These excerpts from the platform of Communist
Party leader Gennadiy Zyuganov are taken from Sovetskaya Rossiya’ March
19, 1996.
Citizens of Russia, compatriots!
The time for crucial decisions has come. The fate of
the Motherland for years to come depends on 16th June. On entering the
struggle for the post of Russian Federation president, I have a duty to
tell you what prompted me to take this step.
I was born at the end of the Great Patriotic War on
ravaged Orel soil. My parents were country teachers. Our entire large family
worked from dawn to dusk and honestly defended the country. I have never
glorified anyone or betrayed anyone. My everyday motto is: knowledge and
action.
I am a Russian by blood and spirit; I love my Motherland.
I joined the party in the belief that the communist ideal, which dates
back more than 2,000 years, reflects most deeply the people’s needs and
aspirations. It is in tune with the age-old Russian traditions of community
and collectivism, and in keeping with the fundamental interests of the
Fatherland.
I see the supreme point of life as being to serve Russia
and its people, and the ideals of good and justice. My attitude to the
1,000-year history of my ancestors is one of respect. The fate of all the
peoples inhabiting the expanses from the Baltic to the Pacific is close
to me. I know at first hand how difficult life is for the Non-Black Soil
Zone peasant, the Urals machine builder, the Kuzbass miner, the Far East
seaman. I have had occasion to go almost everywhere, meet people, help
people. But never before, even during the postwar years, have I seen so
much distress or heard so many requests for help as today. Your heart aches
when you see what is happening all around.
The Fatherland is in danger!
Our people have had to go through a great deal.
But we have beaten all the troubles and misfortunes because we have derived
strength from our attachment to our native land and our sense of Fatherland,
above which there is nothing in the world. But what is happening now is
the most terrifying—the primary source of the people’s life forces is being
hit. Their Fatherland is being taken away from them.
Let us ponder:
The Fatherland means the country, the state, the people.
Where is our country today? The Soviet Union has been illegally dismembered.
Some 25 million compatriots suddenly discovered they were foreigners in
their own land. For the first time in their history, the Russian people
have become a divided people.
The Fatherland means the family, children, the continuation
of the race. But mothers have been denigrated and the birth of a child
threatens most families with ruin. Virtually everything which very recently
children used to have has been taken away from them. Man’s sacred right—the
right to life—has not been safeguarded. Russia is physically dying out,
losing a million souls every year!
The Fatherland means the link between generations, respect
for the elderly and concern for their material well-being, spiritual happiness
and tranquillity. Today, veterans who defended the Motherland and raised
it from the ruins to world heights have been abandoned to the whim of fate.
The Fatherland is an indivisible asset of the citizen.
But most of the people are languishing in poverty and being forcibly prevented
from enjoying the country’s riches. Everything is being stolen and sent
abroad by insatiable predators. The universal asset bestowed by nature—the
land and its mineral resources—are also threatened.
The Fatherland means a community of people. But people
cannot travel to their relations or friends for weddings or even funerals.
Many people cannot afford to telephone another town, go to the theatre
or buy a book.
The Fatherland means traditions, culture and the language.
But we are witnessing an unprecedented assault on the age-old spiritual
values and moral ideals of our life. Inferior and second-rate standards
are being instilled in the heirs of a great people. The nation is being
deliberately abused. They want to remake Russia in accordance with yardsticks
which are alien to it and impose a culture of greed, violence, perversion
and selfishness on it.
The Fatherland means national and state independence
and respect in the world. But the country is increasingly falling into
bondage and losing its allies. In the last 10 years our apologies for rulers
have built up debts to last for the next 200 years. Our lands are not protected
from imports of nuclear waste, junk products, “dirty” money, infectious
diseases, weapons and drugs.
So who in Rus ancient land including Russia is living
a happy and free life? There is not even a Russian term for them. They
are known as compradors native agents of a foreign enterprise , who are
in a tiny minority. Their ideal is “tumbleweed” man, who makes his home
wherever there’s a profit to be made. Their objective is to remake the
entire people in their own image and likeness.
Their weapons are money, provocations, decadence and
lies. They want to capture us with their bare hands. It is easy to recognize
them: They scornfully call our Fatherland “this country.”
The present authorities claim that the Communists and
their allies want to take the country back to the past. Going back is impossible
for the simple reason that we have never even emerged from there. On the
contrary, we are getting stuck deeper and deeper in the worst things that
existed.
The real reforms which are vitally necessary for the
country have not even started. Let us judge the regime of the “democrats”
by its actions. What might it have done? A great deal. But what good has
it done? None. Absolute power and an
absolute inability to achieve anything except destruction—in this respect
the regime has been consistent.
Who rules today? People from the degenerate CPSU elite,
shady businessmen, corrupt officials, the inheritors of the worst traditions
of the nomenklatura system. And those who continue to fight such traditions
are termed “enemies of reform” who refuse to see the positive changes.
Just what are these “positive changes?” Production has
fallen by half—by 80-85 per cent in the sectors on which the country’s
scientific and technical independence depends. Capital investment in production
has fallen by 75 per cent. Half of the tractor and combine pool is useless.
The country has more than 10m partially or fully unemployed people, 6m
refugees, almost 1m homeless. And it’s the same everywhere.
On the other hand, they tell us, inflation and the budget
deficit have fallen. This is indeed the government’s “outstanding” success,
if you consider that it has been achieved by a method never seen before
in the world—by not paying people for work and not repaying debts. This
discovery should be patented
Having accomplished this economic feat, it is possible
to move on to other “achievements.” They point, for example, to the full
shelves in Moscow shops, but “forget” to add that one-third less food is
sold in the country than five years ago. The nutrition of 40 per cent of
the population is below minimum medical standards. For them, even a glass
of milk is a luxury.
Not many products and the people’s pockets are empty.
Everything except vodka has gone up in price—who benefits from this? Whereas
previously there was a joke about Russia that the shelves were empty but
the refrigerators were full, today everything is the other way around—the
shelves are groaning but the refrigerators are empty. Indeed, Russian production
meets only 20 per cent of consumer demand.
They say that, on the other hand, Russia now has democracy
and freedom of speech, but “forget” the flouted results of the referendum
on retaining the union, the repeated attempts to ban the Communist Party
and other people’s patriotic organizations, the tank attack on the legally-elected
Supreme Soviet. Thus has the immutability of the law and civil rights been
trampled, the dignity of the court extinguished, the church denigrated,
the honor of the soldier besmirched.
A state has two pillars: the people and the law. The
regime has exterminated the law. To save itself, it is driving the people
into oppression. If there are a few political liberties in Russia, it is
not as a result of the goodwill of the authorities, but thanks to the opposition’s
resistance to repression. The authorities are simply incapable of squashing
the people’s resistance and so they have to try to make a virtue out of
necessity.
The weapons of lies are continuing to fire with increasing
force. So let us be vigilant—further gullibility is fatal.
Let us rally together for the sake of the Fatherland!
I can see it: the people are seeing the light and uniting.
I believe it: the people will be able to seize their fate in their own
hands and rise up to their full giant stature like Vanka-Vstanka in the
epic poem.
Helping them to achieve this is our main task. In recent
years, my concern as a citizen and a politician has been to bring all the
people’s patriotic forces together in a powerful alliance. To extricate
Russia from its catastrophic situation peacefully, without violence or
civil war. To turn the ship of state onto a course of people’s power, justice,
economic progress and spiritual rebirth.
Today, it can already be said that this work has borne
fruit: a people’s patriotic coalition has been created. In addition to
the Communists and Agrarians, it also includes other noncommunist and patriotic
forces. We are open to new forces to whom Russia is precious and invite
them into our bloc.
Today’s “democracy” mainly boils down to the right of
citizens and parties to say whatever they like and the right of the government
to pay no attention. But democracy is people’s power and thus responsibility
to the people on the part of state bodies. This is what is lacking today
in all places and all things. The president and the government have no
responsibility because they are not controlled and parliament because it
has no rights. This kind of power cannot be strong.
It is necessary to amend the constitution and move towards
a political setup under which the president is not a tsar or the “ father
of the nation” , but the top official serving the state and controlled
by and accountable to people’s representatives.
No minister must be appointed without the agreement
of the legislative branch. No Russia-wide program will start until it obtains
the agreement of parliament and the Higher Learned Council. For their part,
parliament and deputies must be under the control of, and accountable to,
the voters. We will ensure regular elections to all bodies of power from
top to bottom.
I will take measures resolutely to combat corruption
in the state apparatus. The people’s control of its activity will be restored.
Moral criteria will assume top priority in policy. Organizing life in accordance
with truth, conscience and justice will become the main objective of the
state.
We will ensure citizens’ right to honest statistics.
All sociopolitical forces operating within the law will have access to
the state mass media.
Without a strong state there is no such thing as a strong Russia
The historical and geopolitical features of our
Fatherland predetermined a most important role for the state.
The essence of my strategy is to provide maximum scope
for all citizens’ creative energy, initiative and enterprise. The state
is not a “philanthropist” bestowing manna from heaven on its subjects.
It is obliged to act in such a way that nobody can prevent people working
freely, owning the fruits of their labor and independently deciding their
own fate.
We will ensure the conditions necessary for this. They
are simple and clear:
power will be returned to the people;
it will become profitable to produce goods, build and
learn;
the worker will have guaranteed work, be paid according
to his labor and participate in the management of production;
the peasant will become master on his own land and receive
the necessary support from the state;
the teacher, doctor, engineer, scientist, artist, writer
and sportsman will regain a sense of their significance in society;
women will be in a position to raise their children
in peace and will be confident about their future;
children will be given back everything that has been
taken from them;
the school and college student will get the opportunity
to study at no cost and relax properly;
talent will not be left without state support;
the policeman, prosecutor and judge will protect the
honest person and will themselves be protected by the law;
the soldier will receive everything necessary and will
concern himself with his most immediate job—defending the Fatherland;
the veteran, invalid and sick person will be socially
protected and surrounded by attention and concern;
the security of society, the family and the individual,
and freedom of speech and public activity will be guaranteed;
refugees will finally acquire a home in Russia;
the duped investor will get his savings back;
the thief will be put in jail.
Our objective is freedom and justice. If state power
ensures this, free people in a free country will do all the rest themselves,
without being told or coerced.
I believe that this is how it will be. I believe in
the wisdom and common sense of our great people. I believe that at the
elections the people will vote:
For peace against civil war!
For honest labor against parasites!
For law and order against tyranny and violence!
For the friendship and brotherhood of the peoples against
hatred and malice!
For truth and purity against lies and perversion!
For the people’s power!
For the honesty and dignity of the Russian state!