Russia - October 2019
Mass mobilizations against Putin and a new electoral farce
On September 8th elections in Moscow’s Duma and Governorates in several regions of Russia were celebrated and once more time they were a farce. Only 40% of the electoral register participated and in Moscow just over 21%. The candidates were members of Putin's United Russia party, the CP of the Russian Federation and other bourgeois parties with parliamentary representation in the hated Bonapartist regime of the Russian oligarchy.
A true farce in which all the candidates were from Putin and his allies, were able to calmly conform a single list. Thus all the governors and the great majority of the regional parliamentarians were “reelected”, except in Moscow where United Russia lost 13 benches that were mainly in the hands of its allies of the PCFR (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) that went from 5 to 13 Parliamentarians
These new elections were a true farce also because they were preceded by huge masses mobilizations against Putin. The trigger of them was the proscription of 30% of the candidates, a bourgeois fraction that presented themselves as “opponents” to Putin for the Moscow Duma.
More than 60 thousand people gathered during July and August in the center of Moscow and in more than 40 cities. Putin's dictatorship responded - once again - with a fierce repression of the National Guard and thousands of prisoners. Hundreds of them are still imprisoned. Thus, the parliamentary veil with which they want to disguise a fierce dictatorship fell.
This proscribed "opposition" bourgeoisie is a bourgeois fraction which was left, for the moment, outside the juicy businesses of present-day Russia, and he asked, before the elections, for taking a place in the Russian regime and thus obtain a slice of the business at the expense of masses´ hardships.
But among the gaps in the heights huge mass sectors sneaked in, using the disputes among bourgeois gangs, to express all their hatred against a Government and the Russian autocracy regime that condemns them to hunger, misery and brutal repression.
Before this situation, the cowardly “opposition” bourgeoisie, led by Navalny, proposed the “intelligent vote”: he told the masses that they had to leave the streets and go to the polls to vote for any candidate who could beat Putin. This is how he openly called to vote Putin's friends of the PCFR and the ultra-nationalists, who from the Dumas and governorates support all the attack that this Bonaparte throws against the masses; the same parties he denounced as accomplices of the Kremlin until just weeks ago.
This "strategy" of the bourgeois "opposition" failed to excite anyone, as was demonstrated in the participation percentages, as we said above.
What is clear the masses began a political struggle against the Government undergoing unprecedented hardships, they won the streets with a clear shout: "Russia without Putin." It is they know that if Putin's head rolls, it is the first and fundamental step to get his most immediate demands.
And they understand this because in the Russia of the autocracy of Putin there is no possibility of economic struggle, so that the masses can recover their work, their health, their housing and their life, they must face and defeat the government and Putin's regime in a mass political struggle. And large sectors of Russian masses have begun to take the first steps in this sense.
An economy devastated by the business of imperialism and Russian bourgeoisie. Putin throws all costs over the exploited masses’ shoulders.
The truth is although Russia has enormous wealth, it goes to Russian bourgeoisie´s pockets and also to European imperialism that has its companies located there. Oil and gas revenue is captured by Russian bourgeoisie and with a slice of it makes investments in the fabulous military industrial apparatus. Thus he buys French and German technology, a mechanism to enrich these imperialisms. The United States, in turn, handles the large banks such as Citibank and Russian finances and, as if that were not enough, he imposes sanctions and seizure of accounts on companies and Russian major magnates, taking this way a slice of oil and gas income that he robs the people.
This way they leave a Russian economy totally devastated. With his seized accounts, imperialism disciplines Putin to do all the dirty work of keeping the masses fiercely controlled and massacring the masses as a gendarme and guardian of business in Eurasia, with the gunboats pointing to the former Muslims Soviet Republics so the starving people do not dare to revolt.
In addition to a totally beaten economy, more than 3,500 million dollars that imperialism made Putin spend in the massacre against the Syrian masses is added.
Meanwhile there are tariff´s increase s and people cannot have decent houses and health. 20% of Russians (almost 29 million) live below the poverty line, and 1% of the rotten oligarchy that came out from the old name of USCP concentrates 74% of the nation's wealth. That is why at the beginning of 2019 almost 70% of Russians claimed the fall of the USSR was a tragedy, because after the capitalist restoration, which promised the full gondolas like European Supermarkets, today the miserable salaries reduced to 145 dollars cannot even be paid to their slaves.
The retirement age has increased brutally, prolonging exploitation and in sectors such as mining, workers die before retirement. Layoffs and company closures multiply.
And these hellish working conditions are guaranteed by the unions led by Putin's party and by the businessmen. They are true fascist unions which impose dismissals, permit the workers do not earn their salary, the brutal cost of living and the prohibition of the right to strike and mobilize.
A regime of terror to guarantee business to imperialism, supported stained
by the bayonets and bourgeois parties called "communists"
To impose these conditions to the masses, they need a regime of terror where the mere act of carrying a banner in the streets means facing a jail sentence.
That is the regime of the autocracy of Putin and the allied oligarchs, which was born at blood and fire from the Stalinist forces turned into in a new bourgeoisie, associated with world imperialism, after the selling out of the USSR to capitalist restoration.
This regime has inherited from the KGB of Stalinist bureaucracy the form of a secret police, the Army, the police and para-police forces and the National Guard. All this to crush and plunder the working class and oppressed nationalities, and to guarantee imperialism´s businesses in the region.
But Putin is not only supported by the bayonets of the Army but also by parties that only keep the name of "communists" to legitimize this Bonapartist regime, such as the CP of the Russian Federation and other minor parties and ruptures of the CPRF, such as "Communists of Russia."
These parties are the bourgeois parties emerged from the capitalist restoration and their top leaders stole the wealth of the Worker State, turning into the "ruling class. “They are parties with bourgeois programs of private property defense. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is the second parliamentary majority, a true supporter of Putin from within the Duma itself.
These parties keep their name “communists" only to manipulate the masses. They are fundamental to impose the oppression of the “Big Russia” over the nationalities that oppresses inside, appealing to the “patriotic” feeling of the masses, inherited from the old USSR. And they also accompany Putin in his counterrevolutionary role on belhalf of imperialism worldwide. Finally what these “communist” parties supporting and defending Putin persuede is defending their property and their assets: those which they robbed the people through capitalist restoration.
This is Putin's terror regime against the masses! The courageous Russian people that knew how to expropriate the bourgeoisie and take power is subordinated to the worst exploitation and repression
Both Putin and all world imperialism know that any serious struggle of the proletariat and the oppressed masses of Russia revivals the revolutionary path of 1917 and the cry of war shouted by the rebel masses of Ukraine: "Let´s the USSR return" .
This is why imperialism requires Putin's boot, his gendarme in Eurasia, to keep the working class and the Russian exploited crushed.
Stalinism and the ex-Trotskyists worldwide support Putin trying to show him as a people’s friend.
Stalinist currents and Trotskyism´s renegades spread lies worldwide about the regime and living conditions in Russia.
Moreover, while the official Stalinist parties have a common international, the SolidNet, together with the PCFR a bourgeois party allied with Putin, currents of Trotskyism’s renegades make international alliances with one of several Russian "communist" parties, that even pose as a need of the return of the USSR to “dress in red" and better support Putin. This is the case of the PO of Argentina, the EEK of Greece and the DIP of Turkey that have set up a true International with the OKP (Workers Party of Russia), whose leader, Darya Mitina, after being senior official of Putin´s Government from 2001 to 2008, a candidate in these elections to the Moscow Duma and she called to vote for candidates of the CPRF and Communists of Russia in all districts.
Both Stalinists and renegades of Trotskyism, Putin's friends, affirm that he is "friend of the people" and "anti-imperialist." But he has proven to be the gendarme and guardian of imperialism's business in the former Soviet Republics of Eurasia, who never shot the imperialists. Putin is only "brave" to attack and repress the masses in Russia and anywhere where imperialism calls him to fulfill his role as a hitman, as yesterday in Chechnya and today in Syria. It is that Putin today fulfills the role that Zionism played in the region yesterday. It is that all the control devices that imperialism had in the Middle East flew through the air with the chain of revolutions that developed in 2011-2012. Today the fascist state of Israel is prevented from going to slaughter the masses, it cannot openly enter the shots as it did before; and there is Putin always ready to act as a hitman for imperialism. The truth is that Putin and his entourage are the partners of imperialism, which at gunpoint guarantees all business to Citibank - one of the largest banks in Russia - to the German BASF that controls 51% of Gazprom, to the oil companies like the BP that handles 20% of the shares of the Russian Rosneft. That is why so that there is true democracy, to have work, housing, health, salary and decent pensions, to conquer the right to form independent unions, to strike, the right to demonstrate and mobilize, to conquer the immediate and unconditional freedom of all the political prisoners, to end the persecutions and the false criminal causes against the demonstrators, to obtain the right of self-determination of the nationalities that the “Great Russia” oppresses in its interior, the first task is: Down with the autocracy! Out with Putin ! Out with the great Russian oligarchy, heiress of the traitors of the CP of Stalin, Yeltsin and Gorbachev! For the right to self-determination of the nationalities oppressed by Greater Russia on account of imperialism! Dissolution of the police, the National Guard, the intelligence services, and the entire repressive apparatus of the state! Putin out of Syria and Ukraine! Crimea is from the Ukrainian people! It is necessary to expropriate without payment and under workers' control the companies, the industry and the natural resources that were stolen from the old bureaucrats who became a new holder class and who gave the former USSR to imperialism.
All imperialist companies and banks installed in Moscow must be expropriated without payment and under workers' control. We must expropriate land without payment from the oligarchy and imperialism, sold out with the laws of privatization of Yeltsin in the ‘90 that Putin has been deepening since 2002. To achieve this, the workers and the exploited of Russia must return to the path of the heroic October revolution: Open the road to workers' and soldiers' council! Let the USSR return without Stalinist bureaucrats neither those who sold out socialism! For the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat under revolutionary forms in all former worker states! From Portugal to the Russian steppes, a single working class and the same fight against the same enemy: imperialism, bankers and the oligarchs of Moscow. For the Socialist United States of Europe from Portugal to Russian steppes!
Nadia Briante and Eliza Funes
Putin, anti-imperialist?
Enough of farce! He is a minor partner and guardian of imperialism's business in Russia and Eurasia
Stalinist and the renegades of Trotskyism currents in the world, affirm that the mobilizations in Russia that took place during the months of July and August were encouraged by imperialism. Thus they try to hide that Russia is tied with multiple links of dependence on imperialism and that the real guardian of imperialism's business in Russia and Eurasia is Putin. Citibank is the most important bank in Russia that handles the country's huge financial transactions. French and German imperialism also takes part in the fabulous Russian businesses. The Russian army and military depend on the high technology of the imperialist powers. In 2011 Putin signed a contract for the acquisition of two French Mistral helicopter carriers, for 1400 million euros and an agreement with Germany for the construction of a military training camp for 120 million euros. There, Russian soldiers receive all the necessary training to go to massacre the rebel masses of Syria, or anywhere imperialism dispose.
The British BP controls 20% of Rosneft, one of Russia's largest oil companies; and Germany 50% of the shares of the gas giant Gazprom. Russia controls more than half of the shares and is thus obliged to make the largest research and exploration investments, while imperialist pirates keep lots of businesses, cut coupons and share profits. So servant of imperialism is Putin that when Ukraine went into default in 2014, he offered to pay the IMF part of the fraudulent Ukrainian foreign debt. Guarantor of the debt and the brutal attack on the masses during the government of his friend Yanukovych, when Ukraine entered into cessation of payments, Putin offered to disburse 15 million to cover the usury debt. Yankee imperialism refused and stated that Ukraine was, in its entirety, for the Yankees and NATO. Then Putin was limited to withdraw thousands of Russian soldiers from the border with Ukraine for fear that they will go on to fight on the side of the rebel miners of the Donbass who shouted "let the USSR return." His greatest fear was that this unit, which was beginning to occur, between workers of the Ukrainian Donbass and Russian rank and file soldiers, calls into question the property of imperialism and also that of the Russian oligarchy itself. Putin's "bravery" was to snatch the Ukrainian Crimean Peninsula, where Russia has a military base. "Brave" to slaughter the masses, Putin proved to be no more than a lap dog of imperialism.
To the million-dollar embargoes and sanctions that imperialism imposes since then, the “anti-imperialist” Putin responded by finishing off the actions of companies nationalized between 2017 and 2019: the Alrosa mineral extraction company, the VTB bank and the Bahneft and Rosneft oil companies, between others. Russia, along with China, is the spoils in dispute in the commercial war that is ongoing between the imperialist powers. Imperialism needs to finish recolonizing Russia, that is, keeping all the businesses of gas, oil and the Russian military industrial apparatus, without intermediaries. But for now, imperialism needs Putin as guardian of its business in Russia, and of nuclear weapons and the Russian industrial-military apparatus, inherited from the USSR to prevent them from falling into the hands of the masses if they stand up in revolutionary struggle. And as gendarme, to guarantee the control of the masses in the countries of Eurasia, as yesterday in Chechnya, Georgia and Ossetia, and today in Ukraine, selling the revolution out, and in Syria, massacring thousands of exploited people on their own.
The fallacies of Stalinism and renegades of Trotskyism worldwide prove to be a real scam against the world working class, which is very hard paying. Is that having present Putin as a "friend of the people" guaranteed the peace of mind to this hitman of imperialism to massacre the Syrian rebel masses, a tremendous blow not only for the revolution in the Middle East, but also for the international proletariat. It was these deceptions and these lies that covered the drowning in blood of the revolution with a mantle of struggle against "terrorism." Enough of deception! Enough of passing enemies as allies and allies as enemies! Down with the counterrevolutionary pacts of imperialism with the butcher Putin, of massacre and submission of the revolutionary Ukraine and Syria! Out with the military bases and the great Russian killer troops from Tartus - Syria, Crimea-Ukraine and all of Eurasia!