Where the communists and radical democrats go wrong is in talking a lot about people while in fact disregarding them. The communists defer solving their problems to the distant future, the ‘bright communist tomorrow’; the radicals, on the other hand, make money the first priority and turn people into ‘the workforce’, a means of generating profits. We social democrats wanted to move the human being to centre stage.
We were strongly opposed to the expansion of private education at the expense of accessibility, because paying for education violates the principle of equality enshrined in the constitution, and reduces the opportunities for free development of human individuality. The environment and health are high priorities for social democrats. We declared our willingness to cooperate with the ‘Greens’, and spoke out strongly against the commercialization of healthcare.
In the modern world, ethnic problems remain especially intractable. The success of a nationalities policy hangs on success in implementing two major principles of social democracy – equality and internationalism – and on being capable of listening to the voices and concerns of each nationality.
Our manifesto caught the attention of many active, concerned people. We succeeded in establishing the Social Democratic Party of Russia and registering it in 83 regions.
I found the atmosphere in the party congenial; it was open and very public. Anyone could say to anyone, including the party’s leaders, exactly what they thought about politics, their attitude to the president and government, and debate any and all important public issues.
We managed to establish links with the Socialist International and became an observer member. That was important in terms of ideology and organization. Despite that, because the SDPR had at first no political experience, we were bound to run into difficulties and make mistakes.
I consider our biggest mistake was to decide not to run in the 2003 parliamentary elections with our own party list of candidates. Influenced by Konstantin Titov, a majority at the party congress settled for the ‘easy option’ of contesting the ballot only in independent-candidate constituencies, in collaboration with the government’s United Russia Party. As a result, the SDPR failed to make any political impact in the elections to the Duma. Because the party was so low profile, its independent candidates went down to defeat, while the United Russia candidates were effectively political rivals rather than allies.
The party’s fortunes were negatively impacted in other ways by Titov’s actions. During the elections he traded his position as party chairman in his own interests, a selfish approach that played into the hands of those who did not want the SDPR participating in the elections at all. Given the situation, I felt unable to continue as party leader and announced my resignation. It was the right thing to do. I did, nevertheless, stay in the party, trying to help, because I felt society really needed a party of the people rather than an appointed, bureaucratic organization that doggedly carried out any decision the government chose to take. People recognized the need even in the Duma, where there was a move at the time to establish an independent social-democratic group.
It seemed to me that the deputies were on the right track, and that all that was needed was to persuade the Presidential Administration of the fact, but I soon discovered I was wrong. The Presidential Administration wanted nothing to do with it. Their aim was to bring all the political parties and groups under direct Kremlin control. Gorbachev and his party were just an irritation. The Kremlin adopted a policy of ‘containing’ democracy and all political parties in the country that it did not favour. The deputy head of the Presidential Administration actually said to me: ‘Why are you wasting your time on this Social Democratic Party? We aren’t going to register it anyway.’ A new law on political parties allowed the Kremlin to shut down a number of independent political parties, including the SDPR, on purely legalistic grounds.
In combating the Social Democratic Party, the opponents of genuine democracy tested all the means used today to turn democracy into a sham and ensure that the government controls every manifestation of politics in Russia. They claim this delivers stability, but in reality their tactic deprives politics of all meaning and undermines social stability. Artificial parties germinated in Kremlin test tubes, devoid of ideology or mass support, are liable at any moment to wilt, and then what will be left of their whole artificial construct?
I remain convinced that Russian society needs the ideas and values of social democracy. Within the Union of Social Democrats, people with social democratic beliefs continue to analyse and educate, and the need for their work is continually increasing both in Russia and the world.
I will say frankly that I like it when social democrats call each other ‘comrade’. We must never forget that this word designates not only membership of a Communist Party, but also a sense of social, human solidarity. I have not the slightest doubt that the voice of social democrats is an essential constituent of a broad civic dialogue. Every social democrat has the ability to contribute to making Russia a modern, democratic country, playing a condign role in creating a new, more stable, just and humane world order.
Issues and more issues
In the early 2000s, I had periodic meetings with President Putin and we talked about many things, including the political system and political parties. One such meeting took place on 17 June 2002, shortly after the Ministry of Justice had registered the Social Democratic Party of Russia. I remember Putin said at that meeting that society needed a centre left party and he was prepared to cooperate with the social democrats. This was exactly what I had been hoping, but subsequent events showed that the Russian government was not interested in interacting with strong, independent parties. It wanted bloodless associations that it could easily ignore, subjugate or eliminate.
The functioning of the judicial system increasingly gave cause for concern. Under the mantle of ‘dictatorship of the law’, which Vladimir Putin talked about at the beginning of his presidency, ‘telephone justice’, whereby judges are instructed over the telephone what verdict to reach, became more and more entrenched. The judicial and law-enforcement systems were increasingly used as a means of intimidation, to settle personal scores, subordinate businesses to the powerful and put pressure on political opponents. Without a robust, independent judiciary it was impossible to effectively combat corruption, which the president acknowledged was essential.
With things as they were, it was difficult to envisage a shift from the strategy of stabilization to a strategy of development and breakthrough, but I was becoming increasingly certain that this was desperately needed if we were not to miss an opportunity, not to fail to seize a moment that could take us forward to new frontiers. A conversation I had with Dmitry Muratov of Novaya Gazeta was published on 30 September 2002 and reflects an important strand in my thinking at the time. Here is the gist of our talk:
DM: Mikhail Sergeyevich, Perestroika is over. Instead of ‘the framework of the law’ we now have ‘sorting out a situation’. Instead of Glasnost, we have talk shows. Instead of ‘personal freedom’, consolidation of the state as a private business enterprise.
MG: For all that, I find much of what is happening now understandable and explicable. I have no reason at present to question the main intention of the president or his actions. It is, after all, a way out of the crisis, away from the chaos he inherited.
We have lived through what was effectively the risk that Russia might disintegrate, or at least relapse into regional feudalism. And, of course, we have experienced the dominance of the bureaucracy, especially the federal bureaucracy, where mafias brazenly made no secret of lending money for elections, for political power, in the expectation that they would be paid back later with public property They would help themselves to it, and already have. That has had, and is still having, an effect on the moral climate in society. So without an effort to restore public confidence that the government is properly concerned about national issues rather than just servicing these mafias, it will be impossible to get anything done. Governments do sometimes have to be authoritarian, to take action without giving lengthy explanations, and that can make it impossible to understand their measures.