HARD-LINERS PLEDGE TO REVIVE SOVIET COMMUNIST PARTY.

As Russia prepares later this week to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the October Revolution, hard-line Communists gathered in Moscow over the weekend in an attempt to set up a single party along the lines of the Soviet Communist Party. (NTV, November 2) A two-day congress was attended by 360 representatives of left-wing parties and movements from Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, Georgia, and Moldova’s Transdniester region. It was organized by Viktor Anpilov’s Working Russia movement and included Stanislav Terekhov’s Officers’ Union, Eduard Limonov’s National-Bolshevik Party, and other small and less-known parties.

The congress adopted the charter of a new party of Soviet Communists. In his keynote speech, Anpilov called for an end to "internal differences and conflicts in the Communist movement," which, he said, "play into the hands of the enemy and breed pessimism among the working class." But he went on to denounce the leaders of the Russian Communist Party (CPRF) for calling off a parliamentary vote of no-confidence in the Yeltsin government. In so doing, Anpilov said, the CPRF forfeited the right to call itself a Communist party. He also attacked the Russian Communist Workers’ Party, the small left-wing party from which he was expelled last year. "It is our task to restore the Soviet Union and Soviet power and to establish classless society," Anpilov declared. He admitted that returning to the good old days will be neither simple nor easy, but said uniting all Soviet Communists in a single party was an essential first step. (RIA-Novosti, RTR, November 1)

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