Isabelle Magkoeva

25-12-11

Isabelle Magkoeva is a member of the Rossijskoe Socialisticheskoe Dvizhenije (Russian Socialist Movement), RSD, and an activist of the #OccupyMoscow movement

On December 24^th in Moscow took place a new demonstration. As already happened on December 10^th, it seems the representatives of the left political organization were not allowed to speak on the stage. Why do you think liberals excluded them and monopolized the organization of protests?

It’s because of the historical disagreements between left and liberal political groups.

After the horror of the soviet regime, all the interpretations of the Marxism-leninism, also the ones who were repressed by the soviets, experienced together with “official” communism a reproach from the public opinion. The people today look with suspect to all is left-oriented, associating Marxism to totalitarianism and lack of freedom.

After perestrojka raised two main political blocs, the liberal and the communist one, the former represented by El’cin, who proposed the new ideas of free trade and parliamentary democracy, the latter by KPRF, that proposed nothing new but the restoration of USSR.

These two blocs kept a similar consensus until the presidential elections in 1996, when El’cin won (by tricking the results). From that moment the popularity of KPRF (which in that contest represented the left-wing) fell down. Today KPRF is a dying party, as the generation supporting it, that receives relatively a lot of votes only from who wants not to vote for Edinaja Rossija. The role it tooks in the last years particularly favored Putin, who uses the presence of KPRF in the parliament to assert that in Russia we have enough plurality.

As an evidence of their agreement with the system, we can see how Zjuganov defined our demonstration as “the orange infection” (referring to Ukraine). Moreover, KPRF deputies made out they also protest against unfair election, but actually they strongly keep that parliamentary seats they define lawless.

In general the main cause of the left parties’ unpopularity, as in the rest of the world, are the unsuccessful attempts to create socialism and its consequent discredit. Another cause is the impossibility for these political organization to register legally as a party: they have to present 100 thousand supporting signatures, and take so much of them is possible only for persons who have a lot of money like oligarchs. The third cause: the liberal leaders are professional politicians, while left leaders can’t effort to work on politics 24h a day, they have normal lives too. For liberal leaders is simpler to organize and control the situation.

For what concerns the demonstration on December 24^th, on 9 people speaking on the stage only one was a left-oriented one. On the internet was organized a polling to decide who actually should speak. The liberals, who protest against falsifications, tricked the results of this polling, admitting to the second turn only persons they were interested in. To protest against liberals is very difficult, because they are taking a lot of supporters among people while left activist are simply discreditable.

What about the “alternative platform”? Why did you organize it and what goals achieved?

We decided to create this alternative platform because we disagree about what is proposed on the demonstration stage: we don’t want to choose one of that pseudo-politicians are shown and try to send him to the Cremlin to make him forget about us all. We don’t want to listen from the stage actors, politicians, former putinians and nationalists. This is why was born the idea of the alternative platform, supported by various artists, RSD and #OccupyMoscow, to give voice to the one who could not speak on the stage, to the one who came also to express his opinion and not only to listen. We helped people making their own banners, giving them materials, and, more important, we organized the “human microphone” (the human microphone is made by a group of people who repeats loudly all together what is said by the orator. Who organized the demonstration didn’t allow people to take megaphones and microphones in the square, exactly not to let people being distracted by the left activists –editor’s note– ). Actually, we were afraid the human microphone won’t work, the people who speak could communicate unpleasant or repetitive concepts, but it was a success! Many people spoke and we heard many interesting ideas and opinions.

The experiment of the alternative platform was to understand “is it possible direct democracy today?”, the answer we had was “it’s the ONLY possible way”.

Activists of Trudovaja Rossija also disagree with the actions of liberals and they are also looking for different ways to be visible out of the stage. Why left movements have not organized something together still?

I won’t explain all the particulars, the main cause of the lack of cooperation among the different left political organizations is the different interpretation about the past of our nation, and it’s an approach that makes difficult any cooperation.

In these days is raising the need to pass on a new protest level: it’s not enough to fight AGAINST the system, but is needed to fight FOR something different. Which political organizations are more active in creating an alternative? What liberals think about it? For example, Naval’nyj still didn’t make us understand WHAT is he going to do if/when he will have the possibility to decide. When journalists asked him, he simply answered “I still didn’t mind about it”. You think he said so because he has not so much political experience, he has not a specific political ideology, or simply that’s a political game?

I think people is gradually understanding they don’t need any Naval’nyj or any Prokhorov. Nobody who demonstrate has the goal to change some thieves with other ones. On that internet polling to choose who is going to speak on the stage, people voted a lot for not-politic figures (writers or showmen) and this means that the old politicians, however they show themselves, annoyed everyone.

Liberals are scared of the left activists, they now we have the potential, maybe it’s because they agreed with nationalists to make an alliance.

Naval’nyj is playing his game, he knows what he does: he doesn’t say nothing concrete, but his usual slogan “down with the party of thieves and scoundrels”, with which all people agree. Thanks to these populist games and to his charisma, he is making people forget that he is an extreme nationalist who took part in the “Russian marches” and that he also was a politician in the past in the Jabloko party.

Photo (c) Arsenij Zhiljaev