The Transformation of “United Russia”
The Putinist “dynamic of change” expressed itself not only in the manipulation of
the “pluralist” party system by the presidential administration. It was also at work
inside
the parties. This dynamic was characterized by the emergence of an ultranationalist
and chauvinist ideology in the ruling party United Russia, as well as in the tolerated
“opposition” parties. This development was especially unexpected in the case of the
CPRF, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which considered itself as the
successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
[1]
Immediately after its foundation, in February 1993, the party—while still clinging
to the old communist symbols and keeping “leftist” demands in its program—took a chauvinist-nationalist
course that was not much different from the Liberal-Democratic Party of Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
In both cases the party labels were misleading. Like the Liberal-Democratic Party,
which was
not
liberal and
not
democratic, the Communist Party was
not
communist. Outward-looking Communist internationalism had been replaced by inward-looking
Russian chauvinism. Stephen D. Shenfield wrote that many observers declared that the
“ideology dominant within what still goes under the name of the communist movement
is no longer communist, but fascist or close to fascist. The most unequivocal of these
observers go so far as to claim that ‘the CPRF is in effect a fascist party, both
at the top and at the provincial grassroots’ . . . or that ‘the CPRF has for a long
time been following the ideas not of communism and socialism, but of national-socialism.’”
[2]
This opinion was confirmed by Dmitri Furman, an analyst of the Gorbachev Foundation,
who wrote: “In the ideology of the largest party, the CPRF, fascistoid features are
so salient that one has to be blind and deaf not to notice them.”
[3]
In a report of the Moscow-based SOVA Center, the cooperation between the CPRF and
the extreme right (and now forbidden) Movement Against Illegal Immigration, DPNI,
has been amply documented. Aleksandr Belov, the leader of the DPNI, and one of the
agitators of an anti-Caucasian pogrom in the Karelian town of Kondopoga in the summer
2006, was invited as a speaker by the CPRF.
[4]
On the list of the CPRF for the municipal elections in Moscow in 2008 were at least
thirteen candidates who were members of extreme right organizations.
[5]
Gennady Zyuganov, the general secretary of the CPRF, no longer seems to be interested
in the world revolution or in the realization of Marxism-Leninism. Like Zhirinovsky,
his sole interest has become the restoration of the former Soviet empire
.
Like the former Slavophiles he indulged in “Third Rome” fantasies. Moreover, could
one imagine a general secretary of the former CPSU, opening his autobiography with
the sentence: “I am Russian by blood and spirit and love my Native land”?
[6]
Certainly not. Zyuganov, however, had no problem with this exaltation of his “Russian-ness.”
Nicole J. Jackson, referring to Zyuganov’s “extreme nationalist discourse,” wrote:
Gennady Zyuganov promoted a form of national socialism which argued that the class
struggle had been replaced by a clash of civilizations between Russia and the West
which threatened Russia’s existence. This mix of ideas allowed Zyuganov to promote
an alliance of communists and nationalists, “the red-brown alliance,” which demanded
that Russia be allowed to pursue its own unique path of development based upon spiritual
values—although the content was mostly unspecified.
[7]
In fact, Zyuganov was not the first to replace the class struggle
inside
a country by the struggle
between
countries. It was done before him by Enrico Corradini, the cofounder of the Italian
nationalist association ANI, which would merge with Mussolini’s movement in 1923.
According to Corradini “have” and “have-not” nations competed for economic advantage
in perpetual war. “This new imperialist theory did not only legitimate fascist wars
of conquest, but offered an alternative to Marxist class theories.”
[8]
At the same time the foreign policy objectives of the Communist Party were reduced
to a mainly
negative
policy of systematically opposing the United States. The United States was considered
to represent the main global power that could obstruct the reestablishment of the
former empire. That the latter had become the ultimate goal became clear from the
1995 election platform of the party, which called on the peoples of the “illegally
disintegrated Soviet Union to recreate a single unified state in good will.”
[9]
What is interesting here is the use of the expression “
illegally
disintegrated Soviet Union.” Zhirinovsky described the demise of the Soviet Union
in similar words in his book
Last Push to the South
. It is an expression full of sinister consequences. If you consider the Belavezha
Accords of December 8, 1991, in which Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine—the original three
signatories of the Treaty of the Union of 1922—decided to dissolve the Soviet Union,
to be illegal, this necessarily means that you consider all the subsequent treaties,
signed by the Russian government with the new governments (e.g., on the delimitation
of the frontiers), to be null and void. Despite the reassuring use of the words “in
good will,” it is clear that if one follows the logic inherent in the expression “
illegally
disintegrated Soviet Union,” the use of military means to reintegrate these territories
would not be an act of aggression, as defined in the Charter of the United Nations,
but a legal act of a central government to reintegrate rebellious provinces.
The dominant Kremlin party United Russia has treated both the Liberal-Democratic Party
and the Communist Party as extremes on a
left-right scale
with United Russia in the middle. This had the benefit that it attributed to United
Russia the role of a “center” party. It was, as so often in Russia, a pure question
of
labeling.
The “liberal-democrats” and the “communists” share essentially the same ultranationalist
ideology and form an extreme right bloc in the Duma. The most important difference
between the two parties is a difference in style
.
Zyuganov is a gray party apparatchik who lacks the personal charisma of Zhirinovsky.
He is also less outspoken and does not share Zhirinovsky’s more extreme positions
concerning a Russian expansion into Turkey, Iran, and Afghanistan.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century we can observe in Russia the spread
of a new culture and the dissemination of new ideas in society. Sociologists usually
describe this as a process of
Kultursenkung
, which means that “high” culture, starting in the elite, “trickles down” from the
elite into the general population. However, such a
top-down
process does not seem to apply in this case. It is not so much elite culture, as
rather
Unkultur
—a lack of (high) culture—that spreads in society. For this reason it is, perhaps,
preferable to call this process
Unkulturaufstieg
: a
bottom-up
process in which nonculture spreads from the lower echelons of society to reach,
ultimately, the elite circles. An interesting historical example of such a process
of
Unkulturaufstieg
(without calling it so) is given by Andreas Umland. It concerns the spread of anti-Semitism
in pre–World War I Germany.
[10]
Umland observed that the development of anti-Semitism in Germany was marked by
a fundamental
discontinuity
.
At the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, the young German party system
experienced a significant change by the descent of its most explicitly antisemitic
components.
[11]
[This was surprising, because] only a few years before, some seemingly vigorous
ultra-nationalist parties, founded during the 1870s–1880s, had been on the rise, and,
together with the increasingly antisemitic Conservative Party, won a majority in the
1893
Reichstag
elections. Also, a multitude of antisemitic literature had been circulating in Germany
for more than two decades at this point.
[12]
[Yet, this did not prevent the fact that] the electoral fortunes of the antisemitic
parties, other than the Conservative Party, declined in the first decade of the 20th
century.”
[13]
It could be said that this was good news. But was it? Apparently, it was
not
, because “the decline of the antisemitic parties was . . . not symptomatic of a decline
in antisemitism, for these particular parties had already performed their historic
role of moving antisemitism from the street and the beer hall’s
Stammtisch
into the electoral booth and the seat of parliament . . . . The antisemitic parties
had rendered themselves moot. They could quietly disappear, leaving the political
terrain to more potent successors who were fit for the next upsurge in antisemitic
expression and activity.”
[14]
In fact, what Umland is describing here is a process of
Unkulturaufstieg—
the spread of uncivilized ideas “from the street and the beer hall’s
Stammtisch
[table]” to society as a whole—including its higher echelons. Umland also observed
an interesting parallel between the situation in Germany in the first decade of the
last century and the situation in contemporary Russia
.
In the second half of the 1990s we could equally observe a generalized
rise
of illiberal trends and anti-Western opinions in the Russian population. However,
at the same time, “those anti-liberal Russian parties that in the middle of the 1990s
still had relative success at the elections (for instance the Communist Party or the
Liberal-Democratic Party), despite these tendencies, could not improve their attractiveness
for the electorate.”
[15]
Umland rightly concluded that the German experience should be a warning against
premature optimism concerning the state of affairs in Russia. As was the case in pre–World
War I Germany, the present period in Russia is one in which chauvinist and ultranationalist
ideas are permeating society. This process of
Unkulturaufstieg
is especially visible in the United Russia party, a party that has put so much effort
into presenting itself as a moderate “center” party.
In Russia the mixture of racist street hooliganism, the presence of fascist parties
in the Duma, and the spread of fascist and ultranationalist ideas by a multitude of
groups, websites, and blogs, have led to a generalized climate in which ultranationalist
chauvinism has become acceptable
.
During Putin’s first presidential term the political elite still tried to distance
itself from this overzealous ultranationalist fervor. Responsible for ruling the country,
United Russia and the leadership presented themselves as democratic, pragmatic, and
middle of the road: not left, not right, trying to keep a safe distance from the LDPR
and the CPRF, as well as from radical right wing groups. This neutral, pragmatic,
technocratic attitude was, first of all, displayed by Putin himself. Marlène Laruelle,
for instance, characterized Putin in this period as follows: “[T]he new president
cast himself as a-ideological. He claimed to be working solely in accordance with
technocratic objectives, necessary to promoting Russia’s stabilization and then revival.”
[16]
The same assessment was made by two other analysts, who wrote: “On the whole, however,
Putin—as a staff employee of state security who had spent his whole adult life working
for the KGB under the ideological control of the Communist Party—had no ideology or
political program of his own. He confined himself to general populist phrases. Back
in 1999, at the beginning of his tenure as prime minister, he had given the following
response to a question about his potential platform in the presidential race: ‘My
main objective is to improve people’s lives. We will work out a political platform
later.’”
[17]
However, was Putin really this a-ideological pragmatist he pretended to be? Another
author wrote: “It seemed entirely natural when, asked at a town meeting ‘What do you
love most?’ Putin instantly replied: ‘Russia.’”
[18]
Russia? It might seem strange for a man saying he loved Russia more than his wife
and daughters. On another occasion Putin declared that “Patriotism must become the
unifying ideology of Russia,” adding that “patriotism will be vital, when we, citizens
of Russia, can be proud of our country today.”
[19]
Meeting with representatives of the youth movement
Nashi
, Putin said: “We need our civil society, but one that is permeated by patriotism,
a concern for our country.”
[20]
Are statements like these, that Russia needs a civil society “permeated with patriotism,”
compatible with the image of the pragmatic technocrat that Putin so carefully cultivates?
It is time to have a closer look at Putin’s deeper self.
A very interesting document in this context is Putin’s programmatic declaration, published
on the website of the Council of Ministers on December 29, 1999. At that time Putin
still was Yeltsin’s prime minister. The timing was important: two days later Yeltsin
would appoint him to be his successor as acting president of the Russian Federation.
At the time of publication the declaration had the status of a prime ministerial document
presenting the government’s program for the coming year. As such it would have been
no more than a swan song. Yeltsin’s prime ministers were, as a rule, short-lived.
Even if Putin could have stayed on to the end, his career as prime minister would
have ended anyway a few months later when the presidential election took place. Putin’s
appointment as acting president on December 31, 1999, changed everything fundamentally.
The program he had presented was no longer the program of an ephemeral government
shortly before being dismissed. Suddenly it became the
State of the Union
of the young, new president of the Russian Federation. Maybe it was even more: the
solemn declaration with which a new tsar accepts the throne of the empire. A comparison
that is not as far-fetched as it might seem at first glance, because—as in the case
of a royal heir—the throne was literally
offered
to Putin.