Russia/the ex USSR: Situation beter now or then?

[Taxamo Welf]

From my humble understanding I would say that there was a missed chance in the Gorbachev/Yeltsin era - and infact China is a model for better (although not flawless reform).

The main difference between these the reforms of these two communist.

i am discounting everything else you just said for describing china or russia as communist.

sorry

 

[rednblack]

tax you left the no change option off!

 

[rednblack]

and no i don't think people are any freerer now than they were under the state capitalist regime, and it's quite obvious that the majority are economically worse off - the former soviet union, i dont think that can be extended to all of eastern europe though

 

[Ryazan]

Wonder how the kids are getting on rotting in TB infested Russian prisons because of their activities with the National Bolsheviks.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

no you don't.

 

[Ryazan]

Don't what?

 

[Idris2002]

Here, Ryazan, what exactly are the NBP, in your experience?

Are they as dodgy as they appear? Is anti-semitism part of their ideology?

Do they actually have as much support from the youth as I've heard they have?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

Wasn't one of their people the young girl arrested when Tony Blair was on a walkabout a few years ago?

 

[Idris2002]

I hadn't heard about that one. Any more details?

 

[Donna Ferentes]

No, lost in the midst of a forty-year-old's memory I'm afraid.

 

[butchersapron]

That was a latvian girl of a related group i believe.

 

[Ryazan]

Here, Ryazan, what exactly are the NBP, in your experience?

Are they as dodgy as they appear? Is anti-semitism part of their ideology?

Do they actually have as much support from the youth as I've heard they have?

The National Bolsheviks in my experience of them are a small group of people who put on a demonstration near a Lenin monument in Moscow back in 2004. Maybe 20 or so young men and women, some wearing shades and wearing hammer and sickle armbands.

From my knowledge of them is that they have some pretty strange views in regards to back in the nineties wanting the map of Europe to be a more of a red colour. Recently they are into defending the "interests" of ethnic Russians throughout the former USSR. And errr, Da! Smert!

As for anti-semitism and/or racism (my gf is part Jewish), I am not to sure about that, although they claim not to be. But, curiously they have as part of their party propaganda a symbol which both resembles the hammer part of the Soviet flag, and the Nazi Swastika. And, some of the views by party members has been pretty horrendous when talking about Chinese immigrant labour in the Russian east.

As for support, I think that perhaps it is exaggerated, but I think that there is supposed to be 10,000 or so. And quoting a parent of one young lad banged up for National Bolshevik shenanigans Mr Eduard Limonov is using kids as a "stepping stone" for his own poltical path through vanity and notoriety.

The Our Combat Girlfriends section on their website is quite nice too.

 

[Belushi]

I've always been astonished by the swastikas and nazi graffiti you see in eastern europe, considering how these countries suffered under the Nazis.

 

[Ryazan]

And since lebensraum meant in part the subjugation of the "inferior" Slavs into a slave class for aryan colonisers, or left to subsist and starve in the less fertile parts of the east.

 

[JWH]

The National Bolsheviks were your run of the mill left-fascist chimera party in the 1990s but they've changed and turned into a kind of radical opposition party with no huge ideology in the present day. They're mostly kids if I understand it correctly and they're more or less the only ones doing flamboyant/high profile actions against Putin. The NBP isn't ever going to get elected but they have the afdvantage of calling things by their names.

Limonov is a weird guy: lived for a while in the US and later wrote a memoir about it in which he recounts sucking off a black guy for money??? (which is quadruple taboo in Russia). He seems to have a degree of integrity and is apparantly broke but otoh he also is on hobnobbing terms with all of the leading Russian politicians.

His columns on www.exile.ru are amusing/interesting (the English is so bad because he writes them himself).

 

[Ryazan]

Not all the stuff about whoring in Moscow is tongue in cheek either. Exile, made by a couple of jocks from the USA isn't funny. It is sexist and crude for the sake of it.

 

[Idris2002]

Aye, one thing about living here is that you have the pleasure of putting the exile in the bin.

Current issues are full of whinging by the jock-in-chief, a demented sex addict and misogynist about how depressed he is.

Well if you're going to live like that, mate. . .

 

[Ryazan]

The only things I have read in there are tales about how much speed and cocaine they can consume in one night doing a reprt on some new nightclub, and how good looking and dumb the prostitutes are, whether they are good value for money etc. Load of vacuous shite.

Perhaps the depressed one can be pushed over the edge soon. And then it might all stop.

 

[ska invita]

i am discounting everything else you just said for describing china or russia as communist.

sorry

thats just pedantic - i take it you don;t accept either states as communist (state capitalist instead?), the fact is they called themselves communist and thats that - I stand by my points.

For what its worth I think the term "communism" has been sullied by history and should be abandoned - its just a word - let the principal live on, and adapt to a new century.

 

[JWH]

Yeah, but the Limonov stuff is pretty separate from the whoring stories, come on! Plus the exile does do a good job of "rogue fisking" pisspoor foreign journalists every now and again, and their satire is pretty outspoken for what is becoming a genuine police state. Of course, they only really get away with it because it's in English and not widely understood. I wonder how much (if any?) of their content is zakazukha (journalism for hire)?

 

[Barking_Mad]

That was in Sakhalin, wasn't it?

Yeah, I think you're right there.

 

[Taxamo Welf]

i rilly wanted this to be a bit bigger

It calls into question so much stuff; support for cuba, korea etc. whether we are better of under a new labour govt or uner a tory to organise real change, that kind o thing...

 

[Ryazan]

The Nationasl Bolsheviks was not moving away from the topic, rather it is relevant considering the poltical climate in Russia at the moment. Opposition to Putin is not adequate enough, and even the Rodina (containing some people from the old CPSU) party did badly in the last elections.

 

[JWH]

But Rodina was a Kremlin-sponsored project to steal nationalist/leftist nostalgia votes from the Commies so one would expect genuine opposition from them. The Lib Dem Party Rus is just a millionaires' club and the Commies are all in the politics business anyway.

The only vaguely genuine opposition is NatBols (who have a few hundred members tops in a country of millions) and the Thatcherite micro-parties (who are even less widely supported). Having said that, it's interesting to see some of the student anti-Putinists flyering/leafleting in Moscow and criticising the "Nashists" (Nashi = pro-Putin youth movement).

 

[Ryazan]

Hasn't there been a schism between two leading members? It has been defended that the the Rodina party has been formed to genuinely take socialist votes from the Communists due to disillusionment among supporters. but one faction has not been encouraged by the Kremlin to manipulate the threats to Putin's power, but has been attacked by it.

 

[Ryazan]

The Nashi have been in violent conflict with the National Bolsheviks I believe.

 

[JWH]

There was a ruck when a bunch of guys showed up to an NBP/anti-Putin youth meeting and beat the shit out of them. The guys then jumped into a minibus (marshrutka, actually). The minibus got stopped a little down the road, half of the guys were wearing Nashi t-shirts, the cops received a call from someone influential to let them go and told the press that they were skinheads and football hooligans. It was suggested both that they were nashists but alternatively also that they were hooligans that were wearing nashi t-shirts cos they thought it would get them out of trouble. the real answer is probably somewhere in between, i would guess.

 

[Ryazan]

I know what a marshrut taxi is (usually a Zhiguli or Gaz equilavent of a Ford transit), I have travelled enough in them through Moscow, Piter, Ryazan and Michurinsk. Terrible when full of people during the summer especially when it is 30 degrees! Can't wait for Kazan next summer. Cold showers to cool off after a visit to the grocers.

I also love the old American style 1960-70 Volgas. Still see plenty of them around, and would own one if I could drive, plus getting one over here to the Uk would be a pain, as would parts. And considering a lot of Russians will use parts from other vehicles to fix theirs, it might be a pain getting one with original parts.

There is a a Movement for National Unity which is a fash skinhead outfit, members mainly from the deprived housing districts of Moscow. They have been involved in some pretty bloody attacks against Caucasus market traders in recent years.

As far as the National Bolsheviks are concerned though there seems to be a broad range of support from them, with far left and some other ugly support from those attracted to anti-immigration.

 

[JWH]

I know what a marshrut taxi is...

Yeah, I know, that's why I stuck it in for the benefit of those who knew more specifically what I meant, although I think it's only you and me left on this thread anyway!

 

[Idris2002]

IAs far as the National Bolsheviks are concerned though there seems to be a broad range of support from them, with far left and some other ugly support from those attracted to anti-immigration.

And I've read a thing by a Rodina member demanding a closing of the 'porous borders' - while at the same time covering his backside by condemning the ideology that was 'crushed by feats of Russian arms'.

In the same paper, I also came across a relatively hysterical thing from the local business press arguing that Russia is slipping back to Soviet economics. Which is something I very much doubt. But maybe the restoration of capitalism isn't fully complete, or at least not in the way the Thatcher addicts would like?