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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

WITHOUT THE LEFT

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

For the second time running the Hungarian Socialists won the parliamentary elections, garnering most of the votes. The Hungarian Socialist Party has long ranked as one Europe’s most respectable political forces and almost no one bothers to remember that its genetic roots reach back to 1956 when, to the accompaniment of Soviet tank guns, the finally bankrupt Hungarian Labor Party was replaced by the Socialist Workers’ Party to save the communist regime. A sad story, but apparently it has not impeded the process of reformation among the Left in Hungary, searching for new up and coming party activists. The former HSWP’s organ, Nepszabadsag (People’s Freedom), quickly turned into one of the most popular periodicals, successfully competing with upstarts (it is interesting to compare it with Moscow’s marginal Pravda in Moscow or Kyiv’s enigmatic Pradva Ukrainy). This was probably how the new Hungarian Left became an innate component of the all-European political scene.

As for the Ukrainian or Russian Left, its every victory is reported with trepidation: another step back to the recent past, another attempt to revive the old regime! Perhaps because our Left is only leftist only when viewed from within. Western audiences may call them ultraleft, radical, whatever, all these appellations are just convenient categorizing. One often finds more things chauvinistic than communistic in the speeches of Russian Communist leaders, and looking for Semitic roots in their opponents has long become a pathological obsession with some of them. Now this is an ultraright, rather than ultraleft trend. The thing is that both Russian and Ukrainian Communists are neither Left nor Right. They are fragments of the shaky administrative structure into which the CPSU turned shortly before ceasing to exist politically. Fragments composed of third echelon functionaries who would have normally never been expected to become candidate members of the Politburo (as evidenced by a glance through Ziuganov’s or Symonenko’s resumes). All such organizations are capable of is reminding elders of their communist youth. Or take the Russian or Ukrainian Communists’ economic program. Each proceeds from the current situation and offers “realistic” ways out of the crisis. True, the situation is lousy. True, working people are being mistreated. True, things must be straightened out and public law and order affirmed. All this is good for slogans, but how does one go about it in reality? Yes, some will say nostalgically, things were done differently back then. Law and order. No anarchy. We used to live in a superpower which was feared and to be reckoned with. Okay, but the year is 1998, not 1976!

Be it as it may, today’s Communists rely on old slogans. They do not have any new ideas. They are a party with a name but without a program. A favorite feint by the authorities is to threaten us and the West with Red revanche. Meanwhile, both Russia and Ukraine do need the true Leftists. They are already lurking somewhere ahead, though for some reason referred to as the Right or radicals. Actually, they are loath to identify themselves with the left. Take Grigory Yavlinsky’s Yabloko (Apple). A typical Leftist party trying to combine the market with social orientation. Or the Ukrainian Social Democrats. Left to the marrow, nothing centrist whatsoever. Yet the Left wing is still occupied by Ziuganov, Anpilov, Symonenko, Moroz, Vitrenko, et al. Loud meaningless slogans, red banners, illusory promises, and dirty pool. It is sad to believe that our electorate buys all this, trusting them to be a genuine Left, that the noble ideas of social protection under a market economy, those very ideas which saved the West from the Bolshevik onslaught, are being compromised before our very eyes. Most our neighbors - Hungarians, Poles, Romanians, Slovaks - have proven capable of forming civilized and effective Leftist parties after Communism collapsed. These parties threaten nobody, nor do they mourn the “shining future” in the past. They are not all composed of wealthy people, but all their members sincerely wish their countries to prosper. Can we be like them? Will we ever? Hard to imagine.

 

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