Tens of thousands of protesters took to
the streets Dec. 10 across Russia in one of the largest
demonstrations the country has seen in decades. Representing an
eclectic mix of different class forces and political orientations,
the coordinated actions were called to protest alleged vote rigging
during the Dec. 4 elections for the legislative Duma. More
demonstrations are expected in the coming days and weeks.
Much of the protesters’ anger is
directed towards Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his United Russia
party. Putin, along with President Dmitry Medvedev, are
representatives of the capitalist class that took over Russia after
the overthrew of the Soviet Union.
Two decades of counter-revolution
For roughly the first decade of
post-Soviet capitalist rule, Russia was run by President Boris
Yeltsin, who oversaw the pillaging of the country’s formerly public
wealth and productive forces. Yeltsin also slavishly obeyed the
orders of Western imperialism, which imposed “shock therapy”
economic policies to eradicate any traces of the previous socialist
society. This led to a great deal of nationalist indignation, which
took both progressive and reactionary forms.
With the introduction of production for
profit, the living standards of Russian workers catastrophically
declined. Along with the introduction of previously unknown features
of capitalist society like unemployment and homelessness, incomes
fell 25 to 30 percent, and in 1997 the United Nations announced that
100 million Russians had fallen into poverty. The dismantling of the
socialist health care system caused death rates to skyrocket 40
percent between 1990 and 1994.
As a result, the Communist Party of the
Russian Federation (KPRF), the successor to the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union, was able to form the largest parliamentary bloc in
bourgeois elections. The KPRF came close to winning the 1996
presidential elections, and a devastating financial crisis in 1998
further delegitimized Yeltsin.
With the 2000 presidential elections in
sight, the Russian capitalist class turned to Vladimir Putin to
restore political stability to their system. Putin was able to defeat
KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov in the first round of the elections and
proceeded to consolidate overwhelming control of all aspects of
Russian political life through the creation of United Russia, an
amalgamation of several smaller right-wing parties.
Putin continued to faithfully protect
capitalism, but broke with his predecessor by taking a more
independent stance on the international stage. Russia, by virtue of
its veto power in the United Nations Security Council, has often
forced U.S./NATO imperialism to back down from some of its more
aggressive initiatives. For example, the Russian flag was seen at
mass pro-government demonstrations in Syria, a sign of gratitude for
its opposition to direct imperialist intervention.
This is entirely different, however,
from the type of international solidarity extended by the Soviet
Union, which was done on the basis of a fundamental loyalty to the
interests of working and oppressed people. Putin is more assertive of
the interests of the Russian national bourgeoisie, which puts him on
uneasy terms with Western imperialism.
Elections show growing frustration
Russia is badly affected by the global
economic crisis, which further exposes the inequities of the still
relatively new capitalist economy. As a result, Putin’s personal
popularity and the popularity of United Russia have been waning. As
the Dec. 4 Duma elections neared, most analysts expected the ruling
party to retain its majority but lose a significant portion of its
votes.
On the other hand, the Communist Party,
the largest opposition party, was expected to do comparatively well.
Although it has adopted opportunistic positions on the question of
nationalities, which broke with its historical support for
self-determination, the KPRF is increasingly popular mainly because
it advocates a return to socialism. A Pew Global Attitudes opinion
poll from this spring found that half of Russians think that it is a
great misfortune that the Soviet Union no longer exists, and nearly
70 percent think that the changes since the counter-revolution have
not helped ordinary people.
When the election results were
announced, it turned out that a slim majority had voted for parties
other than United Russia, which received 49.3 percent of the vote,
just barely hanging on to its control of the Duma. The KRPF’s share
of the vote increased to 19.2 percent, up from 11.5 percent the
previous election. A Just Russia—a social democratic party—and
the semi-fascist Liberal Democratic Party also saw significant gains.
Although it failed to pass the 7 percent threshold to enter the Duma,
the right-wing, pro-Western Yabloko party managed to attract 3.4
percent of voters.
Even though all opposition parties had
made substantial gains, allegations of vote-rigging quickly began to
surface, and many groups denounced the process. The KPRF, for
example, issued a statement saying that the “elections were unfair
and non-free.” “We consider them illegitimate from a moral and
political point of view,” the statement continued.
Supporters of United Russia responded
by pointing out that many of the non-governmental organizations most
critical of the elections have ties to the West, particularly
agencies like USAID. Western-backed election monitoring organization
Golos, for example, reported over 2,000 incidents of voting
irregularities, and the pro-imperialist Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe was also very vocal in its denunciation of the
process.
Protests break out
The perception that the elections were
unfair led to mass outrage, which first manifested itself in small,
sporadic protests on election night. Demonstrations continued over
the following days, with crowds growing into the thousands. This
culminated in the massive Dec. 10 protests that were legally
permitted, unlike previous demonstrations that had been met with
police repression.
The government’s combination of an
independent foreign policy and the continuation of anti-worker
economic policies has made it enemies across the political spectrum.
At this point, it is not possible to determine a particular character
or definitive leadership of the emerging protest movement. The
largest demonstration on Dec. 10 appears to have been dominated by
the extra-parliamentary opposition, which is largely composed of
reactionary, pro-Western liberals and ultra-nationalists. However,
there was an organized Communist presence in many cities that day,
and on Dec. 18 the KPRF is organizing a mass demonstration in Moscow.
Throughout the
former socialist bloc, governments that have fallen out of favor with
imperialism have often had to step down in the face of mass
demonstrations known as “color revolutions”—a reference to the
fact that the bourgeois media often assigns these uprisings a color
to make them more marketable. For example, allegations of electoral
fraud led to the 2004 “Orange” Revolution in Ukraine, which
resulted in the installation of right-wing Viktor Yushchenko as
president until 2010, when he was crushed in a presidential
election—receiving only 5.5 percent of the vote.
Hoping to foment such a situation and
internationally isolate Russia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton was quick to declare that the elections were “neither free
nor fair” and expressed “serious concerns.” The hypocrisy is
striking. Not only does the U.S. government support governments that
engage in egregious electoral fraud like the Philippines and Senegal,
it backs regimes like the monarchy in Saudi Arabia that do not even
bother with the pretense of voting. The United States, European
Union, NATO and so on are not concerned in the least with civil
liberties or democratic rights; their use of this rhetoric is just a
smokescreen for intervention to advance their own pro-imperialist
agendas.
It remains to be seen what the dominant
character of the protest movement will be: an expression of the just
indignation the Russian working class feels after two decades of
capitalist robbery, or a movement to do away with Russia’s
political independence and bring it under the sphere of control of
U.S. imperialism and its allies. A “color revolution” would not
be in the interests of the people of Russia, who have already
suffered so much under capitalist governance since the overthrow of
the Soviet Union. On the other hand, a real revolutionary leadership
would make it possible for the Russian working class to wage a
struggle to regain what was stolen from it in the counterrevolution
of 1991.
