Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998
For the Hindustan Times
From: Fred Weir in Moscow
MOSCOW (HT Nov 10) -- Several Russian politicians have
called for banning the Communist Party -- the country's largest
political formation -- after it failed to publicly condemn one of
its members for anti-Semitic remarks.
"The Communists should be banned as the carrier of an idea
that could break Russia apart," financier Boris Berezovsky told a
TV interviewer at the weekend. Mr. Berezovsky is a former deputy
chairman of the Kremlin Security Council and current secretary of
the Commonwealth of Independent States.
"They are turning into nationalists and for the first time
they have declared this absolutely openly. . . The Communists
have placed themselves outside the laws of the civilized world
and outside the laws of Russia," he said.
Mr. Berezovsky's demands were echoed by a number of leading
politicians. Former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar accused the
Communists of turning into Nazis and said "if Russia wants to
remain a democratic country it should ban the Communist Party."
The controversy erupted last week when the vast majority of
Communist parliamentarians refused to support a resolution of
criticism against General Albert Makashov, a Communist deputy who
referred to Jews in public speeches using an ethnic slur, blamed
them for causing Russia's economic crisis and suggested they
should be rounded up and jailed.
The motion of censure in the Duma, Russia's lower house of
parliament, was sponsored by film-maker Stanislav Govorukhin, a
left-wing parliamentarian who warned that Gen. Makashov's
inflamed rhetoric was a threat to Russian national unity and a
disgrace to the Communist Party.
But the measure failed when only a handful of Communists,
who hold nearly half the Duma's seats, voted for it. Communist
Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said the resolution was unnecessary
because Gen. Makashov had already been reprimanded inside the
Party.
"We have a pluralism of opinions, and people can say what
they want," says Yuri Ivanov, a Communist Duma deputy. "Makashov
has been criticized by his comrades, and that's enough."
But at a Moscow rally marking the 81st anniversary of the
Bolshevik Revolution last Saturday, Gen. Makashov repeated his
attacks on the Jews, and Communist Party leaders also present
made no move to curb him.
"The Communists have a serious internal problem," says
Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow.
"Zyuganov does not want a split, and so he's had to make
allowances for Makashov".
Mr. Zyuganov slammed Mr. Berezovsky's call to ban the
Communist Party as "an expression of utter extremism" and warned
that all such appeals are contrary to Russia's Constitutional
law.
The Communist Party was banned after the collapse of the
USSR in 1991, but revived when Russia's Constitutional Court
upheld its legality. But it has never declared a clear post-
Soviet ideology, and Mr. Zyuganov tends to appear in the guise of
nationalist, social democrat or Stalinist depending on his
audience of the moment.
It remains Russia's largest political party, and Mr.
Zyuganov routinely leads the pack of possible presidential
candidates in opinion polls. But the same polls show the
Communists not only the most popular, but also the most unpopular
party in the country -- a paradox that led to Mr. Zyuganov's
defeat in 1996 presidential elections and would likely do so
again.
"This controversy reveals the basic problem the Communists
have," says Mr. Petrov. "The Party's internal disunity and lack
of ideological cohesion makes it impossible for Zyuganov to
create an electable image for himself. The Party's enemies find
it easy to exploit situations like this controversy over
Makashov."
--
Gregory Schwartz
Department of Political Science
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
Canada
tel: (416) 736-5265
fax: (416) 736-5686
mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci
