Odd Mix of Left and Right By Boris Kagarlitsky
Nineteen State Duma deputies petitioned the Prosecutor General to ban Jews. The document was published right on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and coincided with President Vladimir Putin's appearance at a somber commemoration. The president was forced to apologize. The whole thing was a scandal.
Yet in fact, this was all nothing new. Only someone extremely naive could have failed to notice what kind of people make up the parliament. It is common knowledge that the Rodina bloc was cooked up using the leftovers of the political process. And no one should be surprised by the nationalist sentiments reigning in the upper echelons of the Communist Party.
I was amazed to read in the press and online that some authors find the letter particularly alarming because the deputies have voters behind them. Yet the only people supporting Duma deputies are their party bosses, who are in turn supported by their sponsors and the Kremlin. Has everyone forgotten how elections are conducted in this country? Hasn't anyone ever heard of administrative resources?
The quality of the anti-Semitic deputies' petition left something to be desired compared to the usual productions whipped up on Okhotny Ryad. It revealed their complete illiteracy and lack of familiarity with legal issues. But do any of the other documents, bills and laws created in the Duma prove anything to the contrary? Of course, the letter's authors wound up in a tight spot after reproducing the logic and arguments of the Third Reich. Now, anyone will be able to justifiably accuse them of being fascists. Yet no one has been bold enough to call them on their parliamentarian stupidity.
No one needed to wait for these deputies to put pen to paper to notice that there is anti-Semitism in Russia. You can get books on the Jewish conspiracy against the Russian people in almost any Moscow underpass, some even put out by fairly respectable publishers. However, these same publishers also put out books on the Israeli secret service, romance novels and basically anything else in demand.
If the current scandal in any way stands out from the boring string of similar scandals in the history of the Duma opposition, then it is because this is the first time in the history of the Russian Communist Party that high-ranking anti-Semites have been rebuffed by those below. Gennady Zyuganov could not find the nerve to disassociate himself from his colleagues or to honestly admit that he feels the same.
However, on the same day, activists from the youth wing of the party began to collect signatures for a response from the leftist community condemning the deputies. This strong reaction must have come as a surprise to the party leadership, which is used to a submissive rank and file. But the events of this January, when opposition actions unexpectedly swelled into mass protests, boosted the young Communists' self-confidence. They found their voice. At the same time, the response demonstrated a new solidarity between numerous left-wing groups, politicians and intellectuals, at least when it comes to the question of whether you can be a communist and a fascist simultaneously.
You have to hand it to the party's leaders, however; they were heroically silent. Of course, they did begin to exert pressure on party members who spoke out against anti-Semitism. In private, party representatives explained that the party was based on pluralism and therefore would not repress any supporters of internationalist views.
The nationalism in the top ranks of the Communist Party is an anomaly, even in the post-Soviet world. Across Eastern Europe, neo-liberal reforms have come under fire from both the left, protesting against incursions into workers' rights, and from the nationalist right, which sees globalization as an extension of the Jewish conspiracy or as a backhanded attempt to make local owners bow to the will of international capital. As one leftist journalist noted, these right- wingers want only homegrown vampires to suck their blood.
Russia is the only country where these two approaches have not only been united, but where the first approach is subordinate to the second.
The political ineffectiveness of the Communists is no secret. However, the party bureaucracy is still capable of successfully working against its own activists. Letting rightist ideology dominate the left is an incredibly effective way to demoralize and paralyze the left wing.
Boris Kagarlitsky is director of the Institute for Globalization Studies.
-- Michael Pugliese