The systemic crisis, which has been aggravated by the pandemic of a previously unknown virus and the plummeting of the world prices of raw materials, has laid bare the catastrophic costs of the capitalist system. These costs are manifesting themselves all over the planet. They clearly indicate that the “liberal paradise” does not exist anywhere in the world. Within the globalist world structure even the most developed countries, faced with large-scale challenges, give in and slip into the maelstrom of social evil. Planetary crisis processes are doubly painful for Russia which, like in the beginning of the last century, is a weak, peripheral link in the world capitalist chain. They are particularly destructive of the Russian people which forms the core of the state and which is hardest hit by the costs and losses caused by the inhumane social experiments of the past decades.
Gennady Zyuganov
Chairman of the CC CPRF, Head of the CPRF at the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Philosophy
World significance of the Russian question
In 1990 there were more than 120 million ethnic Russians in Russia, today there are 10 million fewer of them. A further 20 million Russians then lived outside the Russian Federation. Over the past 30 years their number also shrank by 10 million. The contraction by twenty-five million is comparable to the losses we suffered during the Great Patriotic War!
At stake is the question of our survival. Of saving civil peace and safeguarding our statehood. These all-important tasks can only be solved through a fundamental change of the destructive comprador policy and through implementation of a patriotic anti-crisis program based on the principles of rule by the people and social justice. On restoring the country’s economic and financial sovereignty without which genuine political sovereignty is impossible. However, such a program cannot be implemented without an honest and thoughtful look at the Russian question.
Without belittling the dignity and the interests of the other ethnic entities that form the multinational Russian people it has to be recognized that the Russian question is today the most acute and urgent one. It is key for the destiny of Russia and all the other peoples living within its borders and on the territory of the former Soviet Union.
We Communists are staunch supporters of internationalism. We are very well aware that every people wants to see its language preserved, its faith endure, its traditional way of life remaining immutable and its well-being enhanced. However, Russians form the spiritual, moral and state core of the country. This was the way our common destiny was formed. This was what History ordained. This is not something that can be wished away. To deny this and to think and act in denial of this is madness that spells disaster for all the peoples of Russia. If the Russians become enfeebled and leave the historical forestage, which is inevitable if the course pursued since the early 1990s is preserved, a catastrophe is inevitable. I stress: a catastrophe for all the citizens inhabiting the vast Eurasian space. Russia will simply be trampled underfoot and torn apart by its stronger and luckier neighbors.
The best representatives of our Motherland have always been very mindful of this. In the middle of the 18th century Mikhail Lomonosov, an outstanding scientist, said: “The grandeur, the power and wealth of the entire state consists in the preservation and propagation of the Russian people.” This idea engaged the mind of the great Mendeleyev in the early 20th century. Pushkin’s genius expressed concern about Russia and Russianness. And today for the country 80% of whose population are ethnic Russians the program of saving the original Russian civilization and reviving Russians as the spinal cord of the Motherland must be the key element of nationalities policy.
Indeed, the preservation and well-being of Russians, the largest European nation, is an issue of worldwide relevance. If the destructive processes of the last 30 years continue, if its numbers continue to shrink at such a rapid pace, this will have a fateful impact on the European space and on the whole planet. This will finally break down geopolitical and economic stability in the world in which the Russians have over many centuries been one of the key nations determining its character, history, moral and ethical ideals.
It is not by chance that even the analytical materials of the CIA, which can hardly be suspected of sympathizing with our country, speak of the problem of the dying out of Russians as a key threat to the world. And yet those who run the Russian economy and the social sphere today still refuse to admit the scale of the danger and to seriously discuss effective measures aimed at counteracting it. In spite of the serious external and internal challenges facing Russia, challenges that are obvious to any person in his right mind, they adhere to the absolutely destructive liberal policy. A policy that exacerbates tensions within the country, is openly hostile to the Russians and to the other peoples, to our thousand-year-old statehood.
The CPRF is the only political force which has throughout the post-Soviet period, consistently upheld the idea of restoring the rule by the people and justice, strengthening a nationally –oriented system of governing society and the country. It is only logical that we persistently raise and thoroughly analyze the Russian question which is inseparable from the key problems of our state.
Back in 2004 I devoted my book Russians and Russia to a detailed analysis of the issue. The book met with a lively interest on the part of the patriots of our country and provoked a hysterical reaction from Russophobes and anti-Sovieteers. I regret to admit that contrary to our hopes for a fundamental change that were generated in the early 2000s, the position of the Russian people has not changed for the better. It keeps getting worse. Russia-haters continue, with impunity, to attack and stage provocations against the people that has erected the edifice of Russian statehood. Their destructive activities continue with the connivance of the high-ranking principals ensconced in the corridors of power and the mass media.
The repossession of Crimea and Sebastopol prompted an in-depth nationwide dialog. Support of the heroic struggle of the people’s republics of Donbass has shown the potential of the patriotic sentiments within Russian society. The march of the Immoral Regiment on Victory Day was a convincing statement in favor of genuine values. Yet even after these events the authorities failed to cooperate with the political opponents who genuinely care for the fate of their Motherland. The ruling circles have failed to take the necessary steps to meet the people, their problems and aspirations. Instead, they respond to the growing discontent in society by policing and endless torrents of anti-Soviet rhetoric, vicious attacks on socialism and the great achievements of Leninist-Stalinist modernization.
The “fifth column” and venal propagandists have launched an immoral, and indeed, illegal campaign to present as heroes the White Guard butchers and their followers who made short shrift of their compatriots side-by-side with the foreign armies of the Entente and Hitler invaders. Their victims were representatives of all the peoples that fought courageously for the freedom and independence of our Motherland during the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. Their officially inspired attempts to tear up the most glorious pages of our history and to put bloody traitors of our Motherland on the rotten anti-Soviet pedestal constitute a challenge in the first place to the Russians and an insult to the country’s largest people, desecration of its outstanding victories.
The liberal position deepens the rift between power and society. People are fed up with endless attacks on our history. Torrents of dirt have been poured on it ever since the time of Gorbachev’s “perestroika.” It was then that the “blank spots” in our past began to be smeared with black, the color to which official propaganda is still clinging. But this paint has not stuck to the Soviet legacy. It has dried up and peeled off to reveal to the astonished gaze of the new generations the grandeur of the accomplishments of the Land of the Soviets.
That is what makes Soviet symbols so popular today and that is why Lenin and Stalin are seen by the people as the most authoritative statesmen and political leaders, the towering figures not only of the Soviet epoch, but of Russian history as a whole. This is an undeniable fact.And if so, its main lessons haveto be learned. Then we will get rid of Russophobia and anti-Sovietism which impede our progress.
Some of the outstanding historical lessons are worth remembering. Above all, it is the lesson of the formation of Russian consciousness and the building of our state which was crowned with the emergence of the Land of the Soviets, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The power of peacemakers
In old Rus, the patriotic feeling pre-dates the political, economic or cultural unity of the peoples that inhabited it. Therefore all the enemies of Russia, then and now, have tried to destroy this feeling and turn the Russians and kindred peoples of Eurasia into second-rate simulacra Germans, the Horde people, Byzantians, Varangians, Hazars and so on… Yet each time the patriotic feeling proved to be stronger than external pressure. Rus never became a colony and was never dissolved in other ethnic groups. That in itself was a historic feat. Especially considering the adversities our country faced: the cold climate, shortage of arable land, openly hostile environment all along the perimeters of the country’s western and eastern borders.
The English explorer Richard Chancellor, who was the first to penetrate into Russia and initiate trade relations between the two countries wrote about the Russians in his 1553 diaries that no other people under the Sun encountered such harsh conditions. And yet, this people. against all the odds that seemed insuperable, managed to create the largest country on the planet. This was because its will was cemented by unbending patriotism based on the Russians’ battle and labor feats.
The unique geographic and geopolitical position of Russia, which linked Europe and Asia, led to the synthesis of the Western and Eastern elements that shaped the unique Russian civilization.
The East is more inclined toward introspection and contemplation, adherence to tradition and archaics. The Western civilization has very different aspirations. Its strengths lie in the drive toward scientific knowledge and development, economic and domestic improvements based on innovative thinking. However, these features, which underpinned the West’s successes, went hand-in-hand with its negative features: extreme individualism, and the cult of personal success at all costs. The habit of looking at human relations through the materialistic and financial prism. The abiding penchant to achieve one’s goal through exploitation, enslavement and even extermination of other peoples. This inevitably caused original capitalism to morph into imperialism and globalism which today are pushing the world toward a catastrophe and are destroying the capitalist system pushing it toward degradation and collapse.
The uniqueness and strength of the Russian world lie in the fact that it seeks to combine the best features of the East and the West and springs from the combination of high spirituality, adherence to traditional values and collectivism and innovative thinking, a striving toward scientific and cultural heights.
Like the West, it has striven toward progress, but it never reduced progress to economic and financial matters. In the Russian civilization, progress has always been linked with moral laws, with the principles of sobornost’ (“togetherness”) and justice which rejects selfishness and individualism. Supreme power and the privileged class sometimes departed from these principles. This led to the revolutionary uprising in the early 20th century and a systemic crisis in whose vice the country has been struggling over the past three decades. But the people itself has always adhered to these principles. Only a state based on them can meet its aspirations and ensure its viability and well-being.
Collectivism, statism, self-sufficiency of the Russian state, commitment to promoting the supreme ideals of justice and brotherhood – these are bedrock principles of the Russian civilization. They predetermined the historical result referred to by the religious philosopher Nikolay Beryayev: “The Russian people has created the most powerful state in the world, the greatest empire. From Ivan Kalita Russia was consistently and steadfastly pulling itself together to achieve a size that defies the imagination of all the peoples of the Earth.”
The Russian state as a unique civilization and the largest power is the main historical result of the Russian people’s endeavor. And this is the constant target of our external and internal enemies, past and present. Not only a geopolitical and economic but also a spiritual target that is hostile to them in the cultural and moral sense. Those who target it target the Russian people. Hence the whole world civilization, since life itself proves that world History would have been fundamentally different without the Russian contribution.
The Empire created by the Russians is the only one in world history that was not built by conquest, plunder and extermination of other peoples, but by allying with them, usually on a voluntary basis. Whenever the Russians resorted to arms it was toprotect the allied peoples against invaders who threatened to destroy them
Russia has a brilliant military history. But it is a history not of conquest, but of peace-making. A history of national liberation wars against aggressors who encroached upon our country, of saving other peoples from external intervention, genocide and annihilation. This was the case in the 17th century when Ukraine rebelled against Polish oppressors and reunited with Russia. And again in the 19th century during Russia’s wars against Persia and the Ottoman Empire when Armenia found refuge from ruthless neighbors under the Russian wing. And again in the 20th century when the USSR determined the outcome of the most terrible war in History by defeating Hitler’s Nazism and saving the world from the “brown plague.”
The role of Russia and the Russian people in world history is above all the great role of peace-maker. Without it the world would have been totally different and many of the peoples inhabiting it today would not exist. This is something that cannot be said about any other power. It can only be said about Russia and the Russians.
“We shall be the first to herald to the world that we want prosperity for ourselves not through suppression of the individual and other nationalities, that we seek it through the freest and most brotherly universal unity.” This is what the outstanding Russian writer of prose and essays, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. wrote in his Diary Notes in 1877. These words were fully vindicated by the military exploits of our people and the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union created in line with these principles.
Russia’s interests from ancient times have been not to conquer, invade and subjugate someone but to unite on its land, under its wing, under the protection of a single powerful state, all the Russian people and all those who consider Russia to be their motherland. All the peoples that agree to cast in their historical lot with Russia.
We seek to ensure unconditional and lasting peace in our own home secured against any encroachments from without and from within, creating favorable external conditions for this. To defend our historical uniqueness and original spirituality against the aggression of alien and perverted stereotypes of mass consciousness. Against the pernicious influence of immorality elevated to the level of the norm. Against egoism praised as a virtue. To create for our fellow citizens all the necessary conditions for education and healthcare, work and leisure, the development of science and culture, a happy childhood, and a secure old age.
However, Russia has had at all times to uphold its right to all this in fierce struggle against foreign enemies and their high-ranking accomplices inside the country. Against the “fifth column” which today continues brazenly to corrupt and strangle our country.
From the geopolitical point of view Russia is a key element in preserving the global balance of forces. A kind of safety fuse that deters world powers from violating strategic international equilibrium. From attempts to use force to create a unipolar world which transnational capital seeks to create, and which brought forth Hitler’s Fascism in the last century and today is concentrated in Anglo-Saxon political and financial centers. From disastrous mixing of political systems, cultures, religious teachings advocated by the globalists who try to reduce humankind to a uniform, anonymous and totally docile mass.
From one century to the nextour countryturned out to be the main obstacle in the way of all those who sought to dominate the world. All those who ever laid claim to global power and sought to enslave mankind – from Batu Khan to Tamerlane to Napoleon and Hitler—stumbled upon Russia. After the Great Patriotic War our country stood in the way of the Americans who held out to the world a prospect of electronic slavery, essentially an “updated” version of Fascism laced with neoliberal socio-economic and geopolitical theories. The Soviet Union provided an antidote to this deadly triumph until the USSR and the world socialist system collapsed as a result of betrayal.
Victorious warriors.
As we mark the 75th anniversary of the Great Victory we should remind the young generation of our country’s heroic history.
Beginning from the 9th century when the Russian state was born it had to fight at least 70 major wars to defend its freedom, honor and dignity. And our country has been involved in countless military conflicts. In the period between 1240 and 1462, according to historical chronicles, Russia survived nearly 200 wars and invasions. Of the 500 years between the 14th and 20th centuries the country was fighting for almost 330 years. In 1900 the well-known Russian general Kuropatkin in his memorandum to the Czar wrote that in the previous 200 years Russia had been in a state of war for 128 years and enjoyed only 72 years of peace. Throughout its history our power was constantly the target of external enemies. The arduous and heroic fate of our country was summed up in the words of Alexander III: “Russia has no friends, our vastness is feared. Russia has only two reliable allies – its army and navy.”
A country which has such a destiny must have a strong army. Russia’s history has always been and will be inseparable from its armed forces. Therefore its greatest leaders – from Peter I to Lenin and Stalin – were the creators of a powerful state and builders of an invincible Army.
Alexander Nevksy, then barely 20 years old, defeated the Swedish invaders on Lake Ladoga. Two years later he scored a brilliant victory on Lake Chudskoye over the Livonian Order forcing it to give up all the previously conquered Russian lands.
Thanks to the valor of our warriors Ivan the Terrible, who was enthroned when he was just 16, opened up Russia’s road to Siberia along the Volga and the Caspian when he was 25.
Peter I created the armed forces of the Russian Empire which replaced the Streltsy regiments and manorial troops. He laid the foundations not only of recruitment of the regular Russian army, but the principles of unconditional respect for the defenders of the Motherland which penetrated deep into the thick of the people.
Having spent so many years fighting, Russia did not become cruel. Its army, unlike the armies of Western countries, had never been an army of hangmen. Its soldiers did not fight in order to turn other peoples into slaves, rob foreign lands and grow rich at the expense of their resources. Our soldiers never perpetrated the kind of plunder and treachery that spawned the world capitalist system.
This calls to mind the words of the brilliant Russia poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev in the mid-19th century when he served at the Russian Embassy to Germany and was engaged in polemics with the Russophobes who even then tried to accuse our country of being “an Evil Empire.” “Walk through the French departments and ask people which enemy soldiers constantly displayed the greatest humanity, strictest discipline and the least hostility toward civilians. One hundred to one they would name the Russian soldier.”
The combination of great courage and unquestionable humanism has always guaranteed the victorious feats of the Soviet soldier. Its most salient manifestation was the Soviet country and the Red Army which took on Fascism.
When it entered the Great Patriotic War our people was truly united. Its cohesion was the main foundation of the May 1945 Victory. The cohesion manifested itself in everything. The Soviet leadership and the Communist Party fully shared the fate of the fighting people. All the grown-up sons of the members of the Politbureau of the CC AUCP (B) went to the front, and many of them died a hero’s death. The unity of power and society cemented the unexampled national solidarity and assured victory over the enemy.
The Soviet State did everything to remind people of the heroic pages of Russia’s thousand-year history. In 1941 the artists Kykryniksy and the poet Samuil Marshak made a poster which showed Red Army soldiers and tanks standing like an iron wall to block the Fascists. Above them, also facing the enemy, were the figures of the great military commanders of the past: Alexander Nevsky, Alexander Suvorov and Vasily Chapayev. It was as if they were in a single file with the Red Army men defending their Motherland. Beneath the picture were the verses:
We are fighting hard,
Wielding bayonets,
Grandchildren of Suvorov,
Children of Chapayev.
Stalin said on November 7, 1941: “May you be inspired by the courageous images of our great ancestors – Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy, Kuzma Minin, Dmitry Pozharsky, Alexander Suvorov and Mikhail Kutuzov.” He was saying these words from the stand of the Lenin Mausoleum during a military parade to mark the 24th anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. The words of a great statesman who managed to bring together the great ideas coming from the depth of time and embodied in Soviet society: the great state and socialism.
The marriage of these ideas opened a new and the most glorious page in Russian history. It marked the birth of a new state of which its founder, Lenin, had every reason to say in his 1919 article “The Great Beginning”: “The world has never seen a more democratic state in the true meaning, a state more closely linked with the working and exploited mases.”
It was the fullest and most successful embodiment of the unique synthesis of the best features of the West and East which brought forth the Russian civilization. A synthesis of forward-looking energy of great transformations and spirituality rooted in the innermost eternal values of equality, justice and selfless love of the Motherland.
The Russian Roots of Socialism
It is impossible to understand Russian history as a whole and its outstanding Soviet period without being conscious of the fact that the socialist idea has its roots in Christianity. The Gospel of charity, equality, justice, of rejecting “filthy lucre,” lies and exploitation. The underlying basis of the socialist world view is the faith whose adoption finally made Russia a single nation thatembarked on the path of constant spiritual, cultural, state and political creative endeavor.
The tail end of the 10th century, on the eve of Russia’s adoption of Christianity, saw the schism between the Western Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. The confessional division was not over differences of ritual, as some historians and propagandists would have us believe. It had to do with the underlying world view and values.
Western Christianity, which concentrated on the glitter of rituals and the bureaucratic structure of the papal hierarchy, virtually cast aside the basic ideas of the Gospel: Sobornist’, inconspicuouscharity, care about the poor and the disadvantaged, rejection of the ideology of usury branded by Christ. Protestantism, which branched off from the Roman Church in the middle of the previous millennium, spreading to the Anglo-Saxon world and the north of the European continent, was reduced to the preaching of extreme individualism, and the superiority of “the select.” It severed all links with the foundations of the Christian faith and laid the foundations of the capitalist ideology declaring glaring social inequality to be “God’s providence” and amassing of material wealth to be the highest virtue.
The Russian people from the start chose Orthodoxy which managed to preserve the genuine spirit of Christianity and maintain the moral high ground. To preserve over the centuries adherence to sobornost’ which was uniquely embodied centuries later in the collectivism and solidarity of Soviet society.
The enemies of Communism in their spurious propaganda make wide use of two “unmasking” theses. The first one is that the Bolshevik Party, upon coming to power, supplanted the Christian idea and symbols with its own forcing out of society’s consciousness the spiritual assumptions and meanings and replacing them with political and social ones. The second charge our enemies level at us is that the communist ideology allegedly has the character of worship of symbols and major political figures.
The truth is that the idea implemented in Soviet society combines the basic Christian values which echo humanity’s age-old dream of justice and political practice aimed at embody this dream in reality. We are looking not at a contradiction between socialism and Christianity, but at the historically logical evolution of popular consciousness, worldview and morality rooted in Orthodoxy toward their political and social implementation. That is only possible in a society of social justice and in the socialist state.
That is why the presence of Stalin’s image in the main church of the Armed Forces built in Kubinka near Moscow to mark the 75th Victory Anniversary is deeply symbolic. It infuriated many prominent functionaries who have effectively made anti-Communism their profession. However honest and principled church representatives gave a fitting rebuff to these attempts to whip up hysteria. Thus, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church expert council on church art, architecture and restoration, Reverend Leonid Kalinin, explaining why he would never order the image of the leader of the victorious Soviet country to be removed from the church, said quite rightly: “I have no rights or authority to tear out pages from the Book of History.”
It was not in Russia that the basic principles of the Communist political philosophy were formulated. They were proclaimed by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. But it was our country and the Russian people that adopted them not just as an ideology, but as a national idea. They had been prepared for doing so by centuries of their development. Herein lies one of the main reasons why socialism first triumphed on Russian soil. Such a triumph could only occur on a social and philosophical soil of which Dostoyevsky said the following in A Writer’s Diary more than forty years before the October Revolution: “The supreme and most characteristic feature of our people is a sense of justice and a hankering for it.”
This is why the socialist idea is so close to the Russian world. This predetermines the sincere adherence of the followers of socialism to the key values: equality, rejection of greed, collectivism, compassion, responsibility for the country and the society understood as personal responsibility. With true communists, staunch champions of socialism this adherence is indeed akin to religious faith. Which ensured the great Soviet achievements. The Great Victory in 1945 and the outstanding social and economic achievements of the Soviet Land or our conquest of outer space could not have happened without it.
Like the present authorities, those who ruled Russia before the Revolution proved to be unable to understand the irrepressible yearning of the Russian soul for justice and its stubborn resistance to capitalism. They paid dearly for their deafness. This is a lesson today’s rules should learn. But they stubbornly refuse to do so. They do not want to understand the destiny of their own country, the character and mentality of the Russian man.
Throughout the 19th century social and class contradictions in Russia were growing in spite of the desperate attempts of the state to take the situation under control. Neither the “great reforms” of Alexander II nor the “counter-reforms” of Alexander III nor the establishment of the State Duma by Nicholas II saved the country from social upheavals. The Romanov dynasty had led the country into an impasse. The bourgeois Provisional Government that replaced it failed to take Russia out of its crisis. It helplessly watched the country falling to pieces. Only the Bolshevik Party managed to prevent the country from being buried under the ruins of the monarchy.
The national elite of the Russian Empire failed to fulfil its main function: to ensure an acceptable level of well-being and social justice for its people. No wonder it was swept away by the revolutionary wave in 1917, the wave of the Great October. That wave had been prepared by the revolutionary movement of the 19th century which was Russian society’s response to the progressive degeneration of its ruling class. To the inability of power to keep the country within the framework of its indigenous non-capitalist path.
Socialism and Soviet power provided Russia with a new historical form of the centuries-old Russian idea by not only preserving but putting into practice what is its core: altruism, collectivism, the yearning for justice, readiness to make sacrifices in the name of lofty ideals. In short, everything that negates capitalism and cannot coexist with it as it is incompatible with the Russian civilization.
Contrary to the wish of the ruling class, which challenged the fundamental laws of civilization, it blazed the trail toward a new, socialist world reuniting the Russian Power under the banner of the Soviet Union. It radically changed the history of the whole mankind. This was the second great gain of the Russian world after the creation of the Russian Empire and the foremost result of its thousand-year development.
Soviet power and national pride
Another thesis popular among the anti-Sovieteers who try put on the patriotic garb is that socialism and Soviet power with their adherence to internationalism, are allegedly hostile to patriotism. Including Russian patriotism, whereas the capitalist system does not in any way impinge upon patriotic feelings and even encourages them. This is a patent lie.
Capitalism identifies national interests exclusively with the interests of the ruling class, the exploiting minority of the nation. This is manifest in the version of patriotism offered to society by official Russian propaganda which equates patriotism with worship of the rulers. Seeking to perpetuate class divisions within society capitalism thereby tries to perpetuate a cleavage within the nation. In dividing the world into exploiter and proletarian nations and dividing classes within individual countries the capitalist system foments international contradictions and tensions within states.
In the 21st century capitalism acquired its final anti-national form in the shape of globalism which has a stake in intellectual, cultural and linguistic uniformity. It sees people’s consciousness, their culture and individuality as no more than a function of capital. As indeed the human personality. Everything that does not correspond to this function should be rooted out, according to the globalist ideology. Therefore the aim is to subjugate all national cultures to a single cosmopolitan and essentially anti-cultural standard.
To this end the globalists are prepared to use the most sophisticated technologies of digital enslavement. These include tacit mass chipization they may eventually resort to under the pretext of mandatory vaccination against the coronavirus. The ideologists of digital fascism have allies among the owners of major corporations, bank presidents and high-ranking officials, including in our country.
Unlike capitalism, socialism is inherently aimed at eliminating the soil on which inter-ethnic contradictions and conflicts arise. It creates prerequisites for the nations which have put an end to class divisions of nations to draw closer together on the basis of cooperation and mutual enrichment. This is in striking contrast with national and cultural uniformity which capitalism has long been trying to impose on the world. That is why there are absolutely no grounds for opposing patriotism to internationalism which is essentially the opposite of anti-national capitalist cosmopolitanism.
Even before they came to power the Bolsheviks saw the future Soviet State as a combination of the socialist and patriotic ideals. The key ideals which are equally dear to the Russian people and which are an indispensable condition of its well-being.
Yes, it is a historical fact that in the early post-Revolutionary years Trotskyites who were in thrall to anti-Russian sentiments and a nihilistic attitude to the history and spiritual heritage of our country sought to play an active role in Soviet politics and social life. However, these attempts were resolutely brushed aside by the Soviet State and suffered a debacle.
Exposing the anti-Russian ideas of the Trotskyites, Stalin said: “We are told that nationals should not be mistreated. This is very true and I agree with this –they should not be mistreated. But to promote a new theory to the effect that the Great Russian proletariat should be put in an unequal position to the former oppressed nations means to talk nonsense.”
Today there is a lot of such nonsense about. It is actively used by the Russophobes who oppose the unity of peoples. They continue to whip up anti-Russian hysteria in Ukraine. They are trying to spread its bacilli to fraternal Byelorussia. They rail against the historical choice of the people of Crimea and Donbass. But their wicked activities are doomed to failure, as witnessed by the Bolshevik experience.
Beginning from the early 1930s the USSR categorically rejected attempts to portray Russia’s pre-Soviet history as nothing but a combination of backwardness, oppression and aggressive feudal wars. School textbooks and literary works pictured the country’s rulers, military commanders and diplomats as colorful, flesh-and-blood and many-dimensional individuals. They stressed the continuity of historical development of Kieavan and Muscovite Rus, Peter’s Russia and the Soviet land.
After the Victory Stalin openly admitted that the Russians take the decisive credit for this Victory. He never tired of reminding people of what the CPRF staunchly adheres to and what is written down in our program and what we insist should be reflected in the Constitution: the Russian people forms the core of the state because it is ordained by history to play the central and unifying role in our Motherland.
The architects of the Soviet State were very conscious of the idea which is pivotal for our party’s ideology and policy: the distinctive feature of Russia patriotism that stems from the unique Russian history and from Russian consciousness is its anti-capitalist and anti-bourgeois thrust.
The far-reaching consequences of this truth for the practices of the Soviet State have been acknowledged even by those who, after the October Revolution, disagreed with Soviet power and left the country. This is what the philosopher Nikolay Berdyayev said in his book The Sources and Meaning of Russian Communism published in 1938 in France where he lived after emigration: “A new generation of youth has appeared which has been able to commit itself with enthusiasm to implementing the Five-Year Plan, which perceives the task of economic development not as its personal interest but as social service…The Russian Revolution has awakened and released the great strength of the Russian people. Herein lies its main meaning.”
Today one can elaborate on the philosopher’s idea: herein lies the main reason why in the minds of those who hate the Russian people hostility toward it is intertwined with anti-Sovietism and visceral rejection of socialism.
The ideology of sovereignty
The Great Patriotic War which the Soviet Power won thus saving the world from destruction, has fully vindicated the path chosen by the Communists, the Soviet leadership and the people who came to believe it. Stalin put it very emotionally when he famously toasted the Russian people in 1945.
In the wake of Victory our country created a new geopolitical space, the socialist community led by the Soviet Union. The resulting geopolitical and economic model was an outstanding combination of traditional Russian concepts: the imperial one with its idea of self-sufficient statehood and the Pan-Slavic one, based on the idea of the Great Slavic Space.
Stalin’s policy of rapid industrialization was designed not simply to boost the economy, but also to create a self-reliant economic system independent from the external conditions. Thus, industrialization also solved the main political task of ensuring unconditional sovereignty and its protection against any adversary. The task that was key for the Russians and that was only completely solved during the Soviet era when Russia got rid of the enslaving influence of capitalism, which basically colonizes peoples by making them live according to its laws.
At this point recalling the lessons of history – this time socio-economic history – would not come amiss.
In the period between 1885 and 1913 Russia’s national revenue was growing at the average annual rate of 3.4% . The period between 1914 and 1920, when the country lived through two terrible wars – the First World War and the Civil War – predictably saw a decline of the national revenue by an average 11.7% a year. However, already in the following 8 years, during Lenin’s NEP these lamentable results gave way to growth unheard of not only in this country but in the world economy: 12.7% a year. In 1929—1940, when Stalin’s industrialization was launched, annual national revenue was growing at a still more astonishing rate, 14.5%. That was more than four times the rate of the most favorable pre-revolutionary years.
The New Economic Policy of the 1920s introduced by the Bolsheviks was based on the model aimed at recovery of a devastated country which had sustained huge human and economic losses. That model proved the Communists’ ability to withstand any crisis and to keep their word. Lenin’s party delivered on the promise it gave its people: under its leadership the country attained a fundamentally higher level of development than pre-revolutionary Russia.
Stalin’s industrialization, which built on the foundation of the economic and social achievements of the early Soviet years, represented a model of forward-looking development. The model aimed at making the country in which only 15 years earlier half of the population were illiterate, one of the world leaders in key areas. By the early 1940s this target was achieved in spite of the colossal external pressure from the enemies of the Soviet Union. In spite of the international sanctions which were even more severe than the present ones.
Stalin left behind him a country which, by the mid-1950s, had a national revenue 14 times that of the late 1920s with an industry growing at an annual 12.3% and, not counting the war years, at 19%. The country had paid off all its foreign debts. Its gold and currency reserves were the second largest in the world. We were first in Europe in terms of absolute industrial output volume, and first in the world in terms of the proportion of machine building in industry and mechanization of agriculture. The Soviet power had assured its total technical and economic independence. The most advanced high-tech industries –nuclear, space, aviation, instrument-building, radio electronics — were powering ahead. This was ensured by spectacular development of world-level engineering and science schools, top-class and free education and healthcare systems.
Average life expectancy had increased by 23 years between 1929 and 1955. Russia’s population had increased by 40 million. Above all due to the rapid growth of the number of Russians. And this in spite of the colossal losses sustained during the Great Patriotic War which carried away 27 million Soviet lives of which 20 million were Russian lives.
The welfare of the people was growing steadily. Real wages during this period had increased more than fourfold and total bank savings fivefold. Meanwhile prices in the USSR were constantly going down, unlike in the capitalist economy whose law says that as incomes grow so do prices, which basically brings to naught the formal rise of wages.
Here is but one example from Soviet history which contrasts sharply with the current socio-economic policy that spells constant impoverishment of the people: in the period between 1947 and 1954 consumer goods and food prices in the USSR went down by 2.3 times.
The giant economic and social leap forward the Soviet Union made in less than three decades is unmatched by any state in human history except socialism. This spectacular achievement is underpinned by three factors: wise strategic planning, massive government investments in development and fair distribution of the national income in the interests of the state and its citizens, and hence in the interests of the Russian people who account for the absolute majority of the population.
These factors are totally absent in the policy of the present authorities. As a result, the country is unable to adopt the proactive development model and indeed to implement the model of recovery development and overcome the consequences of the decimation of a powerful and self-sufficient Soviet economy.
Today economic recovery should take the shape of return of the financial and production base to the state and the people. It is only by wresting the financial system and strategically important sectors from the fabulously rich oligarchy that these sectors can be harnessed to proactive development, to ensuring a technological breakthrough and economic independence of the country. This is the essence of the CPRF program to which there can be no alternative if we want to really lift Russia from its knees and ensure a decent life for all its citizens.
However, those who run our economy think otherwise. They continue to feed society with tales that claim that the socialist model has failed. That “perestroika” in the second half of the 1980s, which developed into a geopolitical and social catastrophe, was allegedly brought about by a crisis of the Soviet economy and by the need to revert to the capitalist principles. But that is a malicious lie.
The USSR had built entire sectors of the national economy, major enterprises many of which are still in operation. The well-being and social security of citizens was growing, the USSR had become a great space, science and industrial power. It remained such a power until a handful of out-and-out traitors and rent-seekers pushed the country toward self-destruction under the pretext of “perestroika.”
In 1987 the USSR accounted for one-fifth of the world industrial output whereas today that share is almost 10 times less. Per capita industrial output in our country was 4.5 times the world average. While in the USA the national revenue was growing at the rate of 3% a year in the Soviet Union it was more than 4%. In the mid-1980s our industrial output growth was double that of America: 5.3% versus 2.6%. We were also ahead of the USA in terms of the average life expectancy.
Was that a system that had to be dismantled instead of modernizing and strengthening it? Only avowed enemies of our country, of the Russians and all the other peoples inhabiting it can make such a claim. But they continue unabashedly to lie and pour dirt on our history. The reasons for this are obvious.
Anti-Soviet alliance of Russophobes.
Russophobia nearly always lurks behind anti-Soviet statements. It is a feature of practically all those who are hostile toward our past and the ideology of socialism. If you scratch them hard enough even those who try to project an image of patriots who care about the interests of the Russian people, those who claim to have been ill-done-by under Soviet rule turn out to be Russophobes who have profound disdain for the people, its history and achievements.
Soviet history is about the establishment of the first state in the world based on the principles of social justice. The victory of our country in the most terrible of wars. The great and unmatched feat of industrialization, colossal economic, scientific, cultural and social achievements. It is a history of the great uplift of the Russian people. An uplift which manifested its will and infinite creative potential.
This is one of the main reasons why the Soviet idea and Soviet history so enrage professional anti-Communists the absolute majority of whom hate and detest the Russian people. Suffice it to look at the propaganda talk of anti-Sovieteers and the deeds of those who persistently attack our past to see that they are also, all of them, Russophobes.
The activities of propagandists who foment anti-Sovietism and Russophobia have the support of high-ranking officials who prefer not to display such sentiments publicly but who share them deep down.
Today the systemic crisis is putting the increasingly unstable peace to a test. The two previous crises ended in world wars. Today, too, the enemy does not want to confine itself to economic and information wars it has long been waging against Russia.
NATO is again sabre-rattling close to our border. The prospects of a new Drung nach Osten are again publicly discussed. We are surrounded by a contracting ring of fronts. Transatlantic provocateurs continue to run the show in Ukraine. Their Bandera underlings make constant attempts to aggravate the situation on the border with Crimea and Donbass. The Russophobic regimes in the Baltic states and in Eastern Europe are desecrating the graves of Soviet soldiers. This is all part of the global strategy of the US and its accomplices who see a new big war as the last remaining trump card in their struggle to preserve the power of transnational capital. The power which meets with a growing protest on all continents.
To repel the growing external and internal threats Russia needs social consolidation. But the current policy, which has a strong element of Russophobia and anti-Sovietism, precludes unity. It destroys any prospects of national cohesion.
To revive Russia is our mission. Each of us must realize this. In order to move forward one needs solid ground under one’s feet. This is only possible if a country cares for its history and the people which forms the spiritual, social and demographic core of the state.
And yet our policy-makers consistently seek to deprive Russians of their national identity. To dissolve them in the anonymous mythical notion of Rossiyane (“citizens of Russia”), the idea which was taken on board during the Yeltsin pogrom of the country and is actively being used by the current authorities.
Reliance on native history is exceedingly important at critical junctures. This principle was trampled upon at the tail end of Soviet history. The enemies managed to blow up our Motherland. The same weapons of Russophobia and anti-Sovietism were actively used to undermine its foundation. In our time it may lead to no less gruesome results, sow chaos as destructive as that at the end of the last century.
The call for cleansing the information domain from hideous lies that distort our history is a very special part of the demands of the CPRF set forth in our programmatic theses. Cleansing information of hysteria which insults the dignity of the Victorious People whom the present system has treacherously “rewarded” for its sacrifice with poverty, plunder and extinction provoked by the pro-American course. Society needs to understand that if the country is to get rid of officials and propagandists who sneer at our country and the Russian people it needs to be guided by Communists to implement a patriotic program of revival.
The colonial seamy side of “independence”
In 1812 the Prussian military commander and theorist Karl Klauzewitz spent some time with the Russian army. He hated Napoleon and wanted to help Russia personally when Napoleon’s army attacked it. After getting to know our country, the Russian soldiers, generals and government representatives Klauzewitz came to the following conclusion: “Russia is not a country that can really be conquered, that is, occupied, at least not by the present European states. Such a country can only be defeated by its internal weakness or the effect of internal discord.”
History has fully vindicated that conclusion.
The Russian state continued to grow from strength to strength as long as it was able to follow its own path of development, preserve its unique civilization and pursue its own historical course. Borrowing, if necessary, the achievements of neighbors, but not losing its identity in the process. Not allowing alien ideas and values to become prevalent in the hearts and minds of its citizens.
Any departure from this golden rule inevitably led to troubles. The state lost its effectiveness and strength. Society riven by internal contradictions became an arena of interminable political and ideological conflicts. This happened at the end of the 20th century when turncoats in the nomenklatura (the party and government elite) began to sing from the same hymn book as the foreign enemies of our country and socialism. They ruined the USSR seduced by the liberal attractions of the West which brought nothing but countless woes and privations for the absolute majority of citizens. For the Russian people it was the biggest geopolitical, social, demographic and moral catastrophe in its history.
Against the background of this catastrophe only cynical liars and imbeciles can claim that the liquidation of the Soviet Union brought independence and national liberation to Russia and the Russians. The truth is that the destruction of the USSR paved the way for its de facto colonization.
The declaration on state sovereignty adopted in June 1990 by the RSFSR Congress of People’s Deputies was a key step toward the disintegration of the Soviet State. Russia’s declaration of “sovereignty” in the early 1990s was a harbinger of the processes which led precisely to our country losing its sovereignty de facto. It included our country in the neocolonial system of global capitalism. And not as a strong independent power, but as a raw materials appendage and a cheated “partner.”
Let us face it, it is the Russians who are paying the highest price for the adventurous and essentially criminal policy imposed on the country by the “victorious democrats.”
In March 1991 the absolute majority of Soviet citizens voted for the preservation of the USSR. But in December of that same year their will was unlawfully ignored by the Belovezhskaya Pushcha plotters led by Yeltsin, befuddled with alcohol, power and the praise of Transatlantic principals. By proclaiming the end of the Soviet Union they perpetrated one of the most heinous political crimes in human history. This was above all a crime against the Russians comparable only to the crimes committed against them by the most wicked of foreign invaders.
As a result of the treacherous destruction of the USSR the Russians became one of the largest divided peoples in the world. Twenty-five million Russians who lived in the other union republics found themselves outside the Russian border. They became foreigners against their will.
Overnight, the plotters turned Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia into separate states. As a result, the single Russian civilization was torn into three parts. For each of them the consequences were dire in economic, demographic and cultural terms. The question of reunification of the Slavic republics has to do not only with the restoration of Russia’s lost geopolitical status. Contrary to what our foes would have us believe, it is not just about Russian interests. It has to do with the viability of all the three republics and their peoples which are bound by common roots that cannot be torn by any enemies and any temporary disagreements.
Restoration of a full-fledged union between Russia, Ukraine and Byelorussia was hindered above all by a lack of the necessary political will on the part of the Russian leadership. This, in the final analysis, gave a free hand to the pro-American clique of Banderovites that seized power in Kiev in 2014. It is this that is provoking processes that threaten a cooling of relations between Russia and Byelorussia. This policy has to be stopped immediately.
Russia meets one third of Europe’s demand for gas. It is capable of providing 500 million cubic meters of renewable forest resources. It supports a quarter of the world’s diamond market. Our country’s wealth and revenue is based on assets created above all through the efforts of the Russian people. On labor resources the majority of which are formed by the Russians. On natural resources of the land where the bulk of the population is Russian. From the point of view of justice and from the legal point of view the Russian people is entitled to a proportionate corresponding share of the national revenue. This was the case during the Soviet years. But this principle has been criminally erased under capitalism. The people that created the Russian State and provided the major part of its national wealth has through the efforts of the new “masters” been reduced to an impoverished, disadvantaged and miserable lot.
Those who got hold of the property of the people and the state created during the Soviet years have either destroyed it or turned it into a source of unbridled personal enrichment. The Russian tightwads, who enjoy the protection of the authorities, have in the last 25 years spirited away at least a trillion dollars to foreign banks and offshores. And yet this money could have doubled government spending on education, science, healthcare, trebled pensions, stipends and wages. But the authorities keep mum about it and continue conniving at the plunder of the country.
Russia and the Russian people have paid for this with the destruction of countless industries, thousands of factories, and millions of lost jobs. With veritable colonization of the financial sphere and the economy which has become addicted to the sale of natural resources and depends entirely on imports. This poses a colossal threat to national security in the face of growing hostility on the part of our “partners.”
But those who rule us today and engage the West in fierce polemic in the world arena do nothing to liberate Russia from what is obviously financial and economic occupation.
This situation which spells disaster for the country and society can only be changed through implementation of the CPRF program. A program that envisages wresting of control of strategically important sectors from the hands of the oligarchy. Revision of the criminal results of privatization and bringing its organizers to account. The use of federal and regional budget that would be substantially replenished due to these measures to massively increase investments in industry, agriculture and the social sphere.A ban on the export of capital from Russia. Easy-term crediting of national producers at an interest rate below the level of inflation. Raising of minimal wage, pensions and social benefits by at least two times. All-round support and constant growth of the number of people’s and collective enterprises whose effectiveness is convincingly being proved by our fellow party members and talented managers: P.N.Grudinin, I.I.Kazankov, I.A.Bogachev, I.A.Sumarokov and many others.
This is the only program that today meets the national interests of all the peoples of our country. Only the enemies of these interests can reject it.
The epidemic of capitalism
The collapse of the socialist system caused colossal damage to the country’s economy and the social sphere. As a result, in the 1990s the national revenue was shrinking by an average annual 5.7%, i.e. more than at the start of the Great Patriotic War. In the first two decades of the 21st century our economy either declined or reported a “growth” within a range of statistical error. In other words, it hovered around zero, stagnated.
After he liquidation of the USSR the state cast aside all its social obligations to its citizens. Millions of people are growing poorer and falling into a debt pit. Meanwhile a score of top Russian billionaires increase their total wealth by 1.5 trillion roubles every six months, i.e. almost 300 billion a month, 9.5 billion a day and 400 million an hour, according to Bloomberg agency.
Only the oligarchy which has seized our national wealth and the bureaucrats in its service are interested in the preservation of this destructive system that emerged on the ruins of the great Soviet power. But the people wants to see a great, truly independent country emerge from the ruins. Our history confirms that this is only possible if Russia in its struggle to recover relies on socialist principles.
The development of the situation in the world and inside our country proves that the current neoliberal policy initially conceived by the West and its appointees as anti-Russian and Rossophobic, has spent itself and is on the brink of collapse.
Against the background of a growing crisis the socio-economic course pursued in Russia meets with ever sharper criticism from all sides. More and more people realize that by embarking on the neoliberal path and taking dictation from the IMF and transnational capital the authorities made a choice that spells disaster for the country and society.
However, only a few people dare to tell the full truth: we are looking not only at a dead-end socio-economic model. The ultimate goal for the sake of which this model has been foisted on Russia is to enfeeble its people and effectively to destroy it. To “clean up” the fabulously rich country in order to seize its resources. The main target here is the biggest state-forming Russian people without which the country will collapse and become easy prey for conquerors. The neoliberal socio-economic model is a deadly weapon directed against it. Effectively a neutron bomb in the hands of our external enemies and their underlings inside Russia.
The current socio-economic course serves their interests. The authorities today have a twin task: to minimize their obligations to the citizens and to absolve themselves from any legal responsibility for this. This principle informs the entire socio-economic policy.
The anti-people pension “reform” launched in the country is a direct reflection of this principle. It is nothing but undisguisedrobbery of those who have for many years worked honestly for the country and society and have now been deprived of their right to enjoy well-deserved rest and draw a legitimately earned pension.
Let us recall the clear and solid guarantees of protection of life and health every Soviet citizen was granted under the country’s Main Law. Article 42 of the Constitution of the USSR adopted in 1977 reads in part:
“The citizens of the USSR have the right to the protection of their health. This is ensured directly by free qualified medical care rendered by state healthcare institutions; the broadening network of institutions for the treatment and improvement of the health of citizens; the development and improvement of safety rules and occupational hygiene; wide-scale preventive measures; measures to improve the environment; particular care for the health of the young generation, including a ban on child labor unconnected with education and vocational training; deployment of scientific research aimed at preventing and lowering the level of morbidity and ensuring active longevity of citizens.”
These are much stronger and wider guarantees than those promised by the present Constitution. Unlike those of today they were fulfilled as long as Soviet power existed, financed out of the treasury, without any abstract insurances and contributions.
In its program the CPRF stresses that to rescue the country’s healthcare system and give back to the people guarantees of free and effective healthcare we need to go back to the Soviet constitutional norms. To build a state that would again guarantee their fulfilment. This can be done only by the socialist state which can stop the dying out of the Russian people.
The wages of genocide
In 2006 the German military expert and journalist Peter Scholl-Latour made a documentary film titled “Russia Surrounded” for the major German TV company ZDF. Speaking about it he made a grim prediction: “Russia is inexorably moving toward death. Russia’s main problem today is catastrophic shrinking of the share of Russians.” Reluctant as we may be to do so we have to agree with his assessment. Unless we want the demise of our country to become reality we must honestly admit the destructive ongoing processes and take urgent measures to stop them.
The anti-Russian and anti-Slavic thrust of the country’s internal policy is becoming ever more evident. The Russians and other indigenous peoples that historically formed the backbone of Russia’s thousand-year history are the most disadvantaged and humiliated. The dying out of indigenous Russian regions is 2 or 3 times faster than the average population decline figures. The representation of Russians in key areas – governance, economy, culture and the mass media is startlingly at odds with their predominant share in the total population.
That the current policy is veritable genocide of the Russian people is evidenced by the demographic catastrophe the country faced after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist system.
The population of the USSR as a whole and of the Russian Federation has been growing throughout the Soviet era with the exception of the Great Patriotic War when we lost 27 million people. By 1941 it was 43 million larger than that of the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. It dropped by 13 million toward the end of the war, but ten years after Victory it almost reached the pre-war level. By the early 1990s Russia had a population two and a half times larger than a hundred years before. And this without any migration, solely due to the high birth rate stimulated by the Soviet social policy.
In the USA by the early 20th century people lived on average 17 years longer than in Russia, the average life expectancy having risen by 18 years in 1967 compared with 1900. In the USSR fifty years after the establishment of Soviet power people came to live on average 38 years longer than in Russia in the early 20th century. In 1967 the Soviet Union had longer life expectancy than the USA.
The increase of life expectancy in our country in the 67 years of the 20th century was more than twice that in the USA, the leading country of the capitalist world. In terms of life expectancy the USSR outstripped not only the United States, but also such countries as France, Belgium, and Finland and was level with Japan, the FRG, Italy and Canada. This shows that the socialist system contributed much more to rapid social progress than the capitalist system at its best.
The capitalism that has been foisted on us brought deadly demographic wages for the Russian people. By 2010 – the year of the last census – there were only 111 million Russians in the country. A loss of ten million members of the state-forming people in the first two decades of capitalism. This according to official statistics which do not give the real picture.
On the whole Russia’s population since 1991 shrank by 1.6 million, and the Russian population by 10 million. That does not take into account the data for the last decade which are still unavailable. In other words, the number of Russians is diminishing more than six times faster than the total population. The shrinking numbers are “balanced” only by migration. This is a real humanitarian disaster!
During the Soviet era the number of Russians more than doubled. During the three decades of capitalism it shrank by at least 13%. What more proof is needed of the fact that socialism meets the national interest of Russians while capitalism is patently hostile to them and is deadly for them? What further arguments are needed to show that renunciation of the present destructive governance system is not only a question of the socio-economic well-being of our people, but a question of its physical survival?
Only Communist power, socialism and a recovery of the best Soviet experience will put an end to the system that leads to actual extermination of the people. The system under which citizens consigned to conditions inadmissible for a country so rich in resources are afraid to raise a family and have children.
Today an absolute majority of young Russians do not expect to be able to afford their own — even a very modest – dwelling. Moreover, they have no prospect of acquiring one even 10, 15 or 20 years from now. The cost of housing in Russia has increased a hundred times since the early 1990s. Even if he saves all his earnings down to the last kopeck toward buying a flat the average Muscovite will have to save for 12 years, the citizen of Petersburg, 11 years, those who live in one of the central regions, 18 years and those who live in the south of Russia, 10 years. Those who try to solve the problem by taking out bank loans will have to pay the bank two or three times the price of the flat or move out because of exorbitant interest rates.
The situation will change dramatically after the Communists come to power. The young people who will contribute the most to boosting national industry and science, restoring agriculture and strengthening of the country’s defenses will be granted housing for free immediately or within a short space of time. Others will be able to get housing within several years as was the case in the USSR which guaranteed free housing for everyone. Housing construction — not for the new rich, not for the millionaires and billionaires, but for normal, honest people – will become one of the main areas of effort in the country’s development.
To be an effective program of national salvation of the Russian and other indigenous peoples of our country it has to be based on firm and effective socio-economic principles. The answer to the question what should these principles be is provided by socialism. That is why the CPRF program is a convincing and relevant program in the interests of the country’s indigenous peoples.
The people’s soul trampled underfoot by wreckers
Simultaneously with physical extermination the present system destroys Russia and the Russian people spiritually. While paying lip service to patriotism the authorities absolutely refuse to support the Russian national culture. They contribute to the displacement of culture by primitive and immoral trash made according to Western templates. With the connivance of bureaucrats and cynical people who treat culture as a source of profit this hack work has inundated TV screens, cinemas and publishing houses. The present system induces the state to renounce any attempts to provide moral education and enlightenment and to help those who seek to do so. The soul of the people and its consciousness, its intellect is above all the native language. And yet the Russian language, the language of the great Russian literature, which is a key part of the world cultural heritage, is subjected to humiliation every day. And again, the authorities look the other way.
Our language is one of the richest in the world. But these riches are trampled underfoot by today’s mass culture, education and information policy. The language is being polluted by newspeak, senseless anglicisms which symbolize the colonial essence of the system imposed on our people. Newspeak is effectivelya language of occupation. Take a walk in the streets of our cities and you will see that foreign names of Western and eastern provenance today outnumber Russian ones. It is as if we are deliberately told that the Russian people are not masters of their land. They have no right to national self-consciousness, identity and to native speech.
The law On the Official Language of the Russian Federation passed in 2005 was aimed at protecting the Russian language. But the same authorities that passed this law are reluctant to protect it.
We see the Western countries being swept by the migration process which threatens to develop into a political crisis. But try to get a decent job without knowing the official language. In this country it is becoming the new normal. In the services sphere and in the housing and utilities sector we increasingly deal with people who are unable to communicate in Russian. This is not merely an inconvenience. It provokes social tensions. Ultimately, it threatens civil peace which is inevitably shaken when society is divided into groups that do not understand each other.
By all the criteria adopted in the world community genocide of the Russian people has been unleashed. That is why the most sensitive national issue in modern Russia is not the issue of the “national borderlands” but the issue of “the national core.” It has to do not with a minority but with an overwhelming majority. The sacred desire to safeguard our Motherland and our people against destruction inspires us to struggle to revive in Russia the state that is capable of stopping physical and spiritual genocide of the Russian and other peoples. Of enabling them to return to the path of harmonious moral, cultural and intellectual development. This is the key element of the CPRF program. This is our main duty to the present and future generations.
In order to throw off the yoke of anti-national capital and confidently move forward Russia needs to become aware of itself as the heir not only to Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Nekrasov and Chekhov, but also to Gorky, Sholokhov, Simonov, Isakovsky, Tvardovsky, Bondarev and Rasputin, Prokofiev and Sviridov, Mukhina and Vuchetich, Makarenko and Sukhomlinksy. Kurchatov and Keldysh. Korolev and Gagarin. Zhukov, Rokossovsky, Vasilevsky and Konev. The country must be proud of the fact that the galaxy of brilliant names, the pride of the Russian civilization, was born of the Soviet era, the socialist Motherland, the land of Lenin and Stalin.
Communists and all patriots must be more active in defending Russian history, Russian culture and the Russian soul. Because they are the targets of all those who seek to destroy our Power. At this critical juncture we need to be conscious of the fact that we are not only a party of rule of the people and of justice, but a party of national salvation.
Russia is about to awaken
If the experiment undertaken ” by Lenin— the experiment of socialism —— fails, modern civilisation will perish, just like many civilisations perished in the past.”This was said in 1931 by Nobel Prize-winning British playwright Bernard Shaw. The Soviet power proved its strength and its great creative potential. But its treacherous destruction vindicated the writer’s foresight. The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered a chain reaction of global destabilization which threatens terrible upheavals on the planet. It put on the brink of destruction the Russian civilization whose crowning achievement has been the creation of the Soviet State. The state of the working people. The state of socialism.
However, the colossal historical experience, the great vitality, the moral and intellectual potential we possess enable us to step back from the abyss. To overcome the systemic crisis. Our people can still do it. And it will do it!
It was the Soviet civilization that in the early 20th century offered mankind the greatest socialist project of the world order, a project based on the laws of justice, humanism and equality. It demonstrated its righteousness and power in the battles against the armies of the Entente and Hitler’s hordes. Its real superiority over capitalism which inevitably degenerates into Fascism and political banditry.
The bid of transnational capitalism to bury the socialist project turned out to be futile. Today mankind, tormented by crises and disenchanted with capitalism, is again turning toward socialism. The Russian world must be in the vanguard of this process, like it was a hundred years ago, because the socialist ideas are rooted most deeply in its consciousness. They cannot be suppressed by any resistance of the world and Russian political and financial elite.
The German philosopher Walter Schubart who left Germany after the Nazis came to power and who had sincere respect for our people said this about the Russian man in his 1938 book Europe and the Eastern Soul: “He does not try to turn his fellow man into an instrument. This is the essence of Russian brotherhood. This is the Gospel for the future… Russia’s mission is to give man back his soul. Russia has the strength that Europe has lost or destroyed in itself… Only Russia can breathe the soul back into the human race which is perishing from power lust and is steeped in materialistic business consciousness.”
Obviously, he was referring to the historical processes that unfolded in the world after socialism challenged the ideology of greed, plunder and exploitation. The processes that put the Russian people and all the other peoples of our great power at the center and I am sure will put them there again.
History, whose main facets are again highlighted with fresh force by the dramatic events of our time warrants the conclusion that a true Russian cannot be anything other but a supporter of socialism. And a true adherent of socialism cannot but treat Russians with respect, gratitude and love.
The rabid anti-Sovietism and Russophobia of our opponents is the last toxic potion for which the bankrupt liberal pro-marketeers are reaching out in their attempt to rescue their sinking authority and to convince the country of the need to preserve the system of criminal capitalism. Only a return to the principles of the social state can pull Russia out of its crisis and set it on the path of true development. The path of friendship, brotherhood and genuine national independence.
That is why the CPRF program and 15 key amendments to the Constitution we are promoting are based on the ideas and measures that would restore all the best features of the Soviet economic, social and cultural policy. All the most decent and progressive modern practices. The Communists resolutely counter the ideology of liberal anti-Sovieteers who worship capitalist globalization with the ideology of social justice and national revival that meets the interests of the absolute majority.
We have no doubt that the salvation and revival of Russia is impossible without restoring firm moral foundations and moral principles society and power must abide by. |Let us give an honest answer to the question: in what epoch were the principles dominating society and politics closer to the premises of good, selflessness, charity and humanism which the main world religions have been preaching for ages.? Was it in the Soviet epoch or today? We are convinced that there can be only one answer: the Soviet system directly embodied these principles based on the ideals of universal brotherhood, solidarity and social justice.
The systemic crisis can only be overcome and full-fledged development can be resumedwhen those who were involved in the criminal dismantling of the USSR and the establishment of a system ofwild criminal-oligarchic capitalism are stripped of their control of the political, economic and financial spheres. Let us remember Cicero’s wisdom: “A nation can survive its fools and social climbers but it cannot survive treachery. The enemy at the gate is fearsome, but it is known and it openly holds up its banners. A traitor circulates freely among the besieged, his cunning whisper rustles in the city streets, he acts secretly and infects the citizens such that they can no longer resist. A murderer is less fearsome than he is.”
Removal of the Russophobic and anti-Soviet “fifth column” from power is an indispensable condition of the revival of our country and the Russian people. Only then will the new truly patriotic and nationally –conscious leadership be able to implement the vitally needed change of course and unite all the healthy forces in the Motherland.
The CPRF has renewed its call on the patriots of Russia to promote this idea in the course of the festive events of the All-Union Popular Assembly we organized in the spring of 2020 to mark the 150th anniversary of Lenin’s birth, the First of May outing timed for the Day of International Solidarity of Working People.
We made a similar appeal to citizens on May 9, the day of the great jubilee, the 75th anniversary of Victory. On the eve of that day, as part of our political campaign Lenin, Stalin, Victory we announced large-scale patriotic actions: “Immortal Regiment Under the Red Banner,” “Victory Garden – the Garden of Life,” “Youth Follows the Road of Heroic Fathers.” They will span the whole of Russia and the former Soviet republics which retain sacred bonds with us.
Because of the dangerous infection which put all of us under exasperating lockdown we could not stage street processions and rallies and held our gatherings online. However, in spite of the distance they throbbed with the energy of the struggle for justice. Of confidence that we will soon reunite with fresh force in the name of the common cause of reviving the Motherland and the people.
The Lenin and Victory jubilees remind us that we are heirs to great deeds. Heirs to heroes who have astonished the world with their achievements. It is the people’s sacred right and sacred duty to regain what it has gained and what traitors have taken away from the country and society. We are confident that the enemy will be defeated and victory will be ours.!
When in the Time of Troubles the invaders were feasting at the Kremlin Patriarch Hermogenes who refused to recognize the impostors and occupiers was imprisoned in a dungeon. But even there, deprived of water and food, he continued to call, “Arise Russian people!.” He was heard and the militias led by Minin and Pozharksy came and saved the country. If we put it across to our people Russia will arise and step back from the edge of the historical abyss. The 20th century will become the century of the revival of our great Power.
The ideology that will pave the way toward our resurgence must be the modern Russian idea capable of uniting all the country’s peoples for the sake of the common cause and the common good. The idea rooted in socialism and the thousand-year-old spiritual and patriotic values. The idea that cements the nation in a single surge of creativity. The idea that mobilizes all the social resources to secure an early end to the systemic crisis that threatens the very existence of our country.
China has achieved spectacular results by linking socialism, patriotism and the age-old folk traditions. Cuba, Vietnam and Venezuela are following a similar path. We will achieve victory if we rely on the Russian character, the Russian spirit and Russian history. The Russians are the state-forming nation. They have never oppressed other peoples and have done everything to safeguard their independence, their faith, their alphabets, language and culture. Neither our country nor world peace can be secured without strengthening the Russian people.
This is something true patriots of Russia –both Russians and other peoples — cannot help recognizing. And this strengthens our confidence that it is important to remind society of the sources of the Russian civilization, the Soviet values, discoveries and achievements. Of the need to uphold the ideas of socialism and struggle to promote these great ideas in today’s Russia. For a victory that would assure a decent future for our Motherland.