Russian lefts grow swiftly younger. Rallying students succeed grandmothers. They are struggling against Putin the “dictator”, unmasking Zuganov the “revisionist” and are waiting for the anticapitalist revolution any day. In order to brighten up the process of waiting they bombard elder politicians with ketchup and mayonnaise.
On the 23d of February Russia’s left radicals are going to carry out the action “Russia without Putin”. Evidently they will not manage to organize a mass rally, their most significant actions have gathered only about 2000 participants so far. Under Yeltsin mass left radical open-airs mainly attracted grandmothers with saucepans. Now - students.
The radical left ideas are more and more fashionable amoung the youth. Students are beginning to force out the fossils from executive positions of radical organizations. At the end of January the leader of the “Labouring Russia” Viktor Anpilov nearly became a victim of the “plot” of his organization’s youth wing, which tried to retire him during an ordinary meeting. Only timely officers’ from the bourgeois security services interference prevented comrade Anpilov from bad end.
In May of 1968 a very popular president with high rating was ruling over France. His name was Charles de Gaulle. Soon after the students, armed with left ideas, went out to the streets, Charles de Gaulle had to resign.
Of course, February isn’t March, and Russia isn’t France(and thank God, as many of our readers will surely add), but a parrallel might be drawn. At any rate several conspiratorial and not very conspiratorial youth organizations are looking forward to the youth revolution.
Some of them, not to have a tedious time when waiting, are bombarding from time to time VIP persons like Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, the Election Committee chairman Aleksander Veshnyakov and former NATO Secretary General George Robertson with mayonnaise or eggs.
The best-known and largest left unions in our country are three informal organizations: Revolutionary Komsomol (bolsheviks) (RKSM(b) - the youth wing of the Russian Communist Labouring Party of Viktor Tulkin), “The Vanguard of The Red Youth” (”AKM”, till recently it was considered to be the youth wing of the “Labouring Russia” of Viktor Anpilov) and widely known National-Bolshevik Party of Edward Limonov.
The spirit of the left radicals is based on one simple idea: revolution is inevitable. But within this framework ideologies vary. RKSM(b) is the most sluggish group as for idiology: they are guided by “cave” (as their companions from the AKM and the NBP say) Marxism-Leninism. They don’t seek publicity and refuse to communicate with bourgeois mass media(like “Prifile”magazine). Sluggishness effects mass character: according to the participants of the left radical actions, RKSM(b) almost never takes out more than 30 persons.
AKM’s ideological platform is close to that one. But they are not dogmatists. In the left radical crowd the founder and permanent leader of the AKM Sergey Udaltsov is considered to be a really charismatic personality. It was he who nearly retired Viktor Anpilov. Udaltsov’s know-how is a mixture of Marxism with youth hooliganism and untiglobalist protest. Thanks to this fresh idea the AKM gathered almost 500 persons from Moscow and Moscow region. As the activists of the “Vanguard” affirm, they unite as many as 6000 members(but the representatives of the competitive organizations, like Zuganov’s Union of Communist Youth, say that the AKM’s regional organization doesn’t exist in fact).
Nazbols, unlike their companions, are not very much interested in Marxism. On the contrary, they are accused of nazism as a rule. But in recent years the NBP’s ideology has changed to unticapitalist protest and even asserting rights rhetoric.
Nazbols themselves say:”We’re neither bolsheviks nor nazis, we’re a youth party of a new type”. The “youth character” is the main ideological nazbols’ point: they never stop declaring that the “youth class” is unjustly debarred from ruling of the state. Such a stance attracted more than 1500 Moscovites(but about 500-1000 persons participate in pickets and demonstrations) and about 10 000 all over Russia.
From Marx to Marcos
Russian lefts(their average age is less than 20)are mainly from needy families. The young fellows, who are more ordinary, shave heads, put on military “khaki” and go to beat somebody. More intellectual ones, from the families of research assistants and technicians, find their ideal in unticapitalist slogans and go to the left radicals. The students of colleges, technical schools and technical institutes of higher education are the best ground for summoning to social justice establishment. They compose more than a half of nazbols, almost two thirds of the AKM(they have even an organization in the Moscow Aviation Institute) and RKSM(b).
The leaders are trying to satisfy the mass’s intellectual demands. Preparatory work is carried out with the newcomers. In the AKM and RKSM(b) they are proposed to read the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” and a couple of the classics’ works about class contradictions, which are easier for understanding. Of course, nazbols are proposed a wide variety of the increasing literary heritage by Edward Limonov.
Sophisticated Komsomol members go further: young revolutionaries often read fashionable left philosophers like Slavoj Zizek. “Some read scandalous western literature from Overdrive series(the cult among western lefts “American Psycho” by Bret Easton Ellis was published in this series-”Profile”), I often see texts by subcomandante Marcos (a mexican guerilla-”Profile”),taken from the internet, in our headquarters,- the leader of Moscow department Roman Popkov sais.
Underground romance is an important marketing trick. “Bunker”(that’s how national-bolsheviks call their headquarters)is hidden in the basement of an ordinary Moscow apartment house - the undergroung image obliges. The basement was arranged by Edward Limonov himself as early as 1995, when he was going to create an underground publishing house.
Romantic underground air runs through all the place of the headquarters: one can’t enter or leave it without being checked, party symbols are all over the walls. And one more thing: nazbols are prohibited to take alcoholic drincs in “Bunker”.
- And they really don’t drink? - “Profile” reporter asked Roman Popkov.
- They don’t! - he affirmed. It’s a deliberate prohibition. The headquarters isn’t a drunk hash-house.
“Komsomol members” from the AKM and RKSM(b) also try to keep conspiracy. A stranger can’t come to the meeting. The party members are phoned beforehand, and not to let strangers in, there are guards at the entrance. But anyway the leaders complain that there’s no getting rid of provokers from the FSB.
It’s natural, when waiting for the revolution, there are always provokers. And the young lefts are expecting it to happen very soon. “In the middle, maybe by the end, of the second Putin’s term, the revolution is sure to happen”,- one of the AKM leaders affirms. Oddly enough, having not complited the creation of capitalism, the young people - the less engaged by the soviet system part of the society - claim that it’s necessary to destroy it. As we know “Sparkle” led to the flame. I wonder what “Limonka” will lead to.
Edward Limonov, the Leader of the National-Bolshevik Party:
“I needn’t average people, I need their children”
“Profile”: Edward Veniaminovich, is your party big?
Edward Limonov: I think about 12 thousand. When I was imprisoned in 2001, there were less. Many came during my doing time.
“P.”: You mean, imprisoning you the court did you advertising?
E.L.: Of course. That’s when we first appeared on the national political arena. In Russia the attitude towards prison is special. The sentence served as an argument that the party’s intentions are sincere.
“P.”: What is the average age of the party members?
E.L.: The are all young. Now we’re alredy waiting for those born in 90-s. We have not counted up the average age on purpose, I think it’s 20 odd.
“P.”: What do common national-bolsheviks read? You? Che Gevara?
E.L.: Me. Our newspaper. And many other things, since they are enlightened people. They like books about revolutionaries’ life.
“P.”: Did you originally want to create a youth party?
E.L.: Nobody thought of that. We wanted the party to become a fighting organism. The youth responded to this ideology. It has always been so in history, it’s natural. Man with a family, apartment is less mobile, he has cannon-balls on his feet. All the revolutions in history were carried out by the youth.
“P”: You don’t like average people…
E.L.: Why? Simply I don’t respect them. It’s a defective material, they die of some foolishness or hard drinking at 50 years. I don’t need average people themselves, I need their children.
“P.”: Why children?
E.L.: We need to reorganize this world, to make it just, to destroy these functionaries’ clique, to live according to other laws. Finally to do away with the average people’s influence, so that they would disappear, to ban them. It should be considered a shame to be average.
“P.”: Revolutionary NBP makes complains to the bourgeois court against the bourgeois Ministry of Justice with a claim to register it. Isn’t there a contradiction here?
E.L.: I appeal to the law, because now liberty is important to us, because a revolutionary has no place to go. The state doesn’t want to take into consideration the people. The people wants to take part in the state governing, but not to be pastured. We are angry, we don’t want a Putin father, driving people to the Chechen war.
“P.”: You don’t like Putin either?
E.L.: He is turning our country into a prison camp.
“P.”: But your activists have lately shouted: “Stalin, Beria, GULAG”!
E.L.: Yes, they did, when the revolutionary outburst, sweeping away everithing on the way, was at issue. But when the security agencies came to power, we changed our slogans. Today we need liberty, including political liberty, and we are carrying out our activity from the position of human rights assertion. Maybe once our old slogans will become topical again.
“P.”: What do you think about the Russian Communist Party?
E.L.: They are able to go to a meeting to rotten music, wave little flags and march in a sedate way. One NBP’s action is much brighter than the whole СPRF’s election campaign. All the channels have broadcasted Veshnyakov spilt with mayonnaise. The packet of mayonnaise costed only 26 roubles 14 copecks. We call it velvet terror.
“P.”: Do you take part in the preparation of such actions?
E.L.: No. I’m released early, 14 months prison term still remains. That’s why I’m playing a part of the party’s leader, ideologist, but I don’t prepare the actions. I even don’t go to demonstrations, bewaring of provocations.
“P.”: Is it possible that the mayonnaise and eggs in your activists’ hands will be replaced by a grenade?
E.L.: It’s a special services’ like question. Why grenades? Of course, no. Are we suicides?
Mikhail Zakharov, “Profile”
Tags: AKM, Anpilov, Beria, Bunker, Gevara, GULAG, Kasyanov, Limonka, NATO, nazbol, NBP, Popkov, Putin, Robertson, Stalin, Tulkin, Veshnyakov, Yeltsin, Zizek, Zuganov, СPRF