From O Proletariado
Organ of the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil
February 1996
With the collapse of revisionism in the USSR and in all of East Europe, there was completed, after a long period, the process of capitalist restoration, modifying the institutions which still retained certain vestiges of the period of socialist construction, establishing completely the power of the counter-revolution. In those days the world was swept by an anti-communist hysteria of a revanchist type that decreed the end of communism and even the end of history.
The "democracies," established by fire and sword, soon introduced onto the scene the apple of the eye of the "democrats": parliamentary elections. In the case of Russia the Duma was revived on top of the thousands of corpses of the defenders of the Congress of Deputies, which was bombarded in October of 1993.
Contradictorily, after the holding of several elections, particularly those for the Russian Duma, the same media that boasted of and decreed the end of communism, proclaimed the "communist comeback."
The elections for the Duma, it is true, signified the total demoralization of the Yeltsin government, expressed in the abstention of more than 35% of the electors. Of the 65% who voted, 33% were null or blank votes and Yeltsin's gang, through their "Our Home Russia Party," headed by Prime Minister Chernomirdyn, only achieved the ridiculous figure of 9.5% of the votes.
Almost 50% of the electors who took part in the polls voted for the opposition, more for the left and less for the right wing.
Besides a totally clear demoralization of the Yeltsin government, the holding of the elections for the Duma and its results expressed other factors which have as their base the contradictions of the current counter-revolutionary process and the bourgeois restoration in the countries that made up the USSR and which, with unstated objectives the reactionary media wants to claim as a supposed "communist comeback."
It is obvious that the election results expressed in a general form the mass discontent with the capitalist restoration, which has caused not only the catastrophic deterioration of the living conditions of the people, but also the subjugation of the national sovereignty and the moral and cultural degeneration of the society. The high level of abstention, the null and blank votes and those of the opposition (fragmented, the right both within and outside of the government received mediocre votes: the supporters of Yavlinsky - pro USA - obtained 8.5%; Gaidar, the former minister and ideologist of the "reforms," 5%; and the Liberal Party of the fascist Zhirinovsky 11%), portrayed as a whole, a picture of disintegration in which is found the process of destruction and the political incapacity of imperialism and the monopoly, comprador and mafiosi bourgeoisie to unify themselves to stabilize the process of restoration.
The anti-communist cackle, utilized systematically and in abundance during the election campaign, was despised according to the results of the polls. It showed that it was worn out and had failed as an instrument of political struggle in the sense of providing a cover for the bourgeois restoration and to try to "pasteurize" the class struggle in these countries, principally in Russia.
The 22% of the votes of the electorate for the revisionist and opportunist "Communist Party of the Russian Federation" of Zyuganov was the expression, beyond the discontent with the chaos of the capitalist restoration, of the confusion which still prevails in the collective consciousness about socialism and revisionism, a confusion which surely will still take a long period of political struggle for the masses to get over, making clear the differentiation of classes, politics and ideologies, in the development of a genuine Russian communist and revolutionary movement.
The 4.5% of the vote given to the "Communist Workers' Russia" bloc (more than 3 million votes) is a surer indication of the existence of a base of support for socialism. Nevertheless, as the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik), which adopted a position of boycotting the elections and the Duma, analyzed: "... the majority of the voters correctly analyzed the negative results of the loss of socialism, but they still were not prepared to go into struggle for their own established interests, they still have not shed their parliamentary illusions and only limited themselves to voting."
The participation in the elections and in the Duma of the opportunist parties hidden under the name of Communist Party, in the current conditions of counter-revolution and the restoration of capitalism, serves as an instrument for the bourgeois legitimacy and institutionalization and becomes part of the imperialist strategy of putting a brake on the development of the revolutionary and communist movement in Russia.
Faced with the inevitability of the increasing discontent of the masses with the catastrophic situation and misery, as well as the failure of other alternatives of a chauvinist nature, imperialism is promoting the revisionists, with the label of communists, to legitimize the system and to continue in the campaign of demoralizing the masses and sowing among them disillusion in communism, by means of presenting as its representatives renegades and collaborators with the "civilized" restoration of capitalism.
These are the reasons that the means of communication of imperialism, obviously, are not interested, in clearing up, and in this case, in showing the true identity of the opportunist parties which conceal themselves under the label of communists, since it is a matter of powerful instruments of subterfuge and diversion trying to put a brake on the revolutionary movement.
The publicity about a "communist comeback" in Russia and the various countries of East Europe is nothing more than a diversionist maneuver based on a farce which, as one example among others, still at the price of blood shed by the workers, will be unmasked and swept away, opening the way for the advance of the revolutionary struggle and of a new edition of the Bolshevik revolution and the reestablishment of the USSR and Soviet Power.
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