By Poul Funder Larsen
MOSCOW — A rather uneventful campaign, dominated by heavy pro-Yeltsin propaganda in the electronic media but virtually no popular manifestations in his support, preceded the referendum on April 25. In spite of a sizeable demonstration here on the eve of the referendum, called by the Front for National Salvation and numbering some 40-50,000 participants, there was not much activity with mass support by the opposition forces either.
The editor of the Moscow trade union paper Solidarnost, Andrei Isayev, described this peculiar situation aptly a few weeks before the referendum:
"The president, the deputies and the judges of the Constitutional Court live extremely stressful lives. They quarrel, make peace, swear their loyalty to the Constitution, then swear at the Constitution. But in the lives of ordinary, normal people this does not change anything at all. It only means that next to Santa Barbara [a never-ending US soap opera running on Russian TV], those who are interested can watch another equally drawn-out series Yeltsin fights with Khasbulatov."
The groups and parties that came out of the Communist Party still play a dominating role in the active opposition to Yeltsin. However major parts of these currents can only nominally be termed "left-wing", as chauvinist tendencies merging with the "patriotic" new right are gaining ground among their supporters.
The communists in Russia are, with some notable exceptions, now grouped around two organisations, the front Working Russia (Trudovaya Rossiya), and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). (The exceptions are the Russian Communist Party [RKP], which contains an anti-Stalinist current, and the Communist Tendency inside the Party of Labour, led by Aleksander Buzgalin and Andrei Kolganov.)
The neo-Stalinist Working Russia, dominated by the Russian Communist Workers Party (RKRP) which at one point claimed 100,000 members, has been losing influence over the last few months and was able to attract only around 5000 to its demonstration on the eve of the referendum. Meanwhile the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, founded earlier this year, claims more than 500,000 members, and though this figure may be inflated, it is almost certainly the largest party in Russia.
Both major communist organisations called on the electorate to vote against Yeltsin and his policies, for early presidential elections, but against early elections for the parliament. The latter position was certainly a difficult one to maintain, because the deputies have discredited themselves by their constant vacillations on all major policy issues — for example, in their relations with Boris Yeltsin, whom they originally endorsed — and (as the outcome of the referendum demonstrated) have lost most of their support among the population.
The Congress of Democratic Left Forces, founded in the autumn of 1992, comprises a string of parties, both some coming out of the CPSU (for example, the Socialist Workers Party [SPT], of which Roy Medvedev is a co-founder, and the Russian Communist Party) and some from other traditions (for example, the Party of Labour [PT]), as well as trade unionists, women's organisations and activists from different social movements. In their campaign they called for a no to Yeltsin and his policies — and a yes to early elections for both president and parliament.
In practice the congress's possibilities for waging a real campaign were severely limited by material constraints, so to a large extent it was hanging on to the initiatives taken by the "old" trade unions (FNPR) and the "centrist" forces around the Khasbulatov leadership of the Supreme Soviet and the Civic Union, which de facto is headed by Vice-President Rutskoi.
But neither the unions nor the Civic Union were campaigning in a particularly energetic fashion, and they did not come up with a precise recommendation for the voters as regards the question of confidence in Yeltsin. There were, however, some forces in the trade unions working for a no to Yeltsin.
The relations to the Civic Union may indeed prove a mixed blessing to the leftists in the Congress. In the event of elections they will have to face the question of which candidate to endorse for the presidency: an independent candidate from their own ranks and/or the workers movement; or the candidate of the Civic Union, likely to be Rutskoi, who is well known for his statist and authoritarian inclinations.
These and related issues will almost certainly become a major debate inside the rather heterogeneous congress and can lead to sharp differences or even splits between the forces advocating close collaboration with the Civic Union and those critical of its
bureaucratic nature.
Among the left-wing groups outside the congress, primarily small anarchist, left socialist and Trotskyist currents, most came out in favour of a boycott. The rationale was explained in an editorial of the independent Trotskyist magazine Rabochaya Demokratia:
"The state power and only the state power formulates the question, in a manner so that the answer is known beforehand, and even if this answer does not coincide with what was expected, the right of interpreting it still rests with the state power. The answers to the questions in the referendum will be used by the different groups of exploiters sharing power. Whatever happens, the workers will get nothing. So what sense does it make to participate in this farce and lend it an appearance of popular support?"
Though this position offers some insights, given the extremely manipulative set-up around the referendum, it did not enable its supporters to link up with the feeble but really existing active resistance to Yeltsin expressed in the high number voting against his social-economic policies (some 48% of those participating). Indeed, the "active boycott", called for by these currents, by all accounts ogan, while the "real boycott" — by almost 40% of the electorate — was one of apathy and disgust.
At the same time, it should be said that none of the left-wing organisations — whatever their line on the referendum — were able to make themselves heard to any significant extent in the highly polarised struggle between the president and parliament. However, the
battle of position which will ensue over the next months is likely to give the left new and better opportunities for intervening.