Transcript:
Zyuganov: Capitalists are not only deadlocked. They are going mad. There is only one antidote, because capitalism only creates Nazism, fascism and Bandera movements. Nothing but socialism can defeat it. That is why I expect that in your next speech you will set socialist goals. I think even United Russia will support it. Vyacheslav Volodin is smiling, I can see he likes the idea.
Putin: Regarding the socialist idea, there is nothing bad about it. We should flesh out this idea, especially in the economic sphere. Some countries have given it substance, and this is linked with market regulation forms, etc. The idea is working quite effectively. We need to look into this.
I’m interested to see what the KPRF has to say about this.
Same, we’d need some kprf input on this to see if it’s anything more than lip-service.
One has to be crazy to not be skeptical.
I recall a similar conversation with Putin being posted a year or two ago. Maybe it’s the same one? While it’s existential for Russia to return to the socialist path, I find it hard to imagine it happening under the leadership of Putin.
It would be so cool if someone could actually link said video because the only one I’ve managed to find was the one on Tankietube uploaded today
Found it. Posted July 2022.
Thanks for finding this. So the statement is surely just lip service then.
I mean, why give lipservice to the KPRF though, since it’s still going to piss off Russia’s capitalist establishment
The same reason democrats pay lip service to “Medicare for all”, they, and their capitalist masters know that’ll never happen.
It is definitely the same one
Eh, honestly I think there is credence to the idea that the russian government is giving more leeway to socialists since there heavily reliant on Chinese economic support (china buys like 40% of Russia’s energy exports which is is like nearly 10-20% of Russia’s state budget) so obviously this could be the Russian government feeling it has to give concessions to the socialists to maintain power and it’s relations with china but still.
If Putin is being honest (which honestly I have no idea if he is) then we could potentially see some nationalizations of strategic industries in the future (maybe Gazprom as an example) but I don’t know.
Also I don’t believe United Russia would be a big fan of this, this is something I disagree with Zyuganov actually, they would be very much against even the most flaccid of nationalisation and would fight fiercely against it, I think it should be noted that Putin has never been an official member of United Russia and technically leads Russia as an “Independent” candidate, so it is possible that Putin is realising which way the winds are blowing and he’s planning to jump ship to the KPRF, which is a possibility.
Again, for all of Putin’s faults he is an incredible political operator, this was the guy whom outmanuvered Boris Yeltsin whom was being backed by the west at the time so that is impressive in itself.
I think there’s also the economic situation to consider, Russia’s economic growth has slowed a shit load recently partially due to declining oil demand globally (thanks china) as well as Ukraine’s continued strikes on Russian oil infrastructure has significantly limited Russia’s ability to export oil, which is very problematic considering around 61% of Russia’s state budget comes from the export of good.
There’s also the war in Ukraine, while Russia has made a lot of headway there it still doesn’t control the needed territory to declare a “victory”, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk continue to remain under Ukrainian control and a partial russian victory will require the entirety of the Donbass to fall under russian control, so the war can’t be ended until that objective has been completed.
The war itself isn’t entirely non-beneficial though for Putin, for one it allows him to prevent the KPRF (or to a lesser extent the LDPR) from going militant due to the threat to being turned into an open air rape camp by the west poses, so for the most part two of Russia’s most powerful oppositional parties continue to remain cooperative with Putin for now at least.
Of course continuing the war also overtime leads to war exhaustion to develop. While Putin has managed this considerly better than Zelensky by simply not introducing conscription, this has caused problems at the frontline as the Russian military often lacks the manpower to fill up the frontline which allows for the Ukrainians to make small scale gains and heavily slows russian advancement into Ukrainian territory, this seems to have come ahead recently as Russian advances towards Kramatorsk and Slovyansk seemed to have completely stalled, and while this could be partially due to autumn mud conditions, if this stalemate continues on for a year it’s safe to assume that both sides would be too exhausted to continue fighting and it’s likely a ceasefire arrangement will develop as a result.
Regardless of the outcome I think Putin will likely seek to scapegoat United Russia, the conflict in Ukraine was, in the eyes of the russian people and government, supposed to be a relatively quick blitz offensive to depose the pro-epstein regime in Kiev, though said operation turned into 4 years of brutal trench warfare for both sides. And united Russia will likely be blamed as a result, this can be seen in the 2026 elections, where the elections where rigged to a far more considerable extent that previous elections had been, with western sources (yes I know, reliable but still) estimating that around 22 million ballots for United Russia were faked.
Obviously Bourgeoise elections are Inherently biased in favour of the ruling Bourgeoise class so that’s not exactly surprising, what is though is how blatant the manipulation is within Russia, this suggests that United Russia has lost a lot of popularity in recent years, and is trying to make up for it with ballot stuffing at the polls.
Also, a lot of United Russia’s popularity comes from Putin’s populism in the first place, with UR itself being a massive big tent of a shit load of bourgeoisie political factions that are largely only kept united by Putin, should Putin leave, well, it would be really fucking bad for UR
In anycase, TL;Dr, I think what putin is planning is this (well maybe, whom knows)
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Blame the outcome of the war on United Russia and shift to KPRF.
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Use the FSB (which is in Putin’s control, not United Russia) to purge united Russia and elevate the KPRF.
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Appease the KPRF by purging oligarchs (aka capitalists but there form Eastern Europe so the scary western name “oligarch”) and instating Chinese style Market-socialist reforms, keeping his support with the petite bourgeoise (which do support Putin heavily, it’s one of his main support bases).
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Consolidate power by using Zyuganov to purge opponents in the KPRF, utilise soviet retoric and nostalgia to utterly obliterate support for rightists political movement and consodate further power.
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Profit.
Obviously this could just be a crack pipe theory but I think there’s some credence to it.
I think this take fundamentally misreads both the Ukraine war and Putin’s position. The notion of a stalemate in Ukraine keeps getting repeated by Western reporting but in reality there is no such stalemate and Russian advances, on average, have accelerated as Ukraine’s attrition and lack of material has increased. The prolonged war has paradoxically made Russia’s armed forces and military industry far stronger than they were in 2022. The outcome of the war is going to be more favorable to Russia in terms of balance of power than it would have been had Kiev surrendered in 2022. The hostility of the West toward Russia has been exposed in a major way which means the population in Russia is more on board with fighting until victory now than they were in 2022, but the longer this goes on the weaker and more divided NATO gets and the more broke Europe will be.
In my assessment there is zero chance of Putin leaving United Russia for the KPRF, especially since he is probably set to retire in a few years. Nor is United Russia in danger of losing majority public support any time soon. Its support is not based on Putin alone. UR has entrenched itself across many levels of Russian society, and the networks of political support they have built will continue to exist after Putin. The elections are not entirely clean, but the notion that there is massive ballot stuffing taking place cannot be squared with the level of genuine support that all polling indicates. As much as we would like to see the KPRF gain power, we can’t lie to ourselves about the facts. However it is very likely that Putin and UR will adopt some of the KPRF’s policies as doing so will undercut the support of the opposition.
Interesting theory about Putin potentially abandoning United Russia. As you say most people who support United Russia are really only there for Putin. I usually hate this term for how much it is thrown around, but I think Putin is one of the few genuinely populist politicians in the world.
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Hope he means this and is not just paying lip service to satisfy people. He was from the USSR so maybe. It’s just difficult for me to imagine a capitalist state going socialist without revolution.
There’s no such thing as an ex-KGB man
Though I doubt he ever meant this regarding ideology. Then again even given Putin’s libbed up past as president, closer ties to China could change many minds. Maybe a soft launch of the idea for the (not necessarily too far) future?
Hardest thing would be staffing the government with workers and giving them say without pissing the bourgeoisie, who are in power, off. But the former has to be done. Perhaps Putin means emulating Chinese market policies without giving the means of production to the workers. We’ll see how this goes, Russia’s always been interesting to me.
