Letter From the Editors
If Lenin suddenly came to in the mausoleum and decided to take a stroll around modern Moscow, what would he think of the country 100+ years after his death? And what would he make of the Communist Party’s new 2026 manifesto, aptly called the Victory Program, which was unveiled at the recent Central Committee plenum? The goal of the program seems rather modest by Lenin’s standards: To do no worse than in the 2021 Duma elections, when the RFCP came in second. Speaking at the plenum, Gennady Zyuganov, the party’s perennial ruler whose political longevity Lenin would envy, complained that “global capital” continues to oppress and exploit the working class, while post-Soviet Russia has become the “hinterland of global capitalism,” embodying its defects “in even uglier forms than the West.”
While the grievances remain the same, the tactics are changing. To help attract younger voters and get the word out, the party created a new advisory board, headed by firebrand Deputy Nikolai Bondarenko. He will be tasked with “new communication channels for voter outreach.” Given his millions of YouTube followers, that’s a no-brainer, right? Well, maybe not quite… According to political analyst Konstantin Kalachov, “Developing communication channels is secondary.***Viewers – or readers – will only share a video, a picture or an article if they really love it.” And right now, the Communists don’t have a lot to boast about: Videos of Nov. 7 celebrations showed “the faces in the crowd were those of elderly, lonely people,” says Ilya Grashchenkov, which was “depressing.”
On top of that, given that the government can now turn social media platforms and even Internet access on and off like a switch, online tactics are easily throttled. So while Lenin would agree that seizing key communication channels is still crucial for the revolution, relying too heavily on social media could backfire. One expert quipped that if the Communists get too brazen for the authorities, they may need to resurrect the Iskra newspaper, à la the early 1900s.
Speaking of good old-fashioned journalism, leading British and American newspapers reported that a new 28-point plan on ending the Russia-Ukraine war has been making the rounds. The plan demands that Ukraine cede the Donetsk Basin, reduce its Armed Forces and say goodbye to NATO membership. In exchange, it would get “security guarantees” from the US and potential EU membership. Russia, for its part, gets de facto but not de jure control of Donetsk Basin. What’s more, some of its frozen European assets would be used to rebuild Ukraine. All in all, political analyst Grigory Chizhov says the Trump administration wants a peace deal at any cost, and it doesn’t care what the terms are. And of the two parties, Ukraine turned out to be easier for Washington to pressure, says Chizhov. But Ukrainian officials have already said that unless the plan is seriously reworked, “it would have no chance of being accepted by Ukraine.”
Meanwhile, President Zelensky is still reeling from the “Mindich-gate” scandal that implicated members of his inner circle in major energy sector corruption schemes. According to former Supreme Rada deputy Spiridon Kilinkarov, the 28-point document was a lifeline to Zelensky from the US administration, intended to distract from the lack of progress on the corruption front. “Much will depend on [the Ukrainian authorities’] willingness to move toward a resolution of the conflict,” he said. For his part, Pavel Polyan shines a historical spotlight on current events in an article commemorating 80 years since the Nuremberg Trials. Polyan’s key theme, the “nonimpunity of evil,” is essentially a moral argument for universal justice that transcends borders, political expediency and individual greed. With the new year approaching, can we still dare hope that, just as in the short period at the end of World War II, before the Iron Curtain “descended across the world with a resounding thud and clank,” humanity can still aspire to a higher purpose?