Many by inertia divide the political field between "reds" and "whites", democrats and communists, conservatives and reformers. However, our world is more complex and does not consist only of black and white tones. Centrists are people who seek to connect and smooth out existing contradictions, to find a balance between opposing forces.
Definition
Centrists are representatives of parties and movements that seek to maintain a balance between opposing radical forces located at different poles of the political spectrum. The main advantage of a politician is his ability to achieve his goal, stay in power and achieve the implementation of his program.
Centrism is not an ideology, not a specific doctrine with its sacred figures and postulates. Representatives of this trend are trying to find a compromise between extremely radical parties and movements that have authority in society, find common ground with each of them and conduct a constructive dialogue.
BDepending on the situation, the forces of the center can be a dividing line between liberals and conservatives, leftists and conservatives, clerics and atheists. Often such a policy gives the impression of a lack of own principles, softness and amorphousness.
Strength and weakness
However, in a parliamentary democracy, when the government of the country is distributed among various political forces that are forced to create blocs and coalitions, centrism is an extremely important tool. It is necessary for the normal functioning of the state. The center parties have an advantage in this case, as the game is played by their rules.
Societies accustomed to authoritarian regimes categorically reject such a policy, perceiving methods of concessions and compromises as a form of weakness.
This is clearly evident from the populist slogans of politicians who operate in countries accustomed to a "firm hand".
Background
The French Revolution has enriched the political vocabulary with a huge number of terms, one of them is, in fact, the concept of the center. During the Convention, the Centrists were those deputies who were located between the Radicals and the Girondins.
The mutually hating Jacobins and conservatives fought furiously for power among themselves, positioned on the left and right sides of the assembly hall.
Neutral-minded representatives were located in the center and did not have a clearly defined position. Hold your nose carefullywind, they leaned towards the winning side. For such a strategy, this group was contemptuously called the "swamp", but then their ideological followers secured the respectable name of the parties of the center.
In the middle of the 19th century, the Roman Catholic Party of Germany for the first time designated its political orientation as centrist. In this regard, very often movements with Christian names are a priori positioned as a model of the issue under consideration.
However, centrists are people with a completely different worldview, the ideology of political movements could be diametrically opposed. Their factions of the center were among the Marxists, conservatives, liberals.
Centrism on Russian soil
With the advent of the Social Democratic Party in Russia, the concept of centrism also appeared. The Marxist movement, torn apart by irreconcilable contradictions between the right and left wing, also gave rise to groups that sought to reunite the two halves of the broken cup.
In the pre-revolutionary period, these politicians defiantly distanced themselves from the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions, declaring the need for compromise and restoration of unity. Paradoxically, the irreconcilable revolutionary and socialist Leon Trotsky, who would later go down in history thanks to his radicalism, could be considered a kind of centrist. At that time, he was still trying to establish contact between the two groups, not considering their break as final.
During the Russian Revolution, the positions of the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks were clearly marked. Social Democrats such asChkheidze and Martov tried to maintain mutual understanding between their former party members and restore their former unity to the end. Some of them even accepted the October Revolution and cooperated with the victors, despite the fact that it was contrary to their views.
Accordingly, in Soviet historiography, the concept of centrism was perceived extremely negatively, centrists are unprincipled, weak-willed politicians, they deserve neither respect nor sympathy, according to the official ideology.
Modern Europe
European parliamentary democracy suggests the most favorable conditions for a policy of compromise and concessions. The activities of centrist parties are most pronounced in the Scandinavian countries. Movements here are equidistant from the radical left and right on social and economic issues on the political scale.
Another characteristic feature of local movements is a well-defined ideology, which is unusual for centrist parties in general. They stand on positions of decentralization, liberalism, protection of ecological balance.
The right-centrists periodically take power into their own hands and successfully compete with the social democratic and conservative movements. They successfully play on the contradictions in the slogans of competitors and recruit allies among them.
