Editor’s Note: Paul J. Saunders, associate publisher of the National Interest, interviewed Maksim Shevchenko, a former newspaper editor and television personality who is a prominent left-wing candidate for the post of Moscow mayor.

Q: Thank you again for taking the time to talk to our readers. While you are among the leading candidates to compete for the position of Moscow mayor on behalf of the United Left opposition, most Americans today are not really that familiar with Russia’s “left.” Over the last two decades, since Boris Yeltsin defeated Communist Party candidate Gennady Zyuganov in Russia’s 1996 presidential election, Russia’s left has received far less attention in American media. So maybe you can just tell us a little bit to start about your positions and platform going into that election.

A: When we speak of the “left” in Russia, it’s not the same as the “left” in the United States. In Russia the “left” tradition is a big national tradition. Our twentieth century was the “left” century; it was the century of socialism. You can call it totalitarianism, you can call it Stalinism, you can call it Bolshevism, but it was the one time in our history when most Russians enjoyed access to education, to development, to high levels of society, to science, to education, to social opportunities, to development—my position is that the left movement in Russia expresses the nature of our nation. It is part of the natural self-realization of the Russian people.

You Americans have your own principles of organizing the nation. You said, in essence, that “man was created for happiness,” and, at one point, the American Christians who fled from Europe, where they were persecuted, created their own unique world on the new continent. From a utopian view, it was a revolution, an American revolution, which resulted in the emergence of an American nation with the principles of democracy, with the principles of freedom, with the principles of religion, with the principles of justice, and with opportunities for development. But it is impossible to copy the American nation, nor is it possible to copy the German nation, French nation, or Soviet nation. Each nation develops in its own way. I believe that after all mistakes and after all the experiments, for the Russian people, and for other peoples, the path to socialism, of course not the socialism that was in the twentieth century, but of modern socialism, the path to the social state, is best.

Why? It expresses the national idea, and aids the national development of our people to a greater extent. But we are not Protestants. We are not Pentecostals, not Baptists, we are not Evangelicals. Overall, we are not Americans. We had a different spiritual culture, a different understanding of asceticism (ascetics), a different understanding of the meaning of history, and a different understanding of internal discipline.

Soviet people were poor, but not because they could not be rich. No. Being rich was not a priority for them. This culture was quite ascetic. But this ascetic culture won the [World War II] and created absolutely amazing transformations in science. I drive through modern Russia and see the ruins of what was created in Soviet times—factories, airports, amazing, absolutely, the creations of human reason and human genius. This was the result of the mobilization of the left-wing idea. I am quite sure that the Soviet project would have developed into a modern democracy, but into an original Russian democracy, because the principles of freedom, the principles of development, they always lead to revolutionary radicalism, as was the case with Americans.

After its eighteenth-century revolution, America experienced a horrible, bloody civil war, in which hundreds of thousands of Americans were killed and terrible crimes were committed by those people who considered themselves American citizens. There were punitive detachments to the south of Potomac. I’d like to remind everyone that Lincoln allowed the northern troops to live off the land, at the expense of American citizens, and announced that everyone who was from the south of Potomac, well, their property could be taken and plundered as one pleased. In short, civil war and other extremes of life exist in every revolutionary nation.

Today in Russia, to be a leftist means to be a true patriot and to profess the national idea of the rebirth and development of the people. The modern government in Russia is not nation-oriented. The modern government has set itself the task of fitting into the world system of capitalism. The modern government simply created an entire class of people who, hiding behind sweet talk, simply plunder the country, rob the people, rob the nation, stash their pockets, and this cannot be tolerated. I love my country. I love my people. I support nothing but leftist ideas.

But they, they are not afraid of fascism, anarchism, or democracy. It’s all the same to them; however, they cannot buy the left. The left is the authentic legacy of Lenin, Stalin, and the Soviet victory of 1945. And they cannot undo this. Therefore, they are doing everything to erase the memory of this. So, I made a decision in my life. I decided to take a position that for me—for the Russian intellectual—is a position of struggle and resistance to that which is destroying my nation.

I am not opposed to private property. I am not against the development of the free market. I am in fact a supporter of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and all democratic rights and freedoms. In no way do I believe that they should be subordinated to some principles like the government or something else. I understand, I respect the American people. I understand the principles of freedom and the principles of development. But we are not Americans. Therefore, in search of the left opposition, I am looking to save the national identity of our country.

Q: As you can imagine, for most Americans one—perhaps the highest—priority in thinking about opposition parties and opposition political forces in Russia is their attitude toward the United States and Russia’s relationship with the United States. What’s your view on that issue and how would you distinguish your approach to the U.S.-Russia relationship from the approach of United Russia or the Russian government today?

A: I believe that the foreign policy of Russia and the United States should not depend on the games of large banking and financial institutions and the interests of transnational corporations. I respect the American people and the principles of democracy and freedom that lie at the base of the American society. But the modern government has turned Russia into an “annex” to the American economy. Our money is in America; our resources are flowing to the west; our people live in poverty; while the government officials that are waging, as they say, the battle against America, are living rich lives, as the tsars lived before the revolution. In fact, they restored the Russian empire, but the Russian empire was a stronger state, and a state with opportunities. But this government is draining people’s strength.

I personally believe, and here I am being honest, that the left position refers to the American principles of democracy, and if, like the Soviet Union, well, of course it was an archaic state that did not develop—the crisis that took place there needed to be overcome. Crises are normal. In the history of the United States there were crises as well. The Great Depression was a crisis that America overcame thanks to Roosevelt and thanks to Keynes, and thanks to new, if you will, forms of government, which at that time were also innovative for Americans.

I personally believe that the U.S. and Russian history was stable. But modern Russia is not capable of holding that stability. It has turned into a business relationship between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Dmitri Medvedev and Barack Obama, between some oligarchs from Russia who have businesses in America and Americans who have business with these oligarchs in Russia. But this is not the relationship between the nations. The relationships during the Soviet times, between the Soviet nation and the American nation, despite the fact that there were downsides in America and the Soviet Union that we worked out in the course of history, that was the normal relationship between the nations, and this provided a guarantee of development and stability to the world.

Today, however, Russia is full of problems, problems of a criminal nature, bureaucratic problems, and geopolitical problems that America could not solve without going to war. America was not ready to go to war with the Soviet Union, and it did not want to. Despite the Cold War, no one wanted a real conflict. But in the modern world the threat of war has grown dramatically because everyone understands that the ambitions of modern Russia do not correspond to its internal social abilities and resources that this government provides our people with. While the Communist Party in Soviet times—again, just to reiterate, I am not saying that I’m a fan of Brezhnev’s party or Khrushchev’s, I do not agree with their actions—it was a stable and powerful social system.

It was a real nation with that kept America accountable because it was a another “pole” [in the international system]. Today another such pole doesn’t exist. China is not that pole. Only Russia can become such a pole, and therefore, just as the U.S. at that time supported the Russian revolutionaries, let us be frank, without the support of the American society in 1917, Russian socialists wouldn’t have won. Russia needs to be seen in a different way, and in particular its leftist projects. Therefore, I favor friendship between the United States and new Russia, but only the friendship of nations, not of partnerships of oligarchs above the peoples and nations. This is detrimental for both the American and the Russian people.

Q: Let me turn in a little bit of a different direction. You resigned recently from the Presidential Human Rights Council in Russia after the May 5 demonstrations and how the Russian government treated the protesters. Could you tell us a little bit more about why you took this decision, what troubled you about the government’s response to those protests, and what would you like to have seen the Presidential Human Rights Council do in a situation like that?

A: It’s a very good question. This has been building up for a while because many inquiries into human rights violations—searches for and kidnappings of persons, murders of journalists, violations of freedom of speech, repression of the democratic opposition—have remained unanswered. We talked about it. I told Putin in person. But there was no action.

When we saw on May 5 in Moscow how some bandits, militants that were under the protection of the state police, beat the opposition the way it was before the revolution—and many past émigrés from the Russian empire, particularly the Jews, perfectly remember the Cossacks that were ordered to beat workers and peasants—it seemed to me that the government was recreating the old history. They came back as if from the beginning of the twentieth century. It was for me a very important moment; a decisive moment.

I am not ready to play the role of a clown whose views would remain unheard by a government that will continue with such actions. These people who beat the opposition, they were sent by the government, protected by the government, and taken care of by the government. They were mere fascist formations. I demanded an open meeting with journalists, with those Cossacks, with the mayor of Moscow, with representatives of law enforcement agencies, and with the member of the presidential administration who are behind these actions, and no doubt that these Cossack groups, so called patriotic organizations, are managed by the presidential administration. But they refused, and they simply would not come.

It is impossible to remain in this council when it is so helpless; all it does is talk and it cannot resolve even simple issues. Of course, they did not want to come because at one point the last names of all those who ordered such actions were made known. Those people are criminals. To remain silent today is to simply take part in a crime against freedom of speech and democracy. I do not want to take part in this. Therefore, I made such a difficult decision. I thanked President Putin for inviting me to join the council at that time, and I probably was able to accomplish something, but I believe that nothing more can be done.

I do not want to waste my life on some gibberish and be, as we call it, a “cardboard democrat.” I do not want that. That is why I have decided to join the political struggle and continue my work on human rights and freedom of speech, but to do it through political methods because the purely legal ways of fighting for human rights have unfortunately exhausted themselves. This story with the Cossacks was for me the last straw.

Q: I want to follow up a little bit on your previous answer. I think that many Americans as you can imagine, sympathize with people who demonstrate against the Russian government. They certainly sympathize also with people who criticize the Russian government’s responses to demonstrations, like yourself. But, at the same time, I think a lot of Americans would look at Russia’s left and, you know, certainly in your particular case, you were a public surrogate for the Russian Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin during Russia’s recent presidential election campaign. As I understand it, the Russian Communist Party still really continues to defend Joseph Stalin’s record as the leader of the Soviet Union. How do you reconcile, on the one hand, the sympathy that many on the left in Russia today continue to have for Stalin with, on the other hand, the kind of positions that you have described on human rights and the ability to protest against the current Russian government?

A: We can seriously discuss Stalin today in the same way as we discuss Lincoln. Some Americans see Lincoln as a criminal and a killer, while others consider him to be an outstanding defender of human rights and the constitution. Some Americans consider Gen. Robert E. Lee to be a dedicated son of the American people and a defender of freedom, while others believe Lee to be a racist and defender of racial segregation. I think that historical issues will always divide people, and we are unlikely to agree on Stalin’s personality today. But for Americans, I would like to remind you that Franklin Delano Roosevelt considered Stalin to be the greatest politician of our time, and Stalin saw Roosevelt in the same way. We should not turn historical figures into a pressing issue of modern politics. I was, I am, and I remain a supporter of freedom of speech and democracy. I certainly sympathize with people who express their right to freedom, to protest, and in particular when they protest against the government, if they do this of course in legal and proper ways, and not as chaotic unrest. And I know that many Americans think the same regardless of them being Republicans or Democrats.

Mr. Grudinin, Comrade Grudinin, Pavel Grudinin, call him as you like, he is a very successful businessman who implemented policies in his company that are rare anywhere else in Russia; social security policies where the workers are cared for. In practice, he built a small social state. Therefore, this person is undoubtedly, I don’t know whether he is a Stalinist, but he is definitely a responsible businessman who cares about the rights and freedoms of those who work in the company that he leads. As for Stalin, let me continue the subject. I will remind the American people once again that Stalin was the greatest ally that America had in its history. America never had such an ally. Name at least one historical hero, a character who, during such terrible war, was a loyal and reliable ally of the United States. I think we cannot name anyone apart from Stalin. Stalin should be discussed not as a mythical character, but as a historical and political figure. The scale of events of the twentieth century, terrible and tragic events, as well as the scale of the American Civil War, i.e. tragedy that the American people experienced in the nineteenth century, this scale does not fit into newspaper propaganda, opposition propaganda, or state propaganda.

As for Stalin, we should convene conferences and discuss his political role in a serious, non-propagandistic way. I am ready to do this. If there are partners on the American side, I am ready to convene a conference on the real historical heritage of Stalin, his political legacy—what it was, discussing calmly, without emotions, just as we can today discuss Caesar or Napoleon, in the same way I am sure we can discuss Stalin, Roosevelt, or Lincoln.

But it seems to me that the opposition, which calls itself democratic, is gradually losing its momentum. I assure you, in the near future, the opposition, the left flank of opposition, will become the leaders. People like Alexei Navalny, people like [liberal politician Ilya] Yashin, they will remain who they are, i.e. they are fictional opposition figures. These are people who use all the relevant technology, but they possess neither ideology nor worldview. Their main slogan is basically, “We want to be like the West.”

But does the West need this? I say one more time, would you support the forces in Russia that stand for the rebirth of the Russian people as a nation, which is possible through historical paths of development of a social state? I’m not talking today about communism, about Stalin’s communism, or about Khrushchev’s communism, just as very few Americans would say today let us live like during the times of Adams or Madison, or Jackson. It is simply impossible. But the principles of freedom and justice that were formulated by Jefferson and Adams, or Lenin and Stalin—our Russian founding fathers—I believe that these principles should definitely form the basis of our nation. This is my worldview. Whether it is Tsar Nicholas II, whether it is Putin, whether it is King George, they are usurpers. Only a free nation, that has reached free development can be a historical force. I personally will fight for this.

PJS: Thank you very much, Maxim, for your answers to all these questions. They are very helpful in understanding your point of view. I expect that some of it will be controversial for our American readers. But it is very informative in explaining your perspective.

A former newspaper editor and television personality, Maksim Shevchenko is a prominent left-wing candidate for the post of Moscow mayor. He was a top representative of Russia’s Communist Party during Russia’s 2018 presidential campaign debates.

Image: Red Square. Wikipedia