Russia needs a modern, democratic left-wing political force – this what we increasingly hear from political analysts and the Russian media, which not so long ago viewed slogans about defending workers and their rights as a hangover from the past. So, what’s behind Russia’s “turn to the left”?
First, growing inequality and the removal of social guarantees are, at last, hitting Russian media headlines (against the wishes of liberal commentators). Second, it has become less easy to ignore the word “neoliberalism” as a left-wing ideological label – it’s now a standard term in international economics and politics. And lastly, we have more and more reasons to ask what a party system in “Russia’s bright future” might look like.
The issue of a political force that could unite a struggle for democratic rights and freedoms with decent conditions for working people and vulnerable sections of the Russian public - while providing an alternative to both pro-Soviet politics and market liberalism - has been around since Perestroika. Back then, left-wing dissidents, together with supporters of “socialism with a human face” from the Communist Party and politicised Soviet citizens, created a community which in the 1990s gave birth to all sorts of left-wing democratic projects and, of course, intense ideological discussions.
