Chris Doss The Russia Journal --------------------------- Main Provisions of Russian Communist Party Program Presented
Rossiyskaya Gazeta 18 July 2002 [translation for personal use only] Main Provisions of the Political Party Program of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Russia is standing on a tragic cross-road. The present ruling regime uses treachery and violence in its attempt to bring the peoples of our Fatherland back to barbaric, primitive capitalism. It is a path of political reaction and social regress, a path leading to a national catastrophe and the demise of the Russian civilization.
The Soviet Union has been ruined. The Russian Federation is facing a threat of suffering the same fate. The country is plunged in a severe system crisis. The volumes of industrial and agricultural output have fallen to unprecedented low levels. The productive forces, science, and culture are being purposely devastated. The population is decreasing and the process of its pauperization is gaining speed. The fire of ethnic conflicts has never been quenched. Russia is turning into a target of yet another redivision of the world, a colonial raw materials-producing appendage of economically developed countries. The stratification of property and the fact that the workers have lost most of their social and economic rights are quickly turning the population into the proletariat.
There are new rapidly growing contradictions arising between labor and capital, between a handful of new moneybags and an overwhelming majority of the people. The wrathful protest and outrage of the oppressed blend with the anguish felt by patriots because of the desecrated honor of the State. Opposition against the ruling regime is steadily growing in all social groups. The national-patriotic forces, the forces of social and national liberation are becoming organized and united.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation [CPRF], faithful to the working people, sets itself a task of merging the social-class and national-liberating movements into a single mass resistance movement and make it an aware and purposeful force. The party struggles for the unity, integrity, and independence of our country, prosperity and security of its citizens, the physical and moral health of the nation, and for a socialist path of Russia's development.
Our primary goals:
-- people's power, which means the constitutional power of the working majority united by Councils and other forms of democratic self-government; -- justice providing a guaranteed right to work and payment according to labor, free education and free medical care affordable for all, convenient housing, leisure, and social support; -- equality based on liberated labor, liquidation of exploitation of humans by humans and all kinds of social parasitism, and on the domination of public forms of ownership of production means; -- patriotism, equality of nations, friendship among nations, unity of patriotic and international ideas; -- responsibility of citizens to society and society to citizens, unity of human rights and responsibilities; -- socialism in its renewed and constitutionally established forms matching a modern level of productive forces, environmental security, and a nature of tasks facing the humanity; -- communism as the historic future of mankind.
Socialism creates and develops all necessary pre-conditions for a future communist association in which the free development of each is a condition for the free development of all.
The CPRF believes that the most justified option for Russia that meets her interests is a choice of optimal socialist development in which socialism will catch its second wind as a mass movement and a political system.
The Communists find their main social base in a renewed commonwealth of working people. This commonwealth is the primary target where the Communists direct their ideas, assisting the working people in realizing their interests on a national and international scale. This vanguard social force holds in its hands the fate of not only Russia but also the entire human civilization in the 21st century.
The forces of socialism have not been destroyed. Russia can and must cope with the crisis. Historic experience shows that our Fatherland succeeded in this sphere only when the workers and the entire nation correctly understood their national and state interests. We will have to arrive at this goal by going down our own Russian path.
To this end, we need to: -- stand at the head of the growing popular resistance against the country's forcible capitalization; -- oust from power the Mafia-comprador bourgeoisie by installing the power of working, patriotic forces; -- preserve the state integrity of Russia, recreate a renewed Union of Soviet Nations, ensure national unity for the Russian people; -- strengthen the political and economic independence of the Union by restoring its traditional interests and position in the world; -- ensure civilian peace in society and resolution of disagreements and contradictions by legal methods based on dialogue; -- save the scientific potential, the defense industry, and the Armed Forces; adjust them to the needs connected with reliable national security; -- declare war on crime to guarantee security and protection for individuals and society as a whole; -- take urgent measures to cope with the economic crisis through state regulation of the economy.
>From the past Russian, Soviet, and international experience, the party
takes everything that was proven by time, which allows it to emerge as a
true party of working people and a party giving answers to the most
pressing problems of modern development.
The CPRF intends to step up the national-liberation struggle of the Russian people. In this struggle, it has real and potential allies. Those are political parties from the socialist, centrist, and consistently democratic spectrum, as well as progressive patriotic movements. Those are trade unions, workers, organizations of peasants, veterans, young people, entrepreneurs, and education and creative workers, as well as associations of all traditional professions.
The Communists believe that the historical process takes place in evolutionary and revolutionary forms. While striving for socialist transformations, they advocate peaceful methods of implementing them. The party used and still uses various extraparliamentary and parliamentary methods of fighting. It stands against the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois extremism fraught with the threat of civil war.
The CPRF's activity is based on principles of voluntaryism, equality, self-government, lawfulness, and openness. The CPRF is a successor of the CPSU and the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic] Communist Party on territory of the Russian Federation.
The CPRF banner is red. The CPRF anthem is Internationale. The CPRF symbol is a symbol of the working people of cities, villages, science, and culture: the hammer and sickle and the book. The CPRF motto is "Russia, Labor, Power of People, Socialism!"
This text is published in accordance with Article 14 of the Federal Law "On Political Parties."