My Russia: The Political Autobiography of Gennady Zyuganov

by Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov, Vadim Medish (Editor)

Gennady A. Zyuganov is the leader of Russia's resurgent Communist Party and the opposition coalition of 'National Patriotic Forces.' Zyuganov was Boris Yeltsin's strongest challenger in the 1996 presidential elections. Although his face became familiar to the world at that time, his ideas and his program were mainly a subject of speculation. This volume makes available to English-language readers -- for the first time and in his own words -- Zyuganov's interpretation of Russia's past and her fate under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, his own mission, and his vision of Russia's future under a 'National Patriotic' Communist leadership.

Genres: Russia

240 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1997

About the author

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov (Russian: Геннадий Андреевич Зюганов) is a Russian politician who has been the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation since 1993. He has been Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties - Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001, a deputy in the State Duma since 1993, and a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe since 1996.

Reviews

[Jon · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a mish-mash of speeches, party platform stuff, and an official autobiography from Zyuganov's 1996 campaign, with some commentary about his loss to Yeltsin. The autobiographical section more or less follows the standard Soviet format ("I was born to a proletarian family in Stavropol, my father was an electrician, etc. etc."). Some of the political theory is interesting in terms of late Soviet revisions of Marxism-Leninism, as it simultaneously stresses the importance of Soviet Communism and Russian exceptionalism, as well as religious tolerance (at least of Orthodox Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam--Judaism is conspicuously absent). This seeming contradiction illustrates the CPRF strategy of courting both socialist and nationalist voters, as well as their adoption of the traditionally antagonistic slavophilic and westernizing traditions in Russian political philosophy. Zyuganov is getting older, but he's still politically active (as of 2008), so this is worth reading if you're into current Russian politics or 1990's FSU. Otherwise, you probably couldn't care less (I'm the only person on the site who's even rated this book fer chrissakes!).

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mercifully, the authors opted to compile a variety of speeches and political statements rather than a ghostwritten biography. His speech at Yeltsin's trial of the CPSU is worth reading, as is his reaction to the stolen 1996 election. The longer essays are interesting for their references to 1920s Eurasianism, Orthodoxy, and Berdiaev. The same cannot be said of his political vision, if one can call it that.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm very torn on My Russia.

On the one hand, it's very easy to dismiss the leader of a nonwestern communist party as a left fascist who somehow simultaneously managed to unite 40% of the ex-Soviet electorate ánd completely bowdlerize marxist-leninist orthodoxy. He explicitly claims to want to unite "the white and the red", assuming first of all that Russia as a whole is the basic element of his revolutionary project instead of the classes within (reducing all regressive classes to "comprador bourgeoisie"). He states that Right and Left must balance each other out, which he seems to equate with "individualism" versus "collectivism", thereby agreeing with American conservatives. When praising the zenith of Soviet cultural output, he steadfastly refers to anti-communist philosophers, when citing Fukuyama he only criticizes his supposed fatalism, while arch-reactionary Spengler gets accepted without further qualifications. The Russian national spirit is romanticized to the point where it already embodied communism for two thousand years, and ethnic differences are seen as actively antagonistic and harmful. The role of sexual and moral degradation is emphasized, as is individualism in general. I'm generally perturbed by the lack of class analysis, which from Zyuganov's POV is only relevant to the degree that it can diagnose "comprador" bourgeois interlopers but which does not really grapple with the transition from Lenin's CPSU to the Yeltsin crew.

On the other hand, one must understand that - for instance - the presence of sex and violence in contemporary Russian media, which so galls Zyuganov, is so corrosive to him not because they themselves are the prime mover of the objective degeneration of Russian living conditions, but because they are its indices. In the USSR, mass media did not adhere to liberal sexual fixation as an inalienable good and did not glorify violence as the be-all-end-all solution to social problems. That Zyuganov's analysis seems diluted may (and this is a pretty hefty may) be a reflection of the multi-pronged nature of capitalist restoration: as economic circumstances buckle, so follow the institutional and social morals.

Reading My Russia primarily as a lament goes a long way towards sanitizing it, but not all the way. Zyuganov's national project, which shows a great resemblance to Russian Dengism, is weird and tainted by an ethnonationalism which is not excused by the specific historical circumstances. Final judgment pending.