To understand the significance of the election results in Russia, especially from outside, one must take into account the makeup of the Congress of Peoples Deputies.
The Congress is the heir, so to speak, of the original Soviet of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers Deputies that sprang up in 1905 with the first Russian Revolution. It resurfaced in the 1917 revolutions, and in October, under the guidance and leadership of the Bolshevik Party, attained working class state power which, for the first time in world history, lasted for a sustained period.
But the Congress has experienced many convolutions since then. In March 1990, for the first time, a new and supposedly improved electoral system was introduced that was calculated to please the bourgeois elements at home and especially those abroad who had been pushing for it relentlessly. In this new system, each of the seats could easily be contested in what is described as a pluralistic election similar to those in any bourgeois country.
In December 1991 the Soviet Union was dissolved. What had been the Soviet of the Russian Republic within the union became the Russian Congress.
According to the present Russian constitution, the Congress is the supreme law of the land. All authority is vested in it. Most importantly, it has the power of the purse, as with most bourgeois parliaments. The president or prime minister must come to the Congress to plead for money. Only then does the executive have the right to set up machinery to effectuate the laws enacted by the Congress.
Originally, the Communist Party had the authority to recommend to the Congress the initiatives it deemed necessary to effectuate its political program. The bourgeoisie called this a monopoly of power because the party's recommendations were usually accepted.
But that was abolished during the Gorbachev years. The Congress as now constituted has the authority to pass whatever legislation it feels desirable.
The third element of the government, the Constitutional Court, does not have the vast powers that the U.S. Supreme Court, for example, has arrogated to itself over many decades and to which the bourgeoisie has gladly accommodated itself. The U.S. Supreme Court is generally considered the most conservative and reactionary element of the tripartite political system here.
In the recent referendum, four questions were submitted to the electorate. Did the Congress have to agree to any of them? No, it did not. This is what has to be understood and what the media here have muddled up. The Congress could have rejected the whole thing, could have said it was illegal and would have no force and effect. But it chose not to. Why? Because that would have meant a shift of the struggle from a parliamentary form to a broadly political one in which the masses would have to be called upon.
Instead, it agreed to four damaging questions posed in such a way as to give a tremendous advantage to the Yeltsin counterrevolutionary cabal and its principal supporters in Washington, London, Paris, Bonn and Tokyo. They and the rest of the G7 imperialist countries had deliberately met in Tokyo a few weeks earlier for the purpose of dangling billions of dollars in front of the Russians that would presumably help them out of their catastrophic economic crisis.
It should be no surprise that the referendum was, at least by preliminary accounts, a victory for Yeltsin. The Congress agreed to it because they fear a fight with the counterrevolution, which includes imperialism, and they are afraid of the workers in case of victory. So they agreed to this rotten compromise.
In doing this, they acted very much like the Frankfort Congress that met in Germany during the revolutionary period of the 1840s. In France at that time, the proletariat was in a life-and-death battle with the bourgeoisie for power. But in Germany, the situation had not ripened to that extent.
The Frankfort Congress was supposed to represent the masses — the peasants, the plebeians — but was in reality a bourgeois parliament. It was in a fight with the landlords and the junker nobility. Marx and Engels mocked it because of its inability to arouse the masses. It was addicted to endless talk and eventually suffered the fate of all such legislative bodies. They cannot give voice to the mass struggle but can only stifle it. Reaction finally won the day, as was later epitomized by the Bismarck regime.
The vote in Russia is only an advisory one. It doesn't compel the government to do anything, but it does diminish the support for the Congress in any struggle against the counterrevolution.
One of the questions in the referendum was, "Do you approve of the government's social and economic policies conducted by the president and the government since 1992?" What a mistake that was, to agree on a vote on the economic reforms! And it was done at the initiative of the Congress, presumably based on the expectation that the masses would vote against it.
Of course they would, given a fair election where the authorities abide by the rules. But haven't the Congresspeople, the leaders above all, said time and again that this process is in the hands of the Yeltsinites, who are totally corrupt? Did they think that the Yeltsinites would sit idly by and let the reform clause go by the boards? Indeed, the whole idea of a referendum is dubious at a time when U.S. imperialism, together with the other imperialists, have mobilized all their resources to aid the counterrevolutionary cabal headed by Yeltsin.
How could Congress leader Ruslan Khasbulatov, Vice President Rutskoi and all the other opponents of Yeltsin possibly believe that as a result of a mere referendum the Yeltsenites would hand power over to them?
This surely will go down in history as the worst example of parliamentary cretinism, to use one of Marx's expressions.
The reforms mean a return to capitalism, but whether this is understood depends on how it is explained day after day in the Russian media and press and by the vast Yeltsin officialdom. The Congress should have understood that just putting the reforms on the ballot allowed the Yeltsin forces, which have the money and the power, to explain them in such a way as to virtually guarantee victory.
Even the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times wrote that "State-owned television, which is largely in the President's camp, has shown endless interviews and programs blatantly tilted toward Mr. Yeltsin." (New York Times, April 25) All sorts of promises were made by Yeltsin, from raising the minimum wage to freezing gasoline prices, higher stipends for students and better working conditions for miners. In fact, it was a complete turnaround from his actual program of more austerity for the workers.
The G7 imperialists allowed his demagogy to run amok, despite the austerity program they have in the wings for after the elections. This is really a rerun of the kind of vicious propaganda used by the Nazis, who in order to get votes away from the Communists promised to end unemployment and raise workers' wages and benefits. Khasbulatov says now, after the referendum, that it was a Nazi-type election. But he was supposed to know this beforehand, and to have rallied the masses against it. The referendum was not a tea party or a sporting event organized according to Marquis of Queensbury rules.
This Congress acted similarly during the Gorbachev period. Seeing in what direction Gorbachev was moving, they many times introduced resolutions to halt the so-called reform process introducing capitalism in the USSR. When it seemed these resolutions might pose a serious threat, Gorbachev would threaten to resign and they would compromise. He treated the Congress with contempt every time it declined to get into a decisive fight.
As Gorbachev himself describes in his pamphlet "The August Coup," he had assembled the presidents of the nine leading Soviet republics at Novo-Ogarevo in August 1991 for the purpose of signing the so-called Union Treaty and dissolving the Soviet Union. Instead of carrying out a ruthless struggle against him and ousting him from his position, the Congress compromised. Their spinelessness was a fundamental factor in provoking the ill-considered coup attempt by a group of the top leaders of the state at the time.
Why did the Congress agree to give Yeltsin a vote of confidence? Why let him dictate the terms of the next election when that is strictly the province of the consitution? This makes a mockery of the whole legal and political process.
It should also be noted that the exit polls that right away predicted a Yeltsin victory were commissioned by the imperialist media — particularly the Associated Press and the Washington Post.
The Congress leadership has undermined itself and given the counterrevolution a new lease on life. Yet nothing has been done that cannot be undone. The two forces in the struggle are basically the working class, its allies, and the collectivized peasantry — the working population in general — against the bourgeois counterrevolution, abetted and supported by imperialism from abroad.
There has been no decisive battle. There's been demoralization and vacillation, but that can easily be changed. New revolutionary initiatives can bring about swift changes in the psychology of the mass movement. There has been no lasting, decisive defeat. It is all in the talk stage. All can still be repaired.
But the Congress has to urge the workers to take steps on their own to halt the dismantling, sabotage and destruction of state property.
There is plenty of time for regroupment of all who are sincerely devoted to the cause of socialism. They can demonstrate their independence from the bourgeois elements in the Congress. Above all, they can fight for a broad piece of legislation that invalidates the dismantling of socialized industry. It has to be made clear above everything else that the struggle is about the property belonging to the workers' state.
As Gorbachev had to admit in his account of the attempted coup, the issue was the state ownership of property. That which was won in the greatest revolution in world history cannot be put up for a vote. What society has ever done that? Would any progressive here ever allow a referendum on returning Black people to chattel slavery?
Last updated: 15 January 2018