Crisis gives lift to Russian revolution anniversary
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's Communists have a reason to feel a little smug when they celebrate the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution on Friday: the global financial crisis.
Ninety-one years to the day after Vladimir Lenin led a revolt that overthrew the Russian government, today's Communists believe the crisis proves that they were right all along when they said capitalism was a bad idea.
"This crisis is a hallmark of capitalism," said Sergei Udaltsov, leader of a radical left-wing group called the Vanguard of Red Youth who led a protest last month in Moscow with slogans that included 'Capitalism equals crisis'.
"It is time to change the path along which Russia is developing ... Today in Russia there are fewer and fewer supporters of pure capitalism, the pure market."
From Britain to the United States, bastion of market capitalism, governments have bought up large shares of stricken financial institutions -- at pains always to parry any suggestion of socialist-style nationalization.
The crisis may have helped left-of-center forces in several countries rise to government or hold onto it, but analysts say Russia's Communists are so weak there is little prospect of them challenging for power.
When Communist rule fell apart in Russia, large parts of the country embraced market forces with unbridled enthusiasm. The country now has 110 billionaires, according to Forbes magazine.
The crisis though is tempering that enthusiasm. Russia's benchmark RTS stock exchange has fallen about 70 percent since May, making it one of the worst performers among emerging economies.
Most worryingly for Russia, the high oil prices on which its long economic boom has been based have fallen from their peak of over $140 in July to just over $60 now.
An opinion poll by the VTsIOM pollster showed that Russian voters favor left-wing solutions. Seventy-nine percent said they would welcome state regulation of prices and 58 percent felt it would be useful to nationalize big private companies.
"People have started to work out what's what," said Viktor Ilyukhin, one of 57 Communist lawmakers in the 450-seat lower house of parliament. "People are disappointed, and quite seriously.
"People who see what we have today ... are thinking quite seriously about the future of their children," he said.
NOSTALGIA
At a function late last month to mark this year's 90th anniversary of the Komsomol, the now-dormant Communist youth league, the nostalgia was mixed with a new sense of purpose.
To the strains of stirring Soviet music, the former Communist functionaries, cosmonauts and sportsmen at the gathering said it was time for the Komsomol to be revived in an updated form.
"People have already grown disappointed with (capitalism) a long time ago," said Viktor Mishin, a former first secretary of the Komsomol's Central Committee.
"I am deeply convinced that there will be some progress. There cannot fail to be some progress."
But many Russians associate Communist rule with empty shelves in the shops and endless queues. For all the shortcomings of capitalism, opinion polls suggest they are in no hurry to return to that period.
Few will hanker after the bombastic Red Square parades, the cheers of "Urra!" and the red-flag waving that marked the anniversary of the Great Revolution in the past.
Andrei Ryabov, an independent analyst who studies Russia's political parties, said the Kremlin's tight control over elections would not allow the Communists to make a comeback, even if they were capable of staging one.
"The crisis of world capitalism is a very convenient moment for this party, but it has no ideas whatsoever, I mean in terms of constructive economic and political ideas."
"(The crisis) could help, but only in conditions of real, competitive elections, not the ones we have in Russia," he said.
(Editing by Ralph Boulton)
