Translated material
Lenin's plan
Communists offer their own version of modernization
On April 3, a plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was held in the village of Moskovsky, dedicated to the most fashionable topic in Russian politics - modernization. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov called the idea of conservative modernization put forward by United Russia "completely absurd" and proposed his own path - socialist modernization.Comrade Zyuganov began by criticizing the “bourgeois reforms” of the 90s, which “led our country to severe upheavals.” The illusion that Russia is rising from its knees was destroyed by the crisis. “The ship of Russian statehood crashed on the crisis rocks much more powerfully than any other leading country in the world,” Zyuganov poetically stated. And now even the federal government has realized the need for change. “But even the first timid steps towards transformation cause panic among the guardians of the current order,” noted the leader of the Communist Party. -- United Russia, in response to Medvedev’s call, put forward the idea of “conservative modernization.” This is complete nonsense. Modernization, in principle, cannot be conservative, because it means renewal, going beyond what has already been achieved. It is clear that United Russia is primarily concerned with preserving the current political system. By ‘conservative’ they mean its sanctity.”
Gennady Zyuganov also did not like the modernization plan that experts from the Institute of Contemporary Development, considered one of Dmitry Medvedev’s “think tanks,” described in their report. “By “renewal” liberals do not mean scientific and industrial progress, not an improvement in the lives of the absolute majority, but the actual dismantling of the state, the subordination of Russia to their Western patrons,” said the chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.
Socialist modernization, which the communists propose, involves the return of Russia's natural resources and strategic industries to the people's ownership: electric power, transport, the military-industrial complex, the oil and gas complex, “illegally privatized” factories and mines. “It is necessary to restore centralized bodies for managing the national economy and coordinating scientific and technological progress, and develop a comprehensive state program for modernizing the Russian economy for 10 years. Over the next five years, increase investments in advanced industries by 2.5-3 times,” explained Comrade Zyuganov. In addition, he proposed increasing budget funding for fundamental research, as well as applied research and development (R&D).
At the same time, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation insists on “democratizing the electoral system,” “suppressing the pressure of capital and government on the election process,” and “dismantling the bureaucratic machine for falsifying their results.” The communists propose to restore the procedure for electing deputies to regional and local representative bodies of government and self-government based on a combination of majoritarian and proportional systems. By the way, Gennady Zyuganov believes that in the last elections to regional legislative assemblies the party in power did not perform very well: United Russia, led by Putin, whose portraits hugged almost every Russian pillar, failed. Their result was not 73%, as in the elections of October 2008, and not 64%, as six months ago, but mostly only 40-45%. On the eve of the elections, they again said that this would actually be a referendum on trust in United Russia and its leaders. If this is so, then EdRo lost this referendum miserably.”
Then the Nobel laureate, deputy of the Communist Party faction in the State Duma Zhores Alferov made a report. He called for using the potential of the Russian Academy of Sciences as effectively as possible in modernization. “Now there is no more important task for our country than the revival of the high-tech industry based on scientific developments,” said Comrade Alferov. -- “The scientific potential of the Academy of Sciences is the greatest potential we have, and it must be used effectively.” “Russia will not have a future if we do not re-create an industry based on innovative developments,” the academician believes.
The Plenum also adopted resolutions on the results of the financial and economic activities of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in 2009 and approval of the estimate of income and expenses of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for 2010, and approved the consolidated financial report of the party for last year. It turned out that over the past year the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has received less than 2.8 million rubles in membership dues, and the value of its property is 137.5 million rubles. This was announced by the manager of the affairs of the Communist Party, Alexei Ponomarev. The monthly membership fee of each communist must be at least 20 rubles. On average, members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation pay approximately 35 rubles. per month. According to Comrade Ponomarev, the receipt of membership fees increased by 17.2% compared to 2008.