By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — "We intend to come to power from below, by winning the political trust of the people." This was how Party of Labour leader Aleksandr Buzgalin mapped out the future of the Union of Democratic Left Forces, formed at a congress here on November 28.
Delegates from the Socialist Party of Workers, the Party of Labour, the Russian Party of Communists and the People's Party of Free Russia joined with activists from the trade unions and workplace collectives to found the new political bloc. As an initial step, the congress voted to establish a consultative council made up of representatives of the participating organisations. Later congresses will set up more developed structures.
The Union of Democratic Left Forces will not be a political party. Its purpose is to give the organisations of the non-Stalinist left a public face comparable to that of the other main blocs in Russian politics, while the long-term process of developing unity within the left goes ahead.
The new bloc will attempt to fill the broad political space between the Civic Union — the bloc formed around "nomenklatura- bourgeois" factions opposed to the government's neo-liberal policies — and the neo-Stalinist left grouped in and around the Front for National Salvation.
As this suggests, the Union of Democratic Left Forces encompasses a wide range of political viewpoints. In some cases, the "leftism" is more declarative than real; here the prime example is the People's Party of Free Russia (NPSR).
Set up in 1991 by members of the liberal intelligentsia fresh out of the Communist Party, the NPSR is among the largest political parties in Russia. For some time it functioned as a conventional party of the liberal right, and as a personal political vehicle for its key leader, Russian Vice-President Aleksandr Rutskoi.
Rutskoi eventually sensed the dissatisfaction in nomenklatura circles with the government's hard-line monetarism, and became a prominent figure in the Civic Union. His party went with him, more or less; in some cases, members went still further and came to identify consciously with the non-Stalinist left.
The rise of a left wing within the NPSR is a striking indication of the processes now at work within Russian politics, and is in itself a development of some importance. Nevertheless, the NPSR was an incongruous presence at the Congress of Democratic Left Forces. Speakers from the party made a number of jarring statements, provoking whistles and slow handclaps.
If the congress sessions were often rowdy, much of the reason was that the neo-Stalinists had by no means stayed away. Repeatedly, chairpeople had to interrupt speakers from the floor, in order to ng was for supporters of democratic socialism.
The main tendency represented at the congress was the Socialist Party of Workers (SPT). The SPT is occasionally referred to in the press as "Medvedev's party" in tribute to its best-known member, historian and former left-wing dissident Roy Medvedev. Other leftists have been known to describe it less flatteringly as "the party of grey suits" — a reference to the former lower-level Communist Party functionaries who make up a large part of its membership.
With this social base, the SPT has emerged as one of the larger Russian political parties. It has the only properly functioning internal apparatus to be found in any of the parties of the democratic left, and the only regular party newspaper. Its weaknesses, like its strengths, flow from the character of its members; the SPT suffers from a thinness of talent and a lack of cadres with genuine political skills and insights.
The real political leadership for the League of Democratic Left Forces looks like being provided by the much smaller Party of Labour, which emerged in the autumn of 1991 as a coalition of left intellectuals and trade union activists. The resolutions adopted by the congress on November 28 reflected hard behind-the-scenes bargaining as leaders of the Party of Labour fought to have the draft texts shorn of concessions to neo-liberalism.
The declaration of principles adopted by the congress condemned the authoritarian drift of Russian state policy, going on to denounce the argument, now heard increasingly from "democratic" ideologues, that only dictatorial methods can save the country. The declaration called for the defence of social welfare and social justice, for "real people's power and self-management", and for "the socialism of the future, destined to become the humanism of the twenty-first century." Other resolutions called for the resignation of the Gaidar government, and for a "no" vote in the coming referendum on the unconditional private ownership of land.
A particularly encouraging feature of the congress was the fact that a number of leaders of Russia's main trade union body, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), pledged themselves to work within the new political bloc and to fight for its goals. The FNPR's vice-chairman, Vladimir Kuzmenok, served on the congress presidium and delivered a stirring speech.
With its close links to the labour movement giving it real social weight, the Union of Democratic Left Forces is likely to make a major impact on Russian political life. In one respect, this impact will be felt almost immediately. Now that democratic socialism has a united public face in Russia, the liberal-dominated media will no longer be able to place the customary "equals" sign between socialism and the Stalinist past.