This one just snuck out as the new year was about turn (enjoying it in the village of Herrnhut, Saxony). It’s a piece with Monthly Review, assessing Gennady Zyuganov’s speech from 27 October and focusing on the issue of Marxism and religion.
1 January, 2013
Zyuganov and Religion (on the turn of the new year)
Posted by stalinsmoustache under another world is possible, communism, theology | Tags: Communist Party of the Russian Federation, speech, Zyuganov |[3] Comments
2 January, 2013 at 2:22 am
This is an interesting take on Zyuganov. Judging by my experience, I wouldn’t take everything what he says very seriously. Zyuganov likes to quote Lenin and Stalin, but this is just lip service. In fact, his party long ago abandoned Marxism-Leninism for a nationalist ideology, capitulated to the Putin’s regime and also shamelessly endorse Cristianity instead of atheism.
2 January, 2013 at 3:27 am
I’m prepared to give the Russian communists some credit, since they have managed to rebuild a strong party from 1993. And it has the extraordinary pedigree of pulling off the first successful communist revolution. I agree that the nationalist bent is a real problem (as I write in the article), even though Lenin did push the nationalist line in cases where people were working to overthrow colonialists. But it’s too tricky. And he’s not quite ‘shamelessly endorsing’ Christianity. If you look closely, you’ll see he argues for the necessity of maintaining scientific socialism, but that it can work together with revolutionary forms of religion, if not live in peaceful coexistence even with mainstream forms. That is, of course, predicated on the mainstream church being defanged politically, at least in terms of its conservative bent.
10 January, 2013 at 9:53 pm
[...] Gennady Zyuganov laying a bunch. This year, 5660 flowers were [...]