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Rebel Politics In Russia
Isabel Magkoeva
Marc Bennetts
MOSCOW (RIA Novosti) and therearenosunglasses.com
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to have sounded the
death knell for the ideas of Marx and Lenin in Russia, but just over
two decades on, a new wave of young and increasingly visible socialist
activists are eager to hoist the red flag over the Kremlin once more.
“I became interested in socialism when I was in my late teens,” said
Isabel Magkoeva, 21, a rising star of Russia’s left and an activist with
the Revolutionary Socialist Movement.
“I was always concerned by economic inequality and started to ask
questions about why this should be. Then I got interested in left-wing
literature,” added Magkoeva, a former teenage model who bears a striking
resemblance to high-profile Chilean student protest leader Camila
Vallejo. “That was when I realized I wanted to get involved.”
But although Magkoeva praises Lenin as a “great revolutionary,” she
has few illusions about the Soviet Union, which ceased to exist the same
year she was born.
“There was no genuine socialism in the Soviet Union,” she said. “And
it is inaccurate to portray us all as seeking a return to the past. That
simply isn’t true. We are for a new modernized form of socialism.”
This increase in the popularity of socialist ideas has been
bolstered, in part, by Russia’s appalling record on wealth inequality,
highlighted earlier this month by a report by the Swiss financial
services company Credit Suisse.
“Excluding small Caribbean nations with resident billionaires, wealth
inequality in Russia is the highest in the world,” the report said.
“Worldwide, billionaires collectively account for less than 2% of total
household wealth; in Russia today, around 100 billionaires own 30% of
all personal assets.”
It is figures like this that, activists say, have attracted young
Russians to socialist groups. Young left-wingers have been among the
main movers in the unprecedented protests against the almost
13-year-rule of President Vladimir Putin, bucking an over-two-decade
long trend that had seen unreformed, elderly Soviet-era communists as
almost the sole champions of socialist causes.
“Young people have almost no chance to buy affordable housing and
bring up a family normally. There is almost no opportunity for people to
climb the social ladder, especially for those who are not from Moscow,”
said activist Sergei Fomchenkov, 38, a leading member of the Other
Russia movement.
“And so when people see all this, and then see a small group of
incredibly wealthy billionaires building themselves luxury villas and so
on, of course they start to see leftist ideas as a real alternative,”
he added.
But, like Magkoeva, Fomchenkov has no desire to see Russia return to
its Soviet past.
“We want a modernized form of socialism in which the state controls
national industry, but not small businesses,” he stressed. “It would be
lunacy to attempt to control the activities of every small café, for
example.”
Analysts tie this rise in socialist ideas in Russia into a similar
trend in a crisis-hit Europe, where leftist parties have made dramatic
gains in an increasingly polarized political atmosphere.
“Like everywhere in Europe, vulnerable young people hit by the global
economic crisis are rediscovering the ideas of socialism,” said Lilia
Shevtsova, an analyst at the Moscow-based Carnegie Center think tank.
“These ideas were discredited in Russia in the period after the collapse
of the Soviet Union, but young people are today moving toward the new
left.”
Left Front
The most high-profile of this new generation of leftists, Sergei
Udaltsov, made international headlines last week when he was charged with planning mass disorder across Russia on
the basis of grainy footage broadcast by a pro-Kremlin channel.
Left Front leader Udaltsov, 36, a fiery, shaven-head activist who has
been one of the main players in ongoing anti-Kremlin street protests,
could face up to ten years behind bars if convicted on the charges,
which he denies. Udaltsov was released by investigators on a pledge not
to leave Moscow, but two other Left Front activists remain in custody
waiting trial.
“It’s no coincidence that the Left Front movement was targeted,”
activist Alexei Sakhnin told journalists after Udaltsov had been freed
on a pledge not to leave Moscow. “The Left Front is the only group to
have addressed social issues such as rising utility costs, which is
something that millions of Russians suffer from every day.”
And the movement’s rhetoric seems to have struck a chord with many
Russians. A public opinion survey by state-pollster VTsIOM indicated
that Udaltsov was the only high-profile protest leader to have seen his
popularity ratings increase since Putin’s election to a third term in
March.
“Left wing groups in Russia openly sought a return to a socialism
system in the 1990s, but they were entirely discredited,” said Left
Front co-founder Ilya Ponomaryov. “But people have now again begun to
see leftist ideas as a real alternative and it’s a very positive sign
that more and more young people are getting involved.”
But he dismissed suggestions that history has proven it is impossible
to build a viable society on the principles of socialism and communism.
“They all got Marx and Engels wrong,” he said, referring to previous
failed attempts to construct socialist states. “You have to get the
economic approach right first, before you can build a socialist
country.”
Communist Nostalgia
Putin once famously called the Soviet Union’s collapse “the greatest
geo-political catastrophe” of the 20th century, tapping into a pervasive
nostalgia for the Soviet era among the older generation.
And avowed Putin foe Gennady Gudkov, a former KGB officer turned
Kremlin critic,told RIA
Novosti earlier this year that he shared the president’s views.
“We
could have kept the country together,” he said.
Left Front co-founder Ponomaryov, 37, also admitted to “mixed
feelings” about the Soviet Union.
“It was strong state with many social guarantees, but there was far
too much bureaucracy,” he said. “But it’s clear things were better in
the Soviet Union than they are now.”
“There was no freedom of speech or human rights back then, but there
isn’t any now, either,” he said.
This widespread respect for the Soviet past has translated into voter
support for the Communist Party, the second largest political party in
parliament.
But activists like Magkoeva, who spent the weekend collecting money
for “political prisoners” at a two-day opposition rally in central
Moscow, have little time for the party, whose veteran leader, Gennady
Zyuganov, has lost four presidential elections since the break-up of the
Soviet Union.
“Today’s Communist Party may praise the Soviet Union, but it has
little in common with left-wing ideas,” she said. “It is an opposition
for show only, which does not shy away from using the most populist
ideas, from small business to Orthodox Christianity, to attract
supporters.”
And it is the socialist fervor of Magkoeva and her comrades that many
analysts see as the biggest threat to Putin’s grip on power.
“A few years ago, it seemed that nationalist groups posed the
greatest danger to the authorities,” said Shevtsova, the Carnegie Center
analyst. “But now it is clear that it is the new left.”
