[Political writer Ilya Budraitskis explains the left’s vision of
decentralized governance and why Russia’s Communist Party must exit
together with Putin]
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‘THIS REGIME IS NOT SUBJECT TO EVOLUTION’ AN INTERVIEW WITH ILYA
BUDRAITSKIS  
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Ilya Budraitskis
April 17, 2023
Meduza
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_ Political writer Ilya Budraitskis explains the left’s vision of
decentralized governance and why Russia’s Communist Party must exit
together with Putin _

Ilya Budraitskis,

 

The invasion of Ukraine confronted Russian society with the
consequences of a decades-long transformation that began, among other
things, with Vladimir Putin’s introduction of a new Labor Code. The
new labor legislation, passed in December 2001, curtailed the rights
of labor unions, contributing to social atomization and to the
crumbling of solidarity politics. Historian and political commentator
Ilya Budraitskis has been part of Russia’s leftist political scene
since the 1990s, engaging in labor union activism and other civic
initiatives. Meduza spoke with him about Russia’s wartime left-wing
politics, the role of CPRF (Russia’s establishment Communist Party)
in the large picture of the Russian left, the latter’s survival in
what Budraitskis calls “the conditions of dictatorship,” and the
goals its activists can embrace now to bring about a decentralized,
democratic future Russia, where the state will genuinely serve the
interests of the majority.

WHAT ARE THE ELEMENTS THAT COMPRISE RUSSIA’S POLITICAL LEFT TODAY?

Starting on February 24, 2022, the present regime in Russia entered
the stage of flagrant dictatorship, which puts in question all legal
political activity in the country. Accordingly, political groups and
movements that existed until that date split into two major camps: one
supporting the so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine,
and the other condemning and protesting it. The same kind of division
occurred with the political left at large. This was a foreseeable
development, since it extended the tendencies that can be traced all
the way back to 2014. Today’s Russia has two different kinds of
leftists, and we need to be clear as to which of these two
antagonistic movements we’re talking about.

LET’S BEGIN WITH THE PRO-WAR BLOC. WHEN TALKING ABOUT THE
ESTABLISHMENT PARLIAMENTARY LEFT REPRESENTED BY THE COMMUNIST PARTY
(CPRF), CAN WE CONSIDER IT A GENUINE LEFTIST FORCE?

The pro-war left is represented first and foremost by CPRF’s
leadership and by those who support its position. For instance, Sergey
Udaltsov’s Left Front has adopted
[[link removed]] a pro-war position and is
effectively allied with the CPRF. They think of the war and the
conflict with the West as a radical challenge to Russia’s former
socio-political model, a challenge that will inevitably push the
country in the direction of what they like to call “socialism.”

The main problem with their position (bracketing its morality and
practicability) is that it provides no account of who is to be the
subject of the political shift towards this “socialism” of theirs.
They cannot be talking about the masses, the organized hired labor,
because that possibility has been eradicated in Russia. All
public political
[[link removed]] life
[[link removed]],
including the freedom of assembly, has been destroyed
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Strikes have ceased to be a phenomenon. Russia’s society is in a
maximally depressed and humiliated state. Putin’s Russia has no room
for any kind of progress towards social justice.

From the point of view of the pro-war left, the subject of the
“socialist” shift is to be today’s ruling elite. Its strategy,
then, is the persuade the elite to go down the path of socio-economic
reforms. The motive of these changes, meanwhile (we’re talking about
things like nationalization of major industrial concerns, or a more
“equitable” redistribution of the country’s resources) are the
objective needs of a country confronted with acute external conflict.
Hence the orientation towards militarized socialism, including
top-down planning to meet the needs of ongoing warfare.

In the actual conditions of dictatorship, Putin has become the sole
addressee of all CPRF propaganda. It’s him that this party must
persuade to effect the reforms it is promoting. So, at the
president’s July 2022 meeting with the parliamentary factions, the
CPRF’s chairman Gennady Zyuganov declared
[[link removed]] that his party fully supports
Putin’s political course, but it would like to see movement towards
socialism. Putin replied, somewhat facetiously, that it’s an
interesting idea, but it would be good to first come up with some
estimates of what socialism would look like in practice.

CPRF-collected humanitarian aid and military equipment getting shipped
to the annexed regions of Ukraine from a farm outside of Moscow, March
27, 2023. Yury Kochetkov / EPA / Scanpix / LETA

There are very good reasons to doubt that the CPRF and its allies can
be described as a bona fide leftist political force, since the
socialist position is based on the idea that disenfranchised masses
must take back political and economic power through grassroots
self-organization. Socialism in this classic leftist sense is
something that’s initiated by the people, who establish a new social
order to benefit the many instead of the few.

Today’s CPRF and its allies have rejected this idea, since they
don’t view the masses with their interest in bottom-up change as a
subject, or an engine, of change. Zyuganov’s idea of socialism does
not require any participation from the masses; in his view, grassroots
activity is actually undesirable, since everyday people’s behavior
is unpredictable and can therefore be exploited by Russia’s enemies,
who might seduce them with their false values. It’s far safer to
conduct reforms with a view to the interests of the state.

HOW THE KREMLIN TAMED RUSSIA’S COMMUNIST PARTY
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DOES THE CPRF HAVE REAL POLITICAL POWER? EVEN IF IT’S ABANDONED THE
ROOT IDEAS OF LEFT-WING POLITICS, DOES THIS PARTY HAVE REAL INFLUENCE
OVER REFORMS IN THE COUNTRY?

The CPRF has just celebrated its 30th anniversary, and with great
pomp. This makes the party, headed by its changeless leader Gennady
Zyuganov practically coeval with the post-Soviet political system
itself. It’s worth noting that its place in that system is fairly
ambiguous. As a party of “managed democracy,” it never made any
claims to real political power, coordinating its every step with the
Kremlin, and lately following its explicit directives.

This party has never tried to get anyone to take to the streets. Its
orientation is not about what happens outside the parliament; instead,
it’s all about redistributing the seats in the State Duma and in
regional governance. In other words, this party has no great political
ambitions. It simply maintains itself and its own apparatus, providing
a career ladder for politicians.

There are scores of people who became governors or representatives
solely because they spent their early years climbing the hierarchic
ladder of the Communist Party. Take the Oryol Governor Andrey Klychkov
or Moscow City Duma deputies like Gennady Zyuganov’s grandson Leonid
Zyuganov, or the governor of Khakassia, Valentin Konovalov. All of
them made their careers in the CPRF, getting their modest share of
political power. Within the current political system, the CPRF is
unlikely to take you beyond the post of a deputy or a place in local
government.

The CPRF’s niche in the system of Russian politics is a product of
its function, which is to absorb
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dissident voters during elections. People who vote for the CPRF
don’t do it because they want Zyuganov’s grandson to make a career
for himself, or because they want their party to support Putin’s
every new undertaking. They vote for the CPRF because they are
disgruntled with Russian life in various aspects, the social aspect
being foremost. They’re unhappy about inequality and poverty.

For 30 years, the CPRF has consistently betrayed the interests of the
people who have voted for it. At every stage of Russia’s
contemporary political history, we saw this chasm between the voters
and those who ended up representing them in the government. Take 2011,
when, following the State Duma election falsified in favor of United
Russia, the Fair Vote movement first began, alongside the Bolotnaya
protest movement. In that election, votes had been stolen specifically
from the communists. The liberal opposition either took no part in
that election, or else its results were far more modest than the
communists’. The Fair Vote protests were largely an expression of
indignation by those who had voted for the CPRF. But the party itself
didn’t join the protests; instead, it joined in persecuting the
protesters.

A Fair Vote demonstration in Moscow’s Sakharov Square, December 24,
2011. Regional CPRF branch flags are visible in the crowd. Evgeny
Feldman.

Another case in point is the September 2021 State Duma election.
Thanks in large part to the “smart vote” strategy championed by
the Navalny team, most opposition voters gave their votes to CPRF
candidates. A significant share of those candidates won
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districts but still couldn’t get a seat in the parliament because of
the sweeping falsifications
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including the manipulation of online votes
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The party leadership’s position was, meanwhile: sure, there have
been some violations, but not so great as to question the election
results or to go to bat against the regime.

This ambivalence on the part of the CPRF, an establishment party that
attracted voters prone to protest, was also reflected in its
composition. The CPRF has been a magnet for people looking to get
serious about leftist opposition politics without pandering to the
Kremlin, to defend their constituents’ interests, and to develop
grassroots movements. Over its entire lifespan, the CPRF included
these two conflicting groups with completely different motives. Its
leadership, though, was always comprised of Kremlin collaborators,
content to see the CPRF as an establishment party. Meanwhile, the
party’s local branches often attracted people with completely
different expectations.

In 2021, we saw this contradiction at play when the “smart vote”
strategy garnered support for CPRF candidates like Mikhail Lobanov
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Moscow, not least thanks to the fact that they held genuine,
consistent anti-establishment views. When the war broke out, just a
few State Duma deputies declared their antiwar position, but all of
those who spoke up were CPRF members.

DID CPRF ACTIVISTS MANAGE TO ACHIEVE RESULTS DESPITE THESE INTERNAL
ANTAGONISMS?

When you become a municipal or a regional deputy, this opens up
certain opportunities. They are, of course, severely circumscribed,
given that any establishment opposition party, the CPRF included, is
going to be a minority presence. Still, a deputy is someone who can
significantly amplify the voices of local communities, as in the case
of the Moscow City Duma Deputy Evgeny Stupin, who happens to be a CPRF
member.

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE OTHER LEFTIST CAMP, WHICH DIDN’T SUPPORT THE
INVASION. IF A PERSON DOESN’T SEE ONESELF AFFILIATED WITH THE CPRF,
WHAT OTHER LEFTIST OPTIONS ARE THERE?

Among the leftist organizations that condemned the invasion, there’s
a number of small groups operating essentially as mass media. In the
situation where practically any pacifist or antiwar activity is
outlawed, these groups are just barely legal. Political organizations
that adopted a clear-cut antiwar position have been forced underground
and must be extremely careful now. This presents a serious strategic
problem for all leftist groups that existed in Russia prior to the
invasion, be they socialist or anarchist. There are several basic
strategies they can use to adapt in today’s severe conditions.

The first approach is illicit direct action, which is difficult to
embrace if you’re already a public figure. The second is to limit
one’s activity to propaganda in small communities like closed
reading groups. Finally, there is the strategy of labor advocacy,
which remains legal for now. We’re talking about the messengers’
union Courier, the medical workers’ union Deistvie, and a number of
other smaller unions where antiwar activists participate.

HOW DID RUSSIA’S TRADE UNIONS BECOME A POLITICAL FORCE, AND IS THIS
CHANGING NOW?

Let’s begin with the fact that Russia has both establishment and
independent trade unions. The establishment, official unions get very
little media attention, and most of their putative members hardly even
suspect that they exist. Still, it’s a massive bureaucracy.
Russia’s Federation of Independent Trade Unions (“FNPR”) has
functioned for decades as an extension of the government in the arena
of labor relations and as a tool of the business owners’ control
over the workers. Clearly, this has nothing to do with real labor
unions. If we look for historic parallels, various fascist regimes had
their own state trade unions and associations for both employers and
workers.

May Day workers’ solidarity demonstration attended by Moscow Mayor
Sergey Sobyanin, May 1, 2015. Evgeny Feldman.

As for the independent trade unions, the few remaining avenues of
still legal public activity (like the trade union rights advocacy,
connected with the propaganda of self-education) have become
exceptionally risky. For example, Kirill Ukraintsev, the leader of the
Courier messengers’ union, was arrested and jailed last spring, and
has only been released very recently.

We have to understand that, despite their localized achievements,
these organizations cannot be considered fully-fledged trade unions,
since a genuine trade union is capable of negotiating collective
agreements with major industry employers. In today’s Russia, though,
this is practically impossible, and not just because of repressive
pressure from the government and business owners. It’s impossible
due to the very legislation in effect, since one of Putin’s earliest
initiatives when he first came to power was the adoption of a new
Labor Code that curtailed the powers of trade unions.

This means that it’s practically impossible to have an effective
strike in present-day Russia. The legal scope of trade unions is
practically nil. Associations like Courier, Deistvie, or the
Teachers’ Alliance are excellent and very important initiatives,
operating nevertheless in close-to-underground conditions. They look
more like advocacy organizations than trade unions proper. For
comparison, just take a look at the pension reform protests in France,
and you’ll see the difference.

WHAT ABOUT THE ANARCHISTS? THEY HAVE LONG BEEN SUBJECT TO
STATE REPRESSIONS
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ANARCHIST MOVEMENTS NOW GROWING IN RESPONSE TO THE INVASION? IS IT
ANARCHISTS THAT ORGANIZE RAILWAY SABOTAGE AND SET DRAFT OFFICES ON
FIRE?

We have fairly scant information about who is really behind those
initiatives. I have no data on whether anarchist movements are growing
or shrinking, since they’re operating under enormous pressure, in a
de facto underground mode. But it’s very difficult to grow when
you’re underground.

The regime has been at pains to curtail the anarchists’ sweeping
influence over the younger generation of Russians. About a decade ago,
a major antifascist subculture that significantly relied on some
anarchist ideas established itself in Russia. Its influence was very
palpable. The regime invested a great deal of effort in crushing this
antifascist scene. This is what prompted the prosecution of The
Web,as well as many other politically-motivated criminal cases. The
regime succeeded in liquidating a more-or-less mass movement, simply
by taking out its key activists.

Of course, something of that antifascist element has survived,
transforming into partisan groups. The question here is not so much
about the present as the future. How much of what these groups do
today will remain meaningful in the future? Isolated actions, however
heroic, are incapable of breaking the momentum of the current
situation. But I think that if Russian society presents a demand for a
mass antiwar movement, all of its available forms, including those
that exist already, will be welcome.

IS IT TRUE, THEN, THAT NO LEFT-WING MOVEMENT CAN SIGNIFICANTLY GROW IN
NUMBERS IN 2023? ISN’T THIS, RATHER, THE PERFECT TIME TO AIM FOR
GROWTH?

I think that the dictatorial conditions leave no room for political
and civic rights in principle. They permit no legal political activity
in any form, effectively precluding these movements from gaining new
adherents or actively spreading their message in society.

The question is whether Russian society can manifest change serious
enough to engender a new kind of politics, and also what the left
itself has to offer in terms of the country’s post-Putin
development. This is the main task faced by the left at the moment, as
well as by any opposition group in Russia, and this means that what
they’re doing now is calculated largely for the long run, as opposed
to immediate effect.

HOW DOES THE RUSSIAN LEFT UNDERSTAND DECOLONIZATION, AND WHAT SHOULD
IT LOOK LIKE IN RUSSIA?

This is a complicated question, since there’s, on the one hand, the
term “decolonization” as it stands in the context of post-colonial
studies, and on the other hand, there are practical questions about
Russia’s political future after the dead end it has come to at this
time. And these two things are completely unrelated. So perhaps it’s
best to focus on Russia’s current political order as rooted in its
imperial past.

First of all, we realize that the war is grounded in historical
revisionism and the idea
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existence is possible for Russia within its current borders. The way
the regime sees it, Russia’s borders must be constantly advanced, so
as to “recover” the supposedly “historically Russian” lands.
Regrettably, this line of thought comes with a certain tradition: it
wasn’t invented by Putin, but is, instead, conditioned by all of
Russia’s pre-revolutionary imperial heritage, as well as the
Stalin-era and the post-Stalin Soviet experience.

STALINISM AND FOREIGN POLICY
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This tradition has by now rooted itself in the consciousness of a
large part of the population, and this is what makes propaganda so
effective. Making post-Putin Russia live in peace with its neighbors
without threatening other countries, including the post-Soviet states
and Eastern Europe, requires a cardinal overhaul of the imperial
mindset. We have to work out not just our present, but also our past
and how our people see Russia’s history and its relations with the
surrounding countries. This is the first point.

The second point has to do with Russia’s current official status as
a “federation,” when in reality it’s a hyper-centralized state
where all the resources are appropriated
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by Moscow to trickle down back to the regions based on their degree of
political loyalty to the regime. This is what determines Russia’s
policies with regard to its indigenous minorities, since the very
existence of non-Russian identities inside the country is viewed by
the Kremlin as a threat. Hence the suppression of indigenous
languages
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of the remaining vestiges of autonomy
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regions with significant native non-Russian populations.

These policies have been in place for the entirety of Putin’s two
decades in power, and are directly connected with the Moscow-centric
nature of this regime and the absence of real democracy in the
country. In this sense, we do need a serious revision of Moscow’s
place in Russian governance.

WOULD THIS NECESSARILY ENTAIL RUSSIA’S DISINTEGRATION AS A SINGLE
POLITICAL ENTITY?

Russia as it exists today is holding back the development of its
regions with coercive power and money. It has no further positive
program to offer those regions. This is why, once the regime’s
political power begins to wane and money starts to dry up (and this
will happen within the foreseeable future), we’re going to see an
eruption of centrifugal forces within the country.

The results will not be entirely comfortable for those who live in the
regions. If we want to preserve some common political space — not in
the sense of its being bound by a single political power, but in the
sense of an environment that permits some kind of intercultural human
exchange — we have to think about the values, ideas, and principles
that Russia as such can offer to the regions. The ideas of tolerance,
equality, well-developed social policies, and the regions’ right to
manage their own resources would help preserve this space in the form
of a federation or a commonwealth.

If we keep denying that centralization is a problem till the bitter
end, if we keep trying to force the ethnic regions into some
Procrustean single standard, considering all signs of uniqueness to be
a threat to the state and its integrity, this will lead to
disintegration. Russia’s continuing its present course may possibly
lead to a very harsh disintegration scenario. But it’s also possible
to change this course, and avert disintegration.

WHAT IS THE RUSSIANS’ OVERALL ATTITUDE TO LEFT-WING POLITICS? HOW
MUCH OF A FOUNDATION FOR THE FUTURE HAVE THESE MOVEMENTS BUILT UP FOR
THEMSELVES?

Left-wing politicians have seen some success in post-Soviet Russia.
There are, for example, Mikhail Lobanov’s and other stories of
electoral victories, as well as a whole array of charismatic municipal
deputies like Sergey Tsukasov, who had at one point been the head of
Moscow’s Ostankino municipal district. Or take the role of left-wing
politics in mass social movements like the Shies environmental
protests in the Arkhangelsk region. Then, there is the work of
independent trade unions, and their role in local victories like the
Labor Confederacy’s effective
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on giving back their jobs to dozens of Moscow subway employees,
illegally laid off in 2021.

Over the past decade, Russia presented a dual dynamic. On the one
hand, we saw increasing political engagement among the younger people,
growing grassroots movements and political protest
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and active participation in electoral
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and elections. On the other hand, we’re also witnessing the growth
of state repressive apparatus and its increasing pressure on this
awakening society. Everything this regime had done in response to the
Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, and right up to the launch of the
invasion, pursued not just foreign policy goals but also domestic
ones. The regime’s principal aim was to suppress the society
completely, atomizing the population and instilling an atmosphere of
panic and terror in the face of any and all political activity.

Everything that has happened over the past decade in Russia’s
left-wing politics was part of this dual trend. The situation we
arrived at by February 24, 2022, can be considered a triumph of the
state over society over this particular historical stretch. And since
the left always sides with society, as opposed to the state, this
triumph is also a defeat for the left-wing movement.

POLICE STATE, DIGITAL TOOLS
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I’m not a sociologist and cannot present specific numbers, but based
on my own experience, which includes activism, I can say that the
majority of Russians consider social inequality and inequity to be the
key political question. An absolute majority of people would agree
with you if you were to speak about redistributing the resources and
wealth. They would also agree that Russia needs to become a genuine
welfare state working in the interests of the majority. This is why
the left-wing agenda is so important here.

Even the thrice-outlawed Alexey Navalny’s achievements
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a lot to do with his inclusion
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some elements of the leftist agenda in his own anti-corruption
rhetoric. I would say that the majority of viewers realize that
Navalny’s videos are not just about corrupt state officials.
They’re really about how a negligible minority has seized
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otherwise destitute country. This situation is flagrantly unjust.
Whether the officials got rich legally or illegally is the last thing
that people worry about, because the very laws that enabled this group
to usurp these riches were written by the usurpers themselves.

Another important aspect of the leftist tradition is its orientation
towards democracy, and not just formal democracy. For the political
left, democracy is not just about working electoral institutions.
It’s a question of how ordinary people can take part in the
decisions that affect their own life. Socialism as it had been
conceived by its founders, some 150 years ago, was an internally
consistent vision of democracy taken to its logical limits. It was an
idea of democracy as a majority rule not just in politics, but also in
economics. This is why the democratic demands that have been so
important to Russian society over the past decades — the demands for
fair elections, freedom of assembly, free trade unions, and the right
to strike — are endemic to the political left.

I think that, had Russia preserved some possibility of genuine public
political life, with the creation of a legal left-wing liberal party
that could take part in elections, we would have already seen a rise
in left-wing politics in this country. All the conditions have been in
place over the past decade, and ferment in the masses was very much in
its favor, too.

APART FROM STATE REPRESSIONS, WERE THERE OTHER FACTORS THAT KEPT
LEFT-WING MOVEMENTS FROM PENETRATING DEEPER INTO SOCIETY?

Despite Russian society’s demand for democratization and social
justice, most of it remains politically passive. People have shown
themselves to be unprepared for action, and I don’t think this has
to do only with obstruction of grassroots self-organization or with
the fear of repressions.

In a hardcore market society where every person stands for themselves,
where money is synonymous with power, and where everyone subscribes to
some personal survival strategy, any suggestion of common interests
sounds like total rubbish. This prewar Russian “common sense” got
in the way of the leftist agenda and of any grassroots
self-organization. Russian activists had a very hard time explaining
why the tenants in an apartment building should create a committee to
defend their rights vis-à-vis the local management companies. Hired
workers too have a hard time grasping what organized collective
struggle for common rights is all about.

Instead, people wondered whether the struggle would bring them more
benefits or problems. This was Russia’s reality, and it was largely
responsible for the apathy we’ve seen and for the population’s
vulnerability to militarist propaganda.

THE LEFT’S PREOCCUPATION WITH LOCALIZED STRUGGLES AGAINST INEQUALITY
SEEMS TO ALIENATE IT FROM THE MASSES. AT THE SAME TIME, THE LEFT
DOESN’T PROPOSE ANY SYSTEMIC REFORMS, ECONOMIC OR ANY OTHER KIND. IS
THIS VIEW UNFAIR?

There is a real problem with the activists’ focus on everyday
practical matters. People are easier to motivate when there is
something they can do here and now. It’s generally a good thing,
since activists often do manage to help someone. At the same time, the
fixation on the “here and now” leads activists away from
conceptualizing political programs and proposals, from developing
large, comprehensive accounts that would explain the social reality.
But everyday people need such accounts.

We can see that the Russians’ obsession with YouTube and with all
kinds of talking heads has to do with this demand for a comprehensive
worldview: to understand what they must do, people need someone who
would tie all the events and goings-on into a coherent holistic
picture. Often, people who are completely immersed in activism cannot
supply such a picture. Either they don’t think it’s all that
important, or they don’t have the time and the resources. This is
detrimental to the left-wing movement as we have it in today’s
Russia.

But this isn’t just a problem of how few people are developing
large-scale political programs. Proposals that are decoupled from
practice and from actual mass movements often become abstract. When
liberal economists, for example, start talking about “how to reform
Russia,” there’s usually some clarity about agency: “Putin must
be replaced by a figurative Evgeny Chichvarkin
[[link removed]], who
will transform the economy as he sees fit.” For the left, the
question of agency is radically different. It’s the question of how
to reform the political system so that it would serve the majority.
The answer to this question cannot be anticipated, or arrived at by
some thought experiment.

Vladimir Lenin said that we’ll never find out what socialism looks
like in detail until the masses get to work. This is something
that’s still true for the left-wing movement. We won’t know what a
just society looks like, until the time when this idea reaches
millions of people and the masses decide that they want to see it
realized in practice.

HOW CAN WE FIGURE OUT WHICH LONG-TERM GOALS SHOULD BE THE PRIORITY IN
RUSSIA’S LEFT-WING POLITICS? WHAT SHOULD POLITICIANS EMPHASIZE IF
THEY WANT TO BE HEARD?

Leftists must learn their lesson and draw conclusions from what has
happened to the country. We must be very clear that this regime is not
subject to evolution. It’s not going to change on its own, and some
fairly radical transformation is needed. This transformation will
happen if Russia experiences a crisis of governance simultaneously
with an active will for grassroots change from below.

This is why the left needs to think about how it plans to participate
in this future mass movement. The present regime has made change
within the existing institutional framework impossible. The country
will need a new constitution, new laws, new political parties, and the
CPRF will, in all likelihood, land in the dumpster together with the
rest of the current political system.

There will be a definite need to reevaluate the past privatization,
which became the foundation of the current regime in Russia. There
will be a need for a radical revision of social policy, with a
dismantling of the Putin-instituted labor law, with progressive
taxation, with new budgetary policies for education and healthcare,
now funded on a trickle-down basis.

Beyond this, what society needs isn’t just a redistribution of
resources but a revision of the whole philosophy underpinning
Russia’s social policy as we have it now. Today, it’s governed by
the principle of efficiency: colleges, hospitals, and museums are all
free-market agents that must generate revenues and finance themselves.
Inefficient institutions are closed
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ensuring that the state doesn’t ever have to take a loss. This
premise that the state must always make a profit, that it should get
more than what it spends in the first place, must be defeated. The
whole social welfare sphere must be determined by the needs of
society, not by market efficiencies or profitability.

In addition, there has to be a program for gender equality, with an
overhaul of all these anti-LGBT laws, and with new laws against
domestic violence. There should be a special program for turning
Russia into a genuine federation enabling local governance to manage
regional budgets. We must also enable ethnic minorities to develop
their languages and cultures, without which these minorities are
placed in a position of powerlessness and victimhood.

These aims are all definitely tied to decentralization of governance
in Russia. What form this is all going to take is an open question,
but I’m certain that decentralization is directly connected with
democracy. The more power people have locally, and the less of it
remains in the center, the more durable Russia’s democratic
institutions will be in the future.

MIKHAIL KHODORKOVSKY’S VISION FOR A DIFFERENT RUSSIA
[[link removed]]

_Ilya Budraitskis [[link removed]] (1981) is a
historian, cultural and political activist. Since 2009 he is Ph.D.
student at the Institute for World History, Russian Academy of
Science, Moscow. In 2001-2004 he organized Russian activists in
mobilizations against the G8, in European and World Social Forums.
Since 2011 he has been an activist and spokesperson for Russian
Socialist Movement. Member of Editorial board of "Moscow Art
Magazine". Regular contributor to a number of political and cultural
websites._

Translated by ANNA RAZUMNAY

* Ilya Budraitskis
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* Russia
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* Vladimir Putin
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* Vladimir Lenin
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* Communist Party of the Russian Federation
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