Title, basically.
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Russia lacks a serious left-wing organization and class consciousness is way lower than it has been in 1917, so I would expect social upheaval under current circumstances to result in nothing good, though in the upcoming years the repeat of February-October isn’t completely out of the question, especially if western sanctions actually hit harder, or the Russia fucks up in Ukraine somehow. I do think the chances are slim but hey, Lenin thought he wouldn’t see a revolution in his lifetime.
As for non-revolutionary means, remember that Russia is still a dictatorship of bourgeoisie who still have some serious capital they plundered from Soviet workers, and all parliamentary parties including CPRF are controlled opposition, and the elections seems to become more fraudulent year on year (though now they have uncontrollable electric voting system, so I think they’ve reached an apex of fraud potential). Most historical communist parties coming to power through elections have come to be in a very different circumstances with weakened local bourgeoisie in a multi-polar world shortly after WW2 when prestige of USSR and Red Army was very high.
The CPRF IS NOT controlled opposition. STOP spreading western propaganda. The CPRF tried to overthrow Boris Yeltsin during the mass protests in 1993. The CPRF regularly criticises Putin for his liberal policies. Point to ONE shred of evidence on the CPRF being “controlled opposition” please. The leader of the CPRF Gennady Zyuganov was a fierce critic of Gorbachev and perestroika. He supported the antiGorbachev faction of the CPSU and the failed August Coup that tried to remove him and save socialism. He has always been a fierce critic of Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin.
This is literal western propaganda whose purpose is to say “oh you see, the CPRF is controlled by Putin too, the only REAL opposition is Navalny who is western funded”. You probably didnt mean it in that purpose, but thats the purpose of these arguments. To promote views of Russia as a “totalitarian hellhole”.
CPRF gets up to 89% of its funding from Russian state (152 RUB yearly per vote per RF Federal law N95 Article 33 pt. 5-6) and there are grand bourgeoisie donors who then get elected as CPRF deputes (CPRF had “sold” the most of deputy places of all other parties in 2021 election lmao).
CPRF doesn’t shy from dissatisfied electorate through populist opportunism like engaging with anti-vax protests. Meanwhile when low-ranking members have been arrested in anti-fraud protests* after the 2021 State Duma election, Zyuganov shortly went to denounce them and deepthroat Putin’s boot.
Also not buying the criticism talks. Case in point: CPRF was the only party allowed to organize anything on this May 1st in Moscow where Zyuganov with militaristic fervor echoes Russian imperial/fascist theories blaming “globalist Anglo-Saxons” for attacks on Russian world and pays homage to solidarity of labor and government as the defining factor of the Soviet’s victory in WW2. Nice class analysis there, just a few days after the arrest of “Courier” labor union organizer Kirill Ukraintsev (not a good last name these days) that he decided to ignore. Though that’s not particularly surprising from somebody who straight up praises the now-infamous philosopher of Russian fascism, I.A.Ilyin in his book.
The folks who prefer other philosophers aren’t so lucky. A CPRF deputy was fined for reposting Sartre quote saying “Every anticommunist is scum”. Though that’s nothing compared to how five members of a Marxist reading group in Ufa have been arrested and accused of terrorism, including a CPRF deputy. Somewhat totalitarian hellholish, according to the western propaganda outlet that is the official site of CPRF.
Then again, I’ve been watching Russian political sphere for about a decade and apart from minutae feuds and shedding light on some abuses of Russian power, CPRF seems to have done nothing significant during all that time. Sure, there have been rallies (some pro-Putin though) but it amounted to the same as Democrats in BLM movement. In 2011 CPRF and “A Just Russia” parties had enough mandates that they could refuse to participate and thus strip the parliament of legitimacy, Bolshevik-style, but they chose not to. Even in local cases where UR was in a minority like in Tomsk in 2021 somehow the city Duma had both supported the speaker to be from UR and then acted in favor of construction monopolist against the wishes of local populace, according to local ex-secretary of ideology in CPRF who left the party. I also haven’t particularly seen them supporting organized workers specifically.
I doubt I’ll be changing your mind with any of this, but I’ll leave this for other readers to judge as to what informs my opinion as long as they bother to use translators. I wouldn’t also debate anything based on talks and not action, and there’s a lot of positive light about individual CPRF deputes one can find. Even so I think CPRF as a whole, today, is communist in name only.
[*] - I swapped the source from this, which I still believe provides a decent outline of protests development, to official CPRF site that contains just a short statement.
Lmfao bro, one of the sources you posted, Ovdinfo, is literally a prowest NGO funded by the European Union and Memorial (yes, the anticommunist NGO created in 1989 by Sakharov the liberal to “investigate stalinist crimes” and which greatly contributed to the collapse of the USSR). It literally took me 2 minutes of googling to find this out. If you wont even bother to make sure the sources you are using arent literally western propaganda, then im sorry but i wont take anything you say seriously. I dont have time to look at who funds the other sources but i invite you and any other comrade to do so.
The CPRF gets funded by the russian government because it gets votes, all other parties do. This is not a sinister conspiracy, its the norm in all liberal “democracies”. The Communist Party of Greece, a very based party, also gets such funding for the same reasons. How is this a bad thing? Should we make the work of the party even more difficult by not even accepting this small unconditional funding while the bourgeois parties get billions from corporations? Also you are literally debunking your own argument. How is the CPRF controlled opposition if they are denouncing on their own website these acts of state repression? You are literally not making any sense. And no, Russia is not “totalitarian”, unless you consider the European Union to be totalitarian too, because they do the same shit or even worse. This was exactly my point, because prowest sources (like Ovdinfo that YOU cited) always ramble about Russia doing these things but stay silent when the west does, thus giving the image that Russia is “totalitarian” while the west is “democratic and free”. This was exactly my point when i talked about “Russia isnt totalitarian”.
Edit: Yeah sure, just downvote me instead of addressing the fact you are spreading literal western propaganda funded by the European Union and US proxies in a communist space. Great praxis.
Good thing we don’t have any more time to waste on each other then.
Oh so you will not say anything then? You slip in literal western propaganda as it were honest facts and you wont even apologise or recognize it? Im not saying you have to agree with me, but at least dont go peddling western propaganda dude. If it was an honest mistake then just say it, we all make mistakes. But instead you downvote me and move on, as if im lying, while you were literally peddling criminal western propaganda used to justify war against Russia. Very disappointing.
Ok, what happened is that I looked for sources describing events as I remember it since I don’t store the links regarding every single news piece, and it happened that this site provided an outline that seemed decent at a glance. I’ve replaced it with the statement on CPRF official site now as they describe the same events making the same point, though I would have to go through dozen of articles to give an equally decent outline which I won’t.
And yeah, I do think US, EU and Russia all have state political repression, and none of them is “democratic and free”. I’m concerned particularly about Russia starting to openly attack labor organizers and fledging communists in past years.
But also, I don’t enjoy communicating with you, and at this point I’m happy to resign to history having to prove one of us wrong.
Fair enough, i apologize if i was rude to you, but we cannot tolerate western propaganda here, its very harmful (i think you will agree). I still want to warn you to be careful with newssites that label themselves as “independent anticorruption” and so on. They are very often funded by the west through NGOs. They are very common in eastern europe and southeast asia. Look im not saying CPRF is perfect, but frankly it looks clear to me that they are running a fine balance between opposing anticommunist repression in Russia and support Putin for antiimperialism. Hardly an easy task. Saying that they are “just like Putin/controlled by Putin” diminishes their struggle and achievements and supports western narratives that the only real opposition in Russia is the prowestern one. I hope you will understand my position and why i hold it. I dont think you understand how much of an achievement it is to have the 2nd biggest party in a country as big as Russia be the Communist Party with all the pervasive anticommunist narrative in East Europe since 1991. Here in Western Europe we are lucky if the Communist Party even gets into the parliament, and most big Communist Parties are completely reformists and proUS anyway. Even if CPRF has big problems, to just throw the whole party away seems irresponsible and incorrect to me. It reminds me of how maoists said USSR was completely corrupt and revisionist and opposed it.
I haven’t really looked into it, but I vaguely remember someone saying CPRF was very socdemmy.
Its as “socdemmy” as the Communist Party of China, so not at all. They literally advocate the same economic policies. The CPRF wants a socialist market economy in Russia based on Deng Xiaoping Theory and how the CPC runs China. They basically wanna import socialism with chinese charachteristics to Russia, with some differences ofc. Sure, they are not advocating for immediate revolution against Putin in Russia, but how would that be a good thing now? Russia is fighting an existential war right now in Ukraine against the west. If Russia falls to the west, its game over, China would have no chance of standing up to US imperialism. In these conditions, advocating for revolution against Putin is counterrevolutionary and reactionary, since it only favors US imperialism. This is why the CPRF does not advocate for immediate revolution right now. Instead, they advocate for supporting Putin for antiimperialism while trying to push him to the left with reformism to increase living standards of the russian working class. Once US imperialism has been defeated and/or the russian government becomes reactionary, then it will be the time for revolution.
I hope the stakes aren’t that high for China. I see that China should have absolutely no tolerance for western backed regime change in Russia. If I were in their administration I would see it that way. So the chance of that happening and the potential fallout should be aggressively minimized.
The stakes are that high. Just think about it, if Russia was still in the Yeltsin era, proUS neoliberal, wtf would China do? It would be encircled by hostile enemies from all sides, unable to get the cheap oil and gas it desperately needs for its economy and unable to defend itself from a blockade or a local war. It would be the end. China and Russia are each others lifeline against the west.
And I have rabid liberals all around me having their fantasies at how to get back at Putin. It must not be tolerated on our part either (I assume you are also a westerner…).
Yep, 100% agree. Im westerner too yes, from Spain
Thanks for clarifying
What do you mean by CPRF controlled opposition? I’ve read on a communist subreddit (which of course is not very trustful) that the CPRF is revisionist because it believes in a mixed economy system similar to that of China or Vietnam, but that in my opinion is not revisionist and actually very good for current geopolitics.
I mean that while CPRF may look like an opposition, is not a treat to the capitalist order of contemporary Russia. When it comes to action, they have long abandoned class grounds or revolutionary thought and at first had simply capitalized on Soviet nostalgia. That did get *somewhat *changed fairly recently, when in 2018, after the increase of retirement age in RF led to mass protests and bottom push for a stronger opposition that focuses on social issues, and a lot of lower-ranking members have been using their power as deputies or region leaders like you’d expect from half-decent socdems, but that’s also the kind of people that got both attacked by state and party officials. To date CPRF successfully resisted several attempts to push the party leftwards, though there are still a lot of honest decent people among the lower-ranking members. Ofc that’s just my opinion I’ve formed watching Russian politics for the past 15 years, and I’m more interested in actions and dynamics than theory since politicians are typically all cock, but no cum.
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I have no doubt that Putin would have been able to win the last election without resorting to fraud, but I welcome you to think as to why bother then.
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Unfortunately not soon with Putin, church and conservatives, but I’m really hoping in a couple of years, or at least to start until the end of the decade, especially with more and more territory and countries returning to motherland recently.
I hope another revolution happens soon, not necesseraly in Russia
I’m keeping an eye on Sri Lanka to see if the furvor there spreads northward to India.
what is going on there?
Workers countrywide are striking, many under a hammer-n-sickle banner, despite the “unions” trying to sell them out. It’s workers versus IMF austerity. I’m losing hope as it seems the CP leadership, not the politboro or members, are starting to crumble under pressure from the government.
It’s much more than workers striking. The country cannot provide basic necessities to the population anymore and it’s all because the Prime Minister and his whole family have been bleeding the country dry for 20 some years.
Damn I hope they succeed
If things keep going in Ukraine as they’ve been and Russia comes out with the massive strategic victory that I think they will, Putin will be incredibly popular within Russia. Russia will be loaded from massive oil revenues from the price spikes and be looked up to by the anti imperialist world. Basically whatever he says goes at that point. I don’t know the guy, but it doesn’t seem like he’s a hardcore capitalist nor very a big fan of what the USSR was when he grew up. Seems like he just values Russian sovereignty and stability. Imo he’ll probably stay de facto leader for a long time, and if the CPRF gets enough popular support to take majority power in the duma, he might back them for stability’s sake. Idk if that would lead to a DOTP or something more like Bolivia and Venezuela with their socialist parties having power in a bourgeois state, but that’s a possibility. Kind of a remote one at that, though.
Much more likely though is United Russia stays the dominant party and the same sort of state capitalism remains. I honestly think Russia will be one of the last states to have a revolution simply because I figure they’ll be in such a stable and powerful position at the end of this war.
In the long term Russia may feel pressure from the dominant world order led by China to reform itself.
Not with Putin, at least. I don’t say it’s outright impossible, but right now, I don’t think it’s going to happen.
By the way, I di not mean right now, but for example in the next presidential elections if the Communist Party wins or something like that.
Something similar to the USSR? Maybe. But not in Russia.
In South America and Africa, however? Things are looking really promising. China, Belt & Road and other factors are helping countries in those two regions escape Western financial control. We’re still seeing reactionary coups go off like clockwork, but the US is having trouble keeping up.
Qaddafi’s attempt at a pan-African currency and union might have been quashed, but the idea’s out there: the knowledge that it’s possible, that it would have happened had the US not intervened. People in Africa know what was going on there, and they’re angry about it. China’s behaviour in the region puts in stark contrast what the Imperialists have done. Insert platitudes about how you can’t kill an idea here.
Same deal for South America. What happened to Evo Morales is fresh on people’s minds, they haven’t forgotten what happened to Allende, and everything else in between. The US has fucked with that region so much that nobody’s under any illusions. It was just inescapable until recently. And now we’re seeing ideas about a trade union for Lithium in addition to oil. That’s further paving the way to greater union.
It’s just that in both cases, if something starts happening towads a greater political union the US-led hegemony will aggressively prioritize destroying it. And that’s where the current political climate comes into it. If Western economies crash while the global South is able to ride out the shockwave of that crash by virtue of being much less dependent on the US dollar economy, then the opportunity arises for those regions to organise something while the West is too gassed (literally and figuratively) to do anything about it.
No, conditions are nowhere near revolutionary
Best hope is a very left socdem if communists get into power
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