Rossiyskaya Gazeta 31 May 2002 [translation for personal use only] Article by Valeriy Fedorov, director of Russian Center for Study of Current Political Events: "There Will Be No 'Red Dawn'"
Spring 2002 probably has been the worst season for the Russian Communists since the CPRF was founded. In three months the party lost key positions in the State Duma, changed its policy to one of strong opposition to the president, lost the support of many of its constituents and, finally, found itself on the verge of internal rupture.
The crisis within the party peaked at the Central Committee plenum expelling Gennadiy Seleznev from the party. What will follow this plenum--the consolidation of the Communists on new ideological and political bases or the death throes of the party and the loss of its claim to leftwing voters and its role as the main opponent of the ruling regime?
The expulsion of the supporters of the "undemocratic regime" from the CPRF marked the new boundaries of the Communist Party's position on the Russian political map. The expulsion of Seleznev deprived it not only of its channel of influence on the president and government, but also of one of the party's leading newsmakers. When Seleznev left, he was joined not only by prominent members of the leftwing intelligentsia (Gubenko and Zorkaltsev), but also by important individuals on the regional level (Goryacheva and Khodyrev). The governor of Nizhniy Novgorod Oblast set a particularly serious precedent. Other "red governors" might follow his example, which would lead to the party's loss of administrative resources on the regional level. The mythical "red belt" would change its political color.
After the reapportionment of politically significant committees in the Duma, the CPRF will cease to be a legislatively active party and will therefore lose the support of many groups lobbying for the passage of specific laws. The State Duma staff resources, which the CPRF has been using actively in its party work, are unavailable to it now. The Communists will no longer be able to use the Duma as a "new Smolnyy," and the party treasury will have to find another source of funding to make up for the lost millions of dollars representing the minimal hard currency equivalent of the Duma staff's capabilities.
The prospect of the restoration of the CPRF as a serious political force, capable of taking charge of the government under certain circumstances, is connected exclusively with its adoption of social-democratic principles and the acceptance of current rules of play by the top party officials, excluding the possibility of changes in the current economic model and political regime. Seleznev and his supporters were willing to do this, but Zyuganov was not. This appears to be the final word. The party's rejection of the politicians favoring cooperation with the president and government is turning it into a sectarian organization, an isolated group gradually moving toward the political sidelines. Radicals like Moscow party leader Aleksandr Kuvayev, who does not believe in any kind of change whatsoever, are taking the lead in the Communist community.
The loss of the intellectual potential and social support of the middle class and intelligentsia, connected with the rise of the "Seleznev team," frightens even such confirmed members of the opposition as Viktor Ilyukhin. After trying to portray itself as the "party of all the people" for the last 10 years, the CPRF is turning into the party of social outsiders, who think only about the past and are not seeking progress. This is also the reason that the CPRF has no chance of expanding its constituency. It is strictly localized within the confines of its nuclear electorate--15-20 percent, and certainly not the 35 percent Zyuganov dreams and talks about. The CPRF's plans to take a more radical stance against Putin will only reinforce this tendency. Communists will be represented by a large faction in the next Duma, just as they are in the present one, but they will have no chance of influencing the passage of legislative bills. Regardless of what the CPRF may want, today it is already a toothless opposition, incapable of impeding Putin's plans for modernization.
Does this mean that the Communist Party has no political prospects? Certainly not. For at least the next 10 years, the CPRF will still be strong and popular and will have sound representation in the parliament.
The Communists' main resource is demographic rather than social. Zyuganov simply has to say the right words, corresponding to the "ideological code" of the Communist voters, and he is guaranteed to surmount the 5-percent barrier. The question is not whether the Communist Party will break up or become the ruling party. Neither of these will happen. The CPRF today is repeating the history of the French Communist Party, which is losing its strength and leaving the political arena. This process takes whole decades, however. The French party is slowly losing support, and today it is no longer fighting for power, but simply for its own continued existence as a cohesive political group. The same thing is happening now in the CPRF. Its death is inevitable, but it is still far in the future.