We go from one extreme to another

Commentary by Alexander Tsipko on the phone to the editorial material

I am categorically against Medvedev’s idea that parties can be registered if they have 500 members. I absolutely agree with Zyuganov and all those who say that this is not serious: then any club will gather 500 people and organize a party.

This is funny. I agree that parties should be allowed and supported, but you cannot switch from one
extremes to the other. This very negatively characterizes the government itself: first two million, now three hundred thousand - we rush from one extreme to another, this is a typically Russian trait. All this only leads to discrediting the authorities. This is typical liberal populism, which has no future and will soon be abandoned.
I know Delyagin well - he is an intelligent, serious person, also with leadership ambitions, but he deserves it. If he creates something instead of Rodina, a patriotic party with a white bias, then there is a need for it. Another thing is that there were such figures as Rogozin and Glazyev, and this project was supported, I don’t know why he died...

Such a party unification, in my opinion, is necessary. It will be massive, multi-million dollar, it will be in demand. Our patriotic camp is very motley: on the one hand there are radicals of ethnic Russian nationalism, and there are traditional Russian patriotic parties, such as
Stolypin's party before the revolution, the All-Russian National Union... There were also elements of nationalism and anti-Semitism, but this was not the main thing for them.

But I think that Delyagin will not pull out a game of this type. He is too intelligent, non-Orthodox, an atheist... Another person will be able to revive the new “Motherland”. Udaltsov, according to the testimony of people who communicate with him, is insane, a revolutionary.

We must understand perfectly well that it will not be possible to create a Social Democratic party in Russia. The era of post-communism has shown that people in countries where there is civil society and traditions of democracy easily switch from communist to social democratic positions.

In Orthodox countries, in Russia and Bulgaria, it is much more difficult to move from communism, Bolshevism to social democracy. Although I am deeply convinced that Russia should, logically, have a socialist
party. We have a deep Russian problem - the problem of justice. We still do not have a nation, we are not integrated. We received a divided society from the Soviet legacy. We need left-wing parties, but at the same time national ones, closely connected with the population, etc. But I don’t believe in all these projects.