At the end of last week, communist leader Gennady Zyuganov was awarded the Orthodox Order of Glory and Honor, III degree, and Patriarch Kirill was awarded the Communist Party of the Russian Federation medal “70 years of the liberation of Crimea and Sevastopol from the Nazi invaders.” Dmitry Gubin considers the mutual exchange of awards fair and symbolic, but insufficient for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Photo: Photo from the personal archive of D. Gubin

Try to imagine Vladimir Lenin, smilingly receiving a church order from Patriarch Tikhon for preserving the “values of faith, morality and culture” - here you can laugh out loud.

However, awarding Gennady Zyuganov the Orthodox Order is quite fair. Not only because the leader of the communists, since the end of the last century, has been declaring that he is baptized, and that the code of the builder of communism and the teachings of Christ coincide in basic terms, while shyly omitting that historical materialism, the most important component of communism, categorically rejects religious component.

But mainly, the awarding of Zyuganov is fair because the current Russian Communist Party and the Orthodox Church are closely aligned in their focus on patriotism and statehood. One can say that both contradict Western communism and Western Christianity, but who listens to intellectuals in Russia today, especially those of a liberal persuasion? Intellectuals are annoying because they force them to make claims about their own lives, and Zyuganov’s elderly electorate, who have changed their views many times following their superiors, needs not self-condemnation, but self-justification.

By and large, Gennady Zyuganov gives his flock a product, the main content of which is comfort. A red tie is good, and the church is good, and Russia is great, and all evil comes from enemies. Gennady Zyuganov is the chief master of ceremonies, leading the solemn funeral procession, leading the older generation into the bright distance. For this, Zyuganov cannot have a single claim: he copes with consolation and unction no worse than a priest.

Another thing is that in the struggle for the place of comforter, Zyuganov somehow indecently ignored the communist component itself. As a think tank, a mental headquarters, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is a humble cemetery. Not a single book, not a single idea, not a single discussion of a Marxist, or even a Maoist, or even a Trotskyist kind. Neo-Marxism is the province of Harvard or Oxford leftists. The bestseller "Why Marx was Right" is written by Briton Terry Eagleton. The blog “Reading Marx’s Capital” is written by David Harvey, who lives in the USA. Neo-imperialism is criticized by New York neo-Marxist Vivek Chibber.

Zyuganov is probably familiar with these names. But presenting a Marxist blog on the website of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is as difficult as Marx receiving a Vatican award. And this means that the new Russian evil leftists, that is, young wolf cubs irritated by social injustice, will act on their own, without the slightest cooperation with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which will only feed their anger.

“Zyuganov hands over to his flock a product whose main content is consolation”