access to wealth can put an end to the poverty, insecurity and decadence which are expressions of capitalism everywhere, not least of all in Russia today.
Dave Perrin
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