Analysis of Elections by NSC

Is there a lesson to be learned from the
Russian Elections?

Northstar Compass, as a non-party publication, representing world-wide friends of Soviet people, has the right to speak its mind on the election that took place on December 19th, 1999. After all, all of us are the grandchildren of our parents and also grandparents who were the first to set up the "Hands Off Russia Committees" in 1918 and devoted our energies all these years in order to help the Soviet people to gain their freedom, to live a life under Socialism and to stop Imperialism which is again striving to "drown the baby in the cradle" as they tried to do since the Great October Socialist Revolution.

In other articles we have analyses from our Soviet comrades, as they dissect the results of that election. Here, we're dissecting the results from across the ocean, basing ourselves on what the bourgeois powers say and also on what it does not state!

Here are some headlines in the daily bourgeois press that set the tone for this article:

Unfortunately some of the above headlines are the truth, while others are nothing but wishful thinking.

Prime Minister Putin leaves a voting booth. Is he next PM?

The tragedy of the elections to the Russian Duma was practically a "repeat fiasco" in the election held in the Ukraine. The left forces were disunited, fought also amongst themselves, full of opportunism and forgetting that the enemy (no matter how they pretend that they're divided) is very united in one important goal... under no circumstances must the left forces gain the upper hand.

Why was there a real need to have so many "Communist Blocs", all vying for the Duma seats? Why was it that the CPRF, the biggest party of the left, through its leader (Zyuganov) threw out all unity overtures from both Victor Tiulkin and Victor Anpilov, to join all together into ONE MIGHTY ELECTION ANTI-YELTSIN REGIME BLOC and thus unite a majority of the Soviet people who (even by the present world-wide bourgeois press) state that over 80% of the people want the present regime out and to go back to socialism?

Another question: What has the CPRF leadership (this is no reflection on any of the dedicated rank and file CPRF members at all) done in the Duma for these many years? Did they manage to improve the life of the people? Did they really fight vigorously the Yeltsin regime as Communists should? Why did most of their "Red Governors" in the regions of Russia cooperate with the regime? Many more questions could also be asked... but they all point to the "cooperative spirit and loyal opposition" by the CPRF members of the Duma with Yeltsin, a willing tool of Imperialism and a traitor.

The favorite defense of this "cooperation" is the answer that "Lenin was for participation in the elections!" But... Lenin and all the Bolsheviks fought their class enemy and never cooperated with them! There is a difference, no?

Yes, the Communists (CPRF and some others) held their own. They now have about 140 or so seats out of the total of 450 in the Russian Duma! Can you imagine how many more seats the Communists could have won had they united into one single election bloc?

The CPRF, according to the newspaper New York Times, which wrote after the election, quoting Zyuganov: "We are now demanding that one of our elected members should get a high post, such as the Speaker of the Duma!" Yes, of course... but comrades of the CPRF, you had a well-known CPRF member as the Speaker for the last 4-5 years! What did he accomplish?

Or were the elections to the Duma only to get a great warm chair, good pay, all the perks that go with it...? What about the resurrection of the Soviet Union and also of Socialism? What about stopping the robbery and rape of the Soviet natural raw resources? What about taking measures to stop the ethnic wars and the dangerous death rate, criminality, narcotics, the total Mafia infiltration etc. etc.?

Is this not what REAL dedicated Communists should fight for?

It is no wonder that the Soviet people now look at the squabbling amongst all of the left-wing and communist leaders and stay away from voting, and in many ways the people do not trust some of the present so-called communists!

Yeltsin-Putin-Yakovlev and other traitors will offer pie-in- the-sky to the left-wing deputies in the present Duma... the questions will have to be asked as to how many of all of these elected "Communists Deputies" now shall succumb to these offers and forget as to why they were elected?

There is much agitational work that must be done, first of all among all of the Soviet working class. Only the working class can and will bring about a necessary Second Socialist Revolution and sweep away the present regime and their supporters, be they from the right or the left!

We certainly invite comments, criticism. It would be a pleasure to have the CPRF itself write to NSC about this article. After all, Lenin and Stalin taught us to have criticism and self-criticism. After the death of Stalin, unfortunately this was forgotten and also buried under. When any of the communist party leadership divorces itself from the working class and deems to rule opportunistically... the oncoming gulf widens between the party and the working class, thus producing the contemporary results as we see in some of the former socialist countries.

UNITY of the left forces in Russia during this election could have paved the way for the future. If some comrades think that in year 2000, during the presidential election, there is a possibility of CPRF fielding a successful candidate alone, it is just sheer lunacy!

Click here to return to January 2000 index.