| Gennady Seleznev and his associates are asked to leave Tomorrow there may be three fewer communists. Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev and two chairmen of Duma committees - Svetlana Goryacheva and Nikolai Gubenko - are at risk of leaving the ranks of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation adopted a recommendatory decision yesterday: to expel all three for violating party discipline. Whether the entire Central Committee will accept the recommendation will become clear at tomorrow's plenum, which will probably be the most dramatic in the entire recent history of the party.
They want to expel Selezneva, Gubenko and Goryacheva because, contrary to the party decision, they refused to resign their leading Duma powers. All three have approximately the same argument: they want to work, promoting the party’s program guidelines to the extent that leadership positions allow this.
In fact, the communists, dealing with the personal affairs of the three “refuseniks” tomorrow, will determine their tactics for the next year or two. There will be no split in the party, no matter what the Central Committee does to the undisciplined communists. But tomorrow's decision will largely determine what the communists will bring to the 2003 Duma elections and who they will nominate as their candidate in the next presidential election.
The leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Zyuganov adheres to the tactics of “hard opposition”. She helped the party attract protest votes (including non-communist ones), but under President Yeltsin. The toughness of the communists certainly does not affect the rating of President Putin.
Gennady Seleznev, judging by his statements, believes that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation can come to power not through “hard opposition”, but through constructive work in the power structures. This tactic of “creeping into power” was also tried by the communists at the gubernatorial level. True, Red governors are allowed to suspend party membership, and there are no disciplinary complaints against them, even if they are not pursuing a completely “Red” policy.
There are a minority of supporters of the “Seleznev” tactics in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. How big the preponderance of supporters of Zyuganov’s tactics is will become clear tomorrow.
Much depends on whose side the second person in the party, Valentin Kuptsov, will take. He is now in the hospital, however, according to Vremya Novostey newspaper sources in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, he intends to interrupt his treatment in order to participate in a party event. In April, when the “Seleznev crisis” was just beginning, Mr. Kuptsov tried to find a “soft solution” to the conflict that would help save Mr. Seleznev for the party, and help him save face.
There is another proposal coming from the former chairman of the Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Sergei Glazyev: first determine the party strategy, and only then think about who to exclude from the party and who not.
Yesterday's decision by the Presidium of the Central Committee to expel Mr. Seleznev and his associates should have predetermined the decision of the plenum. However, most likely it will only spur the discussion and give the intra-communist scandal more publicity.
What's happening to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
Gleb Pavlovsky, Effective Policy Foundation:
-- In the Communist Party of the Russian Federation there is a completely obvious decay or half-life. The strategy under which they existed peacefully for so many years stopped working. I would say that there is a feeling in the party of a very dangerous deadlock, which could be followed by the disappearance of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in its current form. I completely agree with the opinion of the editor-in-chief of Sovetskaya Rossiya, Valentin Chikin - he is confident that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation will not achieve success in the near future, since people from the Soviet past are participating in it. In addition, there is the problem of Zyuganov, who has become a symbol of the party’s faith and at the same time a brake on it. There is no communism there, the party is neither leftist nor nationalist, but is increasingly becoming leader-led. Zyuganov has not shown the qualities of a political strategist - he is a good tactician for the old Duma scheme, but is losing in the current one. The party is losing ground so quickly that the question arises as to who will go to the polls. I think that if Zyuganov’s movements are unsuccessful, the party may fall apart, especially if they now try to carry out a purge. The emergence of two parties will almost certainly destroy the current left-wing electorate. So there are still a lot of surprises waiting for us before the elections. In such a situation, the upcoming parliamentary elections are absolutely important for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The old Communist Party will need to get at least the current result in order to be accepted into the big game at all by the next election cycle. If the communists manage to change their strategy, they will succeed. However, looking at the faces of their leaders, I honestly find it difficult to imagine that this will happen.
Boris Makarenko, Center for Political Technologies:
— Quite natural processes are taking place in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The logic of political life pushes it to the periphery, and some of the high-status leaders of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation do not want to go there. To a certain extent, this is a crisis; moreover, such a revolt of six communist notables has never happened before. Although there is a logic in the actions of both Seleznev and the committee leaders: they defend not so much their own privileges as the status of communist leaders in power as such. The communists are afraid that once they leave these positions, they will never return to them. Nobody knows how power will be divided in the next Duma: will it be a package agreement, or will there again be a pro-government majority that will divide everything among themselves. But such a situation is not fraught with a serious split. It seems to me that a rather clumsy compromise from the point of view of an outside observer will be found - the party will condemn the undisciplined, but will not expel them. But even if the Communist Party of the Russian Federation suffers significant personnel losses, it will still not be a global crisis. I do not see that the electoral prospects of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation have weakened significantly - their result in the elections is almost constant, although the result of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation depends not only on how many votes it gets, but also on how many rivals - United Russia, whose electoral the uncertainty is much higher.
Andrey Ryabov, Carnegie Moscow Center:
— In the Communist Party of the Russian Federation there is a danger not of a split, but of a breakaway, and not at the level of Podberezkin or Semago, but at the level of real functionaries. It is also possible to create some kind of communist renewal party from the “schismatics.” If this happens, most people will still remain with Zyuganov. He, a seemingly tolerant, soft person, prone to compromise, suddenly began to take a tough position. This certainly means that Zyuganov grasped the mood in the party and the mood of its electorate, which is now radicalizing greatly. Therefore, Zyuganov, naturally, cannot try to take his former positions at such a moment - let's work constructively, pretend that nothing is happening. Protest sentiments today are on the side of the radical wing of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The breakaway is unlikely to cause significant damage to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. On the contrary, this may lead to a renewal of its leadership - the vacant seats, where there has been stagnation recently, may be taken by representatives of the younger generation, who, after the 2004 elections, will be able to turn the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to other positions. Another question is, does this mean that the presidential administration is successfully implementing its plan, breaking up the communist electorate into little things? After all, as far as I understand, the logic of the latest events around the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is as follows: to make the party a less significant force in the fight with United Russia for the electorate, so that the United Russia wins not through its own strength, but through the weakness of the enemy.
Joseph Diskin, Institute of Socio-Economic Problems of Population, Russian Academy of Sciences:
- What is happening in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is what everyone has seen perfectly well for a long time - a split over the further understanding of the party’s tasks and strategy. Now everything has broken through. All this hysteria of recent days shows that Zyuganov himself does not know what strategy to choose. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is at a crossroads, and, unfortunately, in the very near future the leader will have to decide what is more important for the party - party virginity or pragmatic things. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is changing its social roots. Previously, it was a party of non-market management with an electorate in rural areas and small towns. Today, a new, unsettled electorate of large cities is emerging, which is politically more organized, more rational even in its protest sentiments. It requires other slogans, other leaders. Of course, some party functionaries sensed this demand. So the current situation in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is part of a change in its leadership. And it is possible that it will be resolved by the emergence of another, truly leftist party, which we will all see closer to the parliamentary elections.
Valery Khomyakov, Agency for Applied and Regional Policy:
- What is happening today in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a real rebellion. At the first stage of their political career, all these wonderful people were chickens under Zyuganov, and now they have grown up and began to spit on their mother hen. Having violated party discipline and chosen seats in the Duma, these people preferred independence. Their choice also lies in the fact that they chose between Zyuganov and Putin, considering that Putin’s political trajectory seems to them more successful than the trajectory of their party. In connection with these events, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation expects a rather difficult situation - Zyuganov will be faced with the problem of maintaining the solidity of its ranks. Interviewed by Maria NIKIFOROVA Victor KHAMRAEV |
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