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.
-- See, this is the part where Kagarlitsky forgets what country he is living in. "Rightist" ideology (by which he means nationalisms of various sorts) has been part and parcel of Russian "leftist" ideology for decades. The people who espouse economic egalitarianism and the people who espouse nationalism(s) are exactly the same people. The politics of Solzhenitsyn and the KPRF are practically indistinguishable. The polarization in Russian politics is not between "left" and "right" but between nationalist/Slavophile and liberal/Westernizer.
I'm reading Kag's Restavratsiya v Rossii, which I think has been translated into English, and while it starts out quite good IMO it starts to lose contact with reality the closer his account of history moves toward the present day. The contortions he goes through to attempt to blame absolutely everything on the Kremlin are something to behold. Quoting Pavel Felgenhauer, who reads as if he were a CIA asset, as an authority on the Chechen War is also not very smart.
Roy Medvedev really attacked Kagarlitsky in his book on Putin, which is quite remarkable since Med is usually very reserved and polite. Kag must have really pissed Medvedev off.
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