The Communist Parties of Russia and Ukraine on the Eve of the 1999 Elections: Similarities, Contrasts, and Interactions

Demokratizatsiya

Volumn 7, Issue 1, 1999, Pages 111-134

  Urban, Joan Barth ^a  

^a CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA   (United States)

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EID: 0000126618     PISSN: 10746846     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (89)

1. For an in-depth treatment of these developments, see Joan Barth Urban and Valery D. Solovei, Russin's Communists at the Crossroads (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), chs. 2-3.
2. Gennady Zyuganov, at the April 1997 party contress, claimed 540,000 members for the CPRF (IV Sezd Kommunisticheskoi partit Rossiiskai Federatsii [Moscow, 1997], 33)
3. although other ranking members of the CPRF Presidium estimate total party membership as ranging anywhere between 500,000 and 550,000 members; J. B. Urban's conversations at the State Duma in Moscow, November 1998. The CPRF had long since established party committees in all eighty-nine territorial units of the Russian Federation, while Zyuganov reported that by 1997 there were 27,000 primary party organizations. Pravda Rossii, 15 April 1997, 1.
4. See Urban and Solovei, Russia's Communists, 55-60 and 98-105. When Nikolai G. Bindiukov, CPRF secretary in charge of international ties, reviewed Russia's Communists at the Crossroads, he did not dispute the authors' depiction of these proto-factions; see Byndyukov and Petr Lopata, "Put vybran, neobkhodimo uspeshno ego proiti," Dialog 10 (October 1997): 41-48.
5. See Urban and Solovei, Russia's Communists, 55-60 and 98-105. When Nikolai G. Bindiukov, CPRF secretary in charge of international ties, reviewed Russia's Communists at the Crossroads, he did not dispute the authors' depiction of these proto-factions; see Byndyukov and Petr Lopata, "Put vybran, neobkhodimo uspeshno ego proiti," Dialog 10 (October 1997): 41-48.
6. Chapter 6, Russia's Communists, passim.
7. Programma Kommunisticheskoi partii Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Moscow: Informpechat, 1995).
8. This was suggested by the April 1993 referendum in which, with a voter turnout of over 64 percent, about 59 percent expressed support for Yeltsin's leadership.
9. Russia's Communists, 133-34.
10. Ibid., 149-59.
11. This view was articulated with particular forcefulness by CPRF first deputy chairman, Valentin A. Kuptsov, at a central committee plenum in August 1996; Russia's Com munists, 181-83.
12. Text in IV Sezd Kommunisticheskoi partii Rossiiskoi Federatsii: 19-20 aprelia 1997 goda (Materialy I dokumenty) (Moscow, 1997), 74-92
13. "Rossiia budet velikoi i sotsialisticheskoi: Politichesky otchet Tsentralnogo Komiteta IV sezdu Kommunisticheskoi partii Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Doklad tov. Zyuganova G.A.," in ibid., 7-36.
14. For example, Ivan I. Melnikov replaced Aleksandr A. Shabanov as deputy CPRF chairman, but both men were reportedly Marxist reformers. Nikolai G. Binkyukov, a Marxist-Leninist revivalist, was shifted from the position of secretary in charge of ideology to secretary in charge of international linkages with other left-wing parties, in which capacity he reported directly to Melnikov. One of Zyuganov's speechwriters, Aleksandr K. Frolov, was elevated to the Presidium, while reserve General Mikhail S. Surkov, a figure with no distinct political profile, was moved from the Presidium to the Secretariat to oversee party ties with the military. The new members of the Presidium are listed in ibid., 113-17.
15. Valerii Solovei, "Kommunisticheskaya i natsionalisticheskya oppozitsiia v kontekste postkommunisticheskoi transformatsii Rossii," in Rossiia Politicheskaya, ed. Liliia Shevtsova (Moscow: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 1998), 195-272 at 248-49.
16. Ibid., 254.
17. Urban and Solovei, Russia's Communists, 50, 138-39, 147. In the Russian Duma, the law allows a deputy to employ between one and five assistants. The CPRF has determined that each communist deputy would have five assistants, one in Moscow and the other four in the regions, all of whom have the right to free public transport, rooms in the parliament or local admininstrative buildings, access to state working documents, and so forth. The assistants in the localities double in effect as party officials, acting as raikom, gorkom, obkom, or reskom secretaries. With their salaries paid from the state budget (which in 1998 allotted some 3,000 new rubles per month for this purpose to each deputy, or the equivalent of about $500 per month before the mid-August 1998 devaluation of the ruble), the 800-odd assistants to the communist deputies form a key component of the organizational core of the party. Since 1996, the CPRF has had a separate building in Moscow to house its Central Committee offices, fully equipped with modern communications facilities and even a small adjoining hotel. However, given the large number of Central Committee members who are also Duma deputies, top party leadership meetings continue to be held in the parliament building as a matter of convenience. This information is based on my conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998. By way of concrete illustration, according to discussions by Urban and Solovei at the CPRF's Ivanovo region office in June 1996 and December 1997, the secretary directly in charge of the obkom office was also the assistant to her electoral district's Duma deputy (and obkom first secretary), Vladimir Ilich Tikhonov. As of December 1997, the obkom secretary in Ivanovo received a monthly state salary of 1,300,000 old rubles (about $215 at the then rate of exchange); she then turned over 200,000 rubles from her salary to the CPRF. During my informal conversations at the Ukrainian Rada in May 1998, deputies and their assistants described a roughly similar situation, although not in such detail. In contrast to the CPRF, the CPU headquarters in Kiev, located in a small, cramped, and sparsely furnished two-story building in the old city, appeared to be ill-equipped to serve as the standby nerve center of a mass nationwide political organization.
18. Four days before the first round of the 1996 presidential election, the Ivanovo obkom office was a beehive of activity by volunteers who distributed photocopies of campaign fliers published in the central pro-CPRF press (Sovetskaya Rossiya and Pravda) and posters hand made out of glossy, creatively doctored up left-overs from the pro-Yeltsin "Our Home Is Russia" 1995 Duma race.
19. Urban and Solovei, Russia's Communists, 159-62.
20. For the composition of the CPRF's leadership organs, see IV Sezd Kommunisticheski partii Rossiiskoi Federatsii, 108-17. The author compared this to the persons listed in a breakdown of the Duma fraction memberships made available by a CPRF deputy in December 1997.
21. At the Fourth CPRF Congress in April 1997, a total of 173 Duma deputies were identified as having been elected on the CPRF ticket (the increase since 1995 being due to victories in various by-elections); see the stenographic account of the Fourth Congress in Kommunist 4 (July-August 1997): 102-05. Comparing that list to the breakdown of Duma faction memberships as of December 1997 (see note 17), one can establish that the CPRF "loaned" seventeen deputies to the People's Power group and fourteen to the Agrarians.
22. For these figures, see the unpublished paper by Richard Sakwa, "Left or Right? The CPRF and the Problem of Democratic Consolidation in Russia," 1997, 6, 17.
23. This judgment is based on J. B. Urban's conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998. The Duma passed the 1998 budget in the final reading by 252 to 129 with two abstentions; RFE/RL Newsline, 2, 43, Part 1, 4 March 1998.
24. RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 1, No. 135, Part 1, 9 October 1997.
25. Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 140, Part I, 16 October 1997.
26. Ibid., Vol. 1, No. 144, Part I, 22 October 1997.
27. In Ivanovo, for example, the secretary in charge of the obkom office was able to reach fourteen out of a total of twenty-five raikom secretaries, eight of whom opposed postponement of the no-confidence vote and six supported it; my conversations at the Ivanovo obkom office in December 1997.
28. On Kuptsov's stance, see his interview in Pravda Rossii, 3-9 June 1998, 1-2.
29. Tatyana A. Astrakhankina, Teimuraz G. Avaliani, Albert M. Makashov, and Leonid N. Petrovsky.
30. "K. Kommunistam Rossii," Duel, (March 1998); text republished in Sovetskaia Pravda: Obsor oppozitsionnykh izdanii, (1998): 1-2.
31. See Moskovsky Komsomolets, 6 April 1998. as cited in Raznogolositsa. 6-12 April 1998, 61.
32. See Moskovsky Komsomolets, 6 April 1998. as cited in Raznogolositsa. 6-12 April 1998, 61.
33. Reported by S. Aksenov, Kommersant Daili, 16 April 1998, as cited in Raznogalositsa, 13-19 April, 101.
34. Reported by S. Aksenov, Kommersant Daili, 16 April 1998, as cited in Raznogalositsa, 13-19 April, 101.
35. Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 21 April 1998, as cited in Raznogolositsa, 4 (1998): 127. CPRF Duma speaker, Gennady N. Seleznev, did not take part in the vote, while Yuri D. Maslyukov and Oleg A. Shenkarev (who was soon to leave the CPRF) voted in favor of Kirienko and Dar'ya A. Mitina, the youngest member of the CPRF fraction, abstained, reportedly out of solidarity with Kirienko's youth; J. B. Urban's conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998.
36. Rossiiskaya Gazeta, 21 April 1998, as cited in Raznogolositsa, 4 (1998): 127. CPRF Duma speaker, Gennady N. Seleznev, did not take part in the vote, while Yuri D. Maslyukov and Oleg A. Shenkarev (who was soon to leave the CPRF) voted in favor of Kirienko and Dar'ya A. Mitina, the youngest member of the CPRF fraction, abstained, reportedly out of solidarity with Kirienko's youth; J. B. Urban's conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998.
37. RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2. No. 77, Part I, 22 April 1998.
38. Quoted in RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 75, Part I, 20 April 1998.
39. For the text of the Central Committee resolution, see Pravda Rossii, 29 April-5 May 1998, 1
40. See, for example, G. Cherkasov, Kommersant Daili, 28 April 1998, as reported in Raznogolositsa, 40.
41. See, for example, G. Cherkasov, Kommersant Daili, 28 April 1998, as reported in Raznogolositsa, 40.
42. Estimates regarding the number of communists who broke ranks to vote for Kirienko ranged from Zyuganov's own figure of twelve (Moskovsye Novosti 16 [1998]) to a figure of some twenty-five to forty (Arguments i Fakty 18 [1998]); see Raznogolositsa 5 (1998): 41. Since the vote was by secret ballot, all of these figures are the result of speculation. Still the differences in the figures may relate to the distinction between those deputies elected on the communist ticket who are not "card-carrying" CPRF members and those who are both CPRF deputies and party members. The former are not obliged to observe party discipline although they normally choose to do so; information provided during my conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998. Prominent communist deputies who admitted to voting for Kirienko include Gennady N. Seleznev, Yuri D. Maslyukov, and Duma deputy speaker Svetlana P. Goryacheva. Zyuganov's long-time associate but noncommunist member of the CPRF faction, Alekei Podberezkin, also voted in favor of Kirienko.
43. See, for example, Svetlana Goryacheva's interview in Pravda, 9 July 1998, 1-2, in which she recounted the physical and psychic stress to which she was subjected because of her breach of discipline. Her reasons for taking that step were similar to those cited above by Seleznev in his mid-April interview on Russian Public Television. The capstone of her interview, however, was her delineation of her public policy positions: preferential credit and tax subsidies favoring domestic Russian products over foreign imports; government regulation of energy prices; progressive taxation; free medical care, education, and so forth. These policies may be considered social democratic but certainly not communist in character.
44. Reported to journalists by Zyuganov on 23 May 1998; see RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 98, Part I, 25 May 1998.
45. Report by Zyuganov to a CPRF plenum on 20 June 1998; see RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 118, Part I, 22 June 1998.
46. Podbereyzkin's open letter to the CPRF leadership is quoted in Anatolii Baranov, "Ne vypast by iz istorii," Pravda piat, 23 May 1998.
47. RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 130, Part I, 9 July 1998.
48. Quoted in RFE/RL Newsline. Vol. 2. No. 119, Part I, 23 June 1998.
49. Ibid.
50. For the text of Maslyukov's letter and conditions, see Pravda, 28-29 July 1998, 1.
51. Pravda, 24 July 1998, 1.
52. This disclosure appeared in Pravda, 28-29 July 1998, 1.
53. "Reshenie - za plenumom TsK KPRF," Pravda, 30 July 1998, 1.
54. RFE/RL Newsline, Vol. 2, No. 141, Part I, 24 July 1998.
55. Ibid., Vol. 2, No. 167, Part I, 31 August 1998.
56. The breakdown by party faction of the first vote was reported by Reuters, 31 August 1998, and reprinted in Johnson's Russia List, #2338, 1 September 1998.
57. For the breakdown by party faction of the second vote, see New York Times, 8 September 1998, A12.
58. At the Third CPU Congress in October 1997, chairman Petr Simonenko put the party membership at 140,000 and the number of primary party organizations at 5,172, of which 1,375 were in workplaces. Komunist 42 (October 1997): 7-8.
59. "Osnovy vnutrennei I vneshnei politiki Ukrainy (Proykt Sotsialisticheskoy Partii Ukrainy): odobreny na zakliychitelnom egape VI sezda SPU 13 iiynia 1998 goda," published in the SPU weekly, Tovarishch 26 (June 1998) 1, 3-4. Cf. Programa Sotialistichnoi Partii Ukraini (Kyiv, 1995). The 1995 program was written in part by the dogmatic Marxist-Leninist economist, Natalia M. Vitrenko (who was later expelled from the SPU), which accounts for the more orthodox tone of the latter document.
60. "Osnovy vnutrennei I vneshnei politiki Ukrainy (Proykt Sotsialisticheskoy Partii Ukrainy): odobreny na zakliychitelnom egape VI sezda SPU 13 iiynia 1998 goda," published in the SPU weekly, Tovarishch 26 (June 1998) 1, 3-4. Cf. Programa Sotialistichnoi Partii Ukraini (Kyiv, 1995). The 1995 program was written in part by the dogmatic Marxist-Leninist economist, Natalia M. Vitrenko (who was later expelled from the SPU), which accounts for the more orthodox tone of the latter document.
61. See my interview with Vladimir V. Kizima, SPU secretary in charge of theoretical analysis and strategy, Kyiv, 26 May 1998. The membership of the SPU numbered about 90,000 in September 1991 but dropped to 30,000 when the CPU was formed in March 1993.
62. Partiia Kommunistov Vozrozhdaetsya: Dokumenty i materialy vtorogo etapa vseukrainskoi konferentsii kommunistov i sezda kommunisticheskoi partii Ukrainy, 19 iiunia 1993 goda (Kherson, Ukraine: 1995), passim.
63. Programma Kommunisticheskoi Partii Ukrainy: Preniata II (XXX) sezdom Kompartii Ukrainy, 12 marta 1995 goda (Kiev, 1995), passim.
64. For the latter limitation on freedom and "pluralism," see ibid., 31.
65. I had access to the unpublished stenogram of the Second CPU Congress at the party's headquarters in Kiev, 1-2 June 1998; for the above, see cassette 4, side A, 5-9.
66. Ibid., cassette 2, side B, 38-47.
67. Ibid., cassette 5, side A, 1-4.
68. Ibid., cassette 3, side B, 1-3.
69. Ibid., cassette 7, side A, 8-12.
70. Text in Komunist 42 (October 1997): 3-8 at 6.
71. Ibid. 8. Simonenko's tolerance of diversity is also suggested by the reportedly coop erative nature of his dealings with the Socialist leaders, the results of which, however, are hampered by his inability to persuade more than 30 percent of the CPU to follow him in this regard.
72. The final vote, taken under the government's threat of a popular referendum that would have undermined the parliament's prerogatives and prestige, was 315 in favor, 36 against. 12 abstentions, and 30 nonvoters at a time when the communists numbered 87 out of a total of 415 deputies: a two-thirds majority of the 450 potential seats in the Supreme Rada (301 votes) was required for ratification of the new constitution. For details, see Kataryna Wolczuk, "The Politics of Constitution Making in Ukraine," in Contemporary Ukraine: Dynamics of Post-Soviet Transformation, ed. Taras Kuzio (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1998), 118-38 at 128, 134.
73. Text in Komunist 42 (October 1997): 5.
74. Ibid., 7.
75. Ibid., 6.
76. Russia's Communists at the Crossroads, 110-16. The depth of the CPRF-Shenin enmity was confirmed during my mid-1997 interviews with Shenin at his party headquarters (27 June 1997) and Nikolai G. Bindyukov, CPRF secretary in charge of links with other leftist parties, in State Duma office (30 June 1997). Bindyukov described how Shenin's UCP-CPSU had sponsored an international meeting of communist parties just days before the CPRF's Fourth Congress and then Shenin himself had refused to attend either the CPRF-sponsored gathering of guests from eighty-two foreign parties the day after the Fourth Congress, let alone the congress itself.
77. Vladimir Dekterev, "Porozn' my obrecheny pogibat'," Pravda, 14-15 July 1998, 1. CPRF deputies, including those among the top leadership, are divided on the issue of the recreation of a unitary eastern Slavic state, with some insisting on commitment to this goal and others conceding that any attempt to reunite Ukraine and Russia would lead to civil war in Ukraine; my conversations with ranking CPRF Duma deputies in Moscow, November 1998.
78. Viktor Drozd, "Inogo net puti . . . ". ibid., 2.
79. Information provided by Ivan I. Melnikov, CPRF deputy chairman, on 13 November 1998 in the office of the Duma Committee on Education and Science. Both Melnikov and Nikolai G. Bindyukov (the latter in a conversation on 12 November 1998) cited one particular case in which the CPRF Presidium voted against publication of a controversial article (dealing with the divided Belarusian communist movement); but the Pravda editorial board nonetheless published the article.
80. This assessment is based on my reading of the unedited stenographic account of the Second CPU Congress and my observations of Rada sessions in late May and early June 1998.
81. The new CPU Presidium and Secretariat members are named in Komunist 42 (October 1997): 1 ; the composition fo the Rada elected in spring 1998 is listed, by faction affiliation, in Tovarishch 22 (May 1998): 2. For the election of CPU obkom secretaries as deputies, see Komunist 32 (August 1998): 3. The CPU faction rose from 119 to 120 deputies by late July, as local electoral disputes were resolved.
82. The new CPU Presidium and Secretariat members are named in Komunist 42 (October 1997): 1 ; the composition fo the Rada elected in spring 1998 is listed, by faction affiliation, in Tovarishch 22 (May 1998): 2. For the election of CPU obkom secretaries as deputies, see Komunist 32 (August 1998): 3. The CPU faction rose from 119 to 120 deputies by late July, as local electoral disputes were resolved.
83. The new CPU Presidium and Secretariat members are named in Komunist 42 (October 1997): 1 ; the composition fo the Rada elected in spring 1998 is listed, by faction affiliation, in Tovarishch 22 (May 1998): 2. For the election of CPU obkom secretaries as deputies, see Komunist 32 (August 1998): 3. The CPU faction rose from 119 to 120 deputies by late July, as local electoral disputes were resolved.
84. See Tovarishch 22 (May 1998): 2.
85. I observed the speakership election process from the balcony of the parliament during the week of 24 May; ongoing accounts of the prolonged crisis may be found in the widely respected Kiev daily, Den.
86. Olga Len and Vladimir Solotorev, "Rebyenok parlamentskoi blokady." Den, 11 July 1998, 4.
87. Text in Komunist 29 (July 1998): 3-4.
88. Ibid., 3.
89. Text in ibid., 5.