Thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union smashed its monopoly on power in Russia, today’s Communist Party is now being dragged – apparently against the will of its veteran boss – towards a real battle with the Kremlin.
Gennady Zyuganov has led the party for 28 years, seven years longer than President Vladimir Putin has run the country, becoming a pillar of a "systemic opposition" that lives in cosy symbiosis with the ruling United Russia party.
As long as the communists and the nationalist LDPR did not become too popular or lead major street protests, they would be allowed to run for parliament and enjoy the cash and influence that comes with seats; they would provide a colourful facade of democratic choice but bow to the Kremlin on key issues, and in return they would not be jailed like less pliant opposition figures such as former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and anti-graft campaigner Alexei Navalny.
But Russia’s recent election threatened to wreck this comfortable arrangement, by pulling a wave of protest voters to the Communist Party who want it to hold United Russia to account – a demand that is welcomed by rising stars in and around the party, but which seems to alarm Zyuganov (77).
“We voted for the communists only because we want to destroy United Russia, and any force that can do that will get our vote right now,” said Katerina (30) at a communist-led protest in central Moscow on Sunday against alleged electronic-voting fraud in the capital.
"We don't like the leader of the communists but they have some decent people in the party: Nikolai Bondarenko is one of the most popular politicians in the country, [Valery] Rashkin is all right, and [Pavel] Grudinin is decent and was barred from running in the election; [Mikhail] Lobanov is good too," she added.
Different people
“I don’t think anyone really follows Zyuganov any more,” said her friend Sergei (30). “The party includes lots of very different people.”
Bondarenko (36) is a communist deputy in the southern Saratov region who is best known for lambasting United Russia on social media and for being arrested in January for attending a pro-Navalny protest.
Grudinin (60) is a strawberry-growing millionaire who came second to Putin in the 2018 presidential elections. He was banned from September’s parliamentary ballot when his ex-wife said he part-owned a foreign firm – something election candidates cannot do in Russia, and which he denies.
Valery Rashkin (66), the communists' chief in Moscow, has been the party's main critic of the alleged voting fraud, and he has used his parliamentary privilege to call street protests under the guise of "meetings with a deputy" – which do not need official approval and so are less likely to be broken up by police.
Rashkin addressed hundreds of demonstrators in central Moscow on Sunday, despite the police warning that protesters could be arrested and blasting out pro-Putin songs to drown out the speeches.
At the same time, Zyuganov and leaders other of “systemic parties” were talking to Putin. The Communist Party boss raised the issue of online vote fraud, but was quickly pacified during what resembled a long pep talk from the president.
Stay in bounds
Tatyana Stanovaya, head of political analysis firm RPolitik, thinks Zyuganov sought to assure Putin that his party would "fight any show of anti-system activity in the party", while the president signalled that the communists should "stay within the bounds of the system".
There is still a significant segment of communist support that feels nostalgia for the USSR, and some defend Stalin and lay flowers at Lenin’s tomb on Red Square.
But a growing number of people barely connect today’s communists with its monolithic Soviet forebear, and hope the party can use see its solid position in parliament, its strong national network and its members who denounce inequality and corruption in Russia to mount a serious challenge to Putin’s allies.
"It's the Communist Party," explained Moscow State University (MGU) student Slava (21) at a protest last week. "But it's not 'that' Communist Party."
Mikhail Lobanov (37), an MGU maths professor, says he is a "democratic socialist" whose only way to run effectively in the elections was to take the communist ticket – and he is sure that online-voting fraud robbed him of victory over his United Russia rival.
“We will do all we can so that the word of a fundamentally new leftist politics ... resounds loudly in squares, courtyards and university lecture halls,” he said.
“We have lots of plans for the near future, and we’ll talk about them soon. Stay tuned.”
