Editorial
As Editor of NSC, I read numerous newspapers, articles, proclamations, programs and hundreds of letters, e-mails and faxes which describe the numerous Communist, Socialist, Marxist parties that are on the scene in Russia, Ukraine, Byelorussia and other former Soviet republics. With elections coming up in Russia, Ukraine and in other republics at the end of this year and also in the year 2000, let us look very carefully and analyze what would or could really happen if by chance a Communist was elected as President either in Russia or Ukraine... the two largest and most populated regions of the former USSR!
In Russia the candidate from the Communists is preparing to announce his candidacy for the post of President. He is Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In Ukraine the candidate for the President of Ukraine is to be the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine P. Simonenko. They are not the only candidates to be sure, since the present "presidents" are also candidates, plus a score of others shall be vying for the top posts.
Let us suppose that the Communist candidate either in Russia or Ukraine somehow manages to get elected as President. How will this "victory" be looked upon by the international working class that a President, a "communist" was elected to head a capitalist-bourgeois country? A second question is needed to be asked also. How will such a President be able to hold on to power, to govern a state that has the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, where the parliaments are composed of anti-socialist deputies, businessmen, Mafiosi type who are supported, abetted and heavily financed by Imperialism and the International Monetary Fund? It is a fact that not one proposal of the new President would be able to be passed by the parliament. He could try and use the power of a veto as is now in the constitution of Russia and Ukraine, to try and push through the recommendations that he as a "Communist President" wants. The confrontation would be sharp as it is now, with a bourgeois president and a bourgeois state.
The present bourgeoisie would go to sabotage, diversions, terror and a putsch to overturn the will of the people. Since the Parliament would have at its disposal the courts, the power would still be in the hands of the army, police, secret service and militia, the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. In order to overthrow this bourgeois dictatorship, you need the dictatorship of the proletariat. But, where will you get the dictatorship of the proletariat when in the constitution and program of the CPRF (Russia) and in the CPU (Ukraine) you cannot find this important phrase or even the mention of a people's revolution to overthrow the present capitalist regimes?
Both the CPRF and the CPU think that they can build socialism through parliamentary means. It is a dangerous illusion.
V.I. Lenin said that to attain socialism there are only two roads - peaceful and also non-peaceful way, but he added - history does not know even one instance where a change of government of a ruling class was achieved by peaceful means. V.I. Lenin also emphatically stated that the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie must be replaced by the dictatorship of the proletariat which must use all power to defend the gains of the revolution against the forces of the impending counter-revolution.
Only by such means will the Soviet State be formed and defended against the internal and external enemies. There is no other path. The working class should understand this, as should the present leaders of all the communist and socialist parties in the former Soviet Union. This should also apply to the leaders of communist parties in all of the capitalist countries!
Besides all of the above, let us just suppose again that Zyuganov or Simonenko manage to get elected as Presidents. How will Zyuganov or Simonenko take on the task of abolishing the post of President? To abolish the post of President by parliamentary means is impossible - the present Constitution has this guaranteed... there is no paragraph in the present Constitution of both Russia and Ukraine that an elected President can abolish the post of President for which he was elected! There is only one other means to do this - a referendum.
Suppose that in the Referendum the people decide to abolish the "Presidency"!
This still leaves the bourgeois parliament in control of the country. The leader of the Duma in Russia and the Supreme Soviet in Ukraine are both supposedly "reds", but in reality they are pawns in the hands of the capitalist class that is ruling both countries.
An example of what happens in the bourgeois parliaments in both Russia and Ukraine is the never-ending discussions and debates which are nothing but to "show" the people how "democratic" the parliaments are, but in actual fact this is a tool to propagate and carry out the plans of the IMF and US Imperialism, but hide it under the "democratic cloak" of parliament. A perfect example was the election in Ukraine of the speaker of the parliament, a certain A. Tkachenko, a vicious Trotskyite, an anti-Sovieteer - who was elected as a compromise candidate, with the full vote of the CPU!
Will a situation as stated above change the country and put it on the road to Socialism?
Is anyone that naive that US Imperialism and NATO would allow the Soviet Union to go back to Socialism, without an outright attack against the Soviet people in order to drown them in blood as they did in Yugoslavia and scores of other countries of the world?
The above questions are not without reason. You have read in NSC numerous stories that in Russia the so-called "red governors" - members of the CPRF - act as lackeys of the present Yeltsin regime, doing their dirty work, hiding behind their titles as "Red Governors" while carrying out the present program as dictated by the IMF. The same things are happening in Ukraine, where the governing officials in Crimea, all members of the CPU are repressing the Bolsheviks and not one economic, political or national question was settled.
The fact of the matter is that the present regime in Russia is illegal even by the standards as established by the US judiciary. The last Referendum in the USSR decided overwhelmingly that all the Soviet Republics wanted to stay inside the USSR with no separation. The Yeltsin regime ignored this and together with the traitors in the leadership of the Soviet Republics the USSR was dismembered. International Law does not in actual fact recognizes this, but you will not read about this in any present bourgeois press. Therefore, trying to change the present situation through parliamentary means, while the state is in the hands of the capitalist class, supported by Imperialism, is nothing but a pipe dream.
The Call by "Trudovaya Rossia" and the Stalin Bloc in Russia, for a united front in the forthcoming election to the Russian Duma in December of this year, deserves comment and support as a tactic in the given situation. This Appeal was sent to Gennady Zyuganov of the CPRF, asking that all Communists unite and field candidates from "Communists of Russia" for the Duma elections. As of the date of publication of NSC, there was no response from the CPRF.
This is only a tactic, it certainly shall not overthrow the present Russian Mafia infested regime... but it is a necessary step towards building a United Front which shall go a long way towards the overthrow of capitalism in Russia and the coming dictatorship of the proletariat, to be followed by the resurrection of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
These are the reasons as to why we are planning to hold the First Congress for Friendship and Solidarity with Soviet People in the year 2000 in Europe, in order to elect an International Council - as friends of Soviet People, carrying out the tradition and devotion that our fathers, mothers and grandparents did in 1918 when they established the "Hands Off Russia" Committees in many countries of the world!
Michael Lucas
Editor
Close this page to return.