YESTERDAY over 20,000 people marched in Moscow and several thousand in Leningrad to mourn the death of Boris Nemtsov.
The vast majority of the Russian people stayed at home, since they politically hated and despised Nemtsov, and others of the same ilk, including Yegor Gaydar, who were responsible for the massive efforts under President Yeltsin to destroy all of the gains of the Russian revolution, and return the country to capitalism, this time as a semi-colony of the USA.
The road was paved for this by the Perestroika programme pioneered by Gorbachev which handed over power to openly pro-capitalist forces.
Gorbachev was first talent-spotted by Thatcher. He gave the go-ahead in 1984-85 for Poland to send coal to the UK to help break the miners’ strike.
She announced that he was a man that the West could do business with and he obliged by withdrawing Russian forces from Eastern Europe, accepting the word of the USA and UK that NATO would not expand eastwards!
However Gorbachev was too extreme for Yeltsin and his supporters, since the former wished to maintain the USSR. In fact, on 17th March 1991 over 71% of the population of the USSR voted yes in a referendum sponsored by Gorbachev to maintain the USSR.
The question put to voters was: ‘Do you consider necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a renewed federation of equal sovereign republics in which the rights and freedom of an individual of any nationality will be fully guaranteed? The yes vote was overwhelming. The turn-out was 80% across the USSR.
The great supporters of western democracy had no time for this democratic vote. On December 8, 1991, Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk and Belarussian parliament chairman Stanislau Shushkevich met and dissolved the USSR.
Throughout 1992 Yeltsin was fighting it out with the Supreme Soviet. The issue was settled on October 4 1993 when tanks of the Taman Division shelled the Russian White House and disbanded the Supreme Soviet.
Yeltsin then moved to try to restore capitalism and overnight bureaucrats who administered industries became owners and billionaires. The oligarchs were born through massive theft of state property!
Spearheading the drive were the ‘shock therapists’. Gaydar, Nemtsov and others who vowed to restore capitalism within 100 days!
Gaydar was appointed to lead the counter-revolutionary government. 90 per cent of wholesale and retail prices were released from state control overnight. Prior to freeing the prices, the government had forecast threefold increase in prices across the board. However, the moment the prices were freed, they immediately skyrocketed ten-to twelvefold. Overnight millions of Russian workers were turned into paupers! In addition, their lifelong rouble savings were made worthless.
In 1992, Nemtsov was governor of Nizhny Novgorod, and then became first deputy prime minister, and economic supremo in 1997-98 under Yeltsin.
With massive opposition to the shock therapists mounting and a political revolution rapidly maturing, Yeltsin who was expected to choose Nemtsov as his successor instead chose Putin.
The latter exiled all those oligarchs such as Berezovskiy who were not prepared to accept the political leadership of the Kremlin and made concessions to the masses of the working class.
Putin then proceeded to rule through a balancing act, ruling with one foot on the workers and the other on the oligarchs.
It is this balance that is being disturbed and being made much more difficult by the world crisis of the capitalists and their inexorable drive eastwards.
The shock therapists are hated in Russia and viewed as open US agents, and as enemies of the working class. The ruling section of the bureaucracy meanwhile clings onto power.
However the majority of the population wants to see the restoration of the USSR and rule though soviets. They will have their say in the period ahead!