In Russia there are two parliamentary oppositions – one small and the other large. The first opposition is frightfully intelligent, the second terribly patriotic. The oppositionists from the liberal intelligentsia call themselves, oddly enough, the “apple” – in Russian, “yabloko”, an acronym from the names of their movement’s founders. The patriots in the parliament building on Okhotny Ryad in central Moscow call themselves “communists”, despite having no more resemblance to fighters for the interests of working people than Grigory Yavlinsky and his liberal colleagues have to ripe fruit.

The problems of the Apple flow from the fact that in the broad scheme of things, there are few people in Russia who feel any need for this horticultural party. The misfortunes of the so-called Communist Party have a completely opposite cause: too many people are interested in it. Strictly speaking, they do not need the party as such; what they need is the “brand”, the label Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) Anything and everything can be hidden beneath this title, from a society of lovers of parliamentary offices to circles of admirers of the White movement. The content is unimportant; the vital thing is the name. For another decade or two, people in Russia will still vote for the party which is officially recognised as the successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The degree to which the politics of this party correspond to its name means nothing. Quite the reverse – the less the name and the politics coincide, the more valuable the name becomes, since if the same politics were presented under another name, people might well refuse to vote for them.

The brilliant success scored by Gennady Zyuganov and his partners in 1993 lay in the fact that they were able to win a secret Kremlin tender, establishing their ownership of a political trade mark to which something like a dozen contenders had a strong claim. At that time, the people in the Kremlin reasonably enough concluded that to give the popular name to communists was too risky, and preferred the national-conservative Zyuganov.

For roughly a decade, Zyuganov and his team have masqueraded successfully as an opposition. As a result, the radical communist groups, which enjoyed considerable influence in the early 1990s, have been completely excluded from serious politics. The development of new forms of left movement has been successfully blocked, while first Yeltsin and now Putin have been able to sit peacefully in the Kremlin, with no opposition threatening their authority.

Nevertheless, times change. President Yeltsin loved complex plots, labyrinthine intrigues, and to use a chess metaphor, “castling”. In the “system of checks and balances” which Yeltsin established, Zyuganov’s party was assigned an important and prestigious role. President Putin prefers to operate using simple administrative methods, issuing directives and receiving accounts of how they have been carried out. The KPRF, which in addition to the State Duma has been given whole regions of Russia to feed upon, has not been included in this set-up. The authorities have started applying heavy pressure, which has left the Kremlin’s partners no choice except to play by the new rules or to leave the scene. Unfortunately, Zyuganov’s unwieldy structure is incapable of making either one choice or the other. The party members would be happy to play along with Putin, but they are unable to adapt. Meanwhile, the very size of the party does not allow it to disappear without trace. Dinosaurs die out, but they do not surrender. And so, a brilliant idea has emerged in the Kremlin. In 1993 the Zyuganov group was allowed to privatise the KPRF brand, so why not privatise the party again, to the advantage of another group? This was perfectly in line with the general logic of the redistribution of property.

Properly speaking, the idea of privatising the KPRF did not originate in the Kremlin; its real author was the exiled business oligarch Boris Berezovsky. The latter not only declared his intention in the newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta and in an interview with Aleksandr Prokhanov, but was observed in the company of chief KPRF financier Viktor Vidmanov, who had hurried to London to discuss details of the deal. Unfortunately, the London exile has always fared better with ideas than with their practical implementation. Other oligarchs realised the value of the “red” trade mark, and competition appeared.

It is possible to feel sorry for Berezovsky. First he was stripped of the television station ORT and the oil firm Sibneft, and now, before he could even make use of it, the KPRF has been whipped from beneath his nose. The new claimant to the privatisation of the KPRF is a consortium organised by the Kremlin administration and oligarchs close to the Yeltsin “family”. Since political parties are not openly sold at auction, it has been necessary to devise a complex intrigue whose key player is deputy speaker of the State Duma Gennady Semigin, who enjoys the steady support of head KPRF apparatchik Valentin Kuptsov.

Semigin is an obscure figure in political terms, but he is crucial for apparatus intrigues. It is this businessman-patriot who brings in the money that is used to maintain roughly five hundred employees of the party and of its umbrella organisation, the Popular Patriotic Union. Until recently, people preferred to ignore the question of where Semigin got the money from. Semigin’s positions in the party structure were unshakable so long as Zyuganov and his close associates did not discover the plot.. The oligarchs who had not been included in the privatisation consortium also became agitated. Just as had happened with the Krasnoyarsk elections, rival coalitions started taking shape. The St Petersburg security force veterans and the “old” oligarchs, who had already outplayed the “family” in Krasnoyarsk, united with the firm intention of denying their rivals a valuable political “brand”.

The most intriguing thing about the situation that has arisen is not the fact that oligarchic structures have set about deciding the fate of a political party. Nor is it even the name of the organisation. The really fascinating thing is that as the Americans say, the cat has been let out of the bag. Semigin’s opponents raised a public scandal, revealing the behind-the-scenes manoeuvres. In the newspapers Zavtra and Sovetskaya Rossiya, Aleksandr Prokhanov and Valentin Chikin published a programmatic article entitled “Operation Mole”; in which they revealed the attempt to privatise the party. The oppositionists suddenly discovered that the treasure-chest from which Comrade Semigin had been getting money for them lay in the presidential administration. What they condemned their opponents for, however, was not for having links with the class enemy, nor for suborning party cadres, but merely for the fact that Semigin was using this money as his own, and was trying to influence personnel policy. Meanwhile, the authors of the letter firmly defended their right to associate with the oligarch Berezovsky.

In earlier times, articles exposing “internal enemies” and “degenerates” were printed only when the matter had been settled, and the culprits had already been dispatched to the Lubyanka, or at least, had been removed from all their posts. Moreover, it was the done thing to point to at least some political disagreements between the various sides.

This time it has by no means been decided what the disagreements are, and an internal party discussion can hardly be conducted on the topic of which of the oligarchs to accept money from. Nevertheless, the significance of what has happened is underlined not only by the shrillness and aggressiveness of the joint statement by the two leading opposition newspapers, but also by the fact that the official KPRF website featured this remarkable document on its first page, without waiting for the newspapers to publish it.

The style of the document is astonishing as well. It is enough to compare the text of the letter from the two literary figures with the article which Prokhanov contributed to the same issue of Zavtra to note an obvious incongruity. The letter is clumsily written, but in a style that would be understood by party functionaries and middle-ranking political bosses. Behind the backs of the steadfast Zyuganovites, the silhouettes of political hatchet-men are clearly discernible. It is obvious that Zyuganov’s political survival is at stake. The blow has been dealt suddenly and effectively. Now that the behind-the-scenes role of the presidential administration has surfaced, it will be far more difficult for Semigin and his friends to operate. But even if victory is achieved, and Zyuganov keeps his job as party chief, the cost will have been high. Analysts have spoken of ties of corruption between the authorities and the opposition; now these ties have been admitted by the party leaders themselves. The political discussion is finally taking on the character of a vulgar neighbourhood squabble.

If Paris was worth a mass, then the KPRF brand name is of course worth a public scandal. Whoever wins the current scuffle, another privatisation of the party is only a question of time. It could be, however, that the triumphant victor will discover before long that this brand is worth much less than was paid for it.

http://www.aglob.ru