In Sunday's Russian elections Alexei Kondaurov and others like him are fighting on a Communist platform against President Vladimir Putin, writes Dan McLaughlin, in Moscow.
Ride the quiet lift for seven floors, tread the plush carpet between walls of polished wood and let the smoked-glass door close silently behind you. The office is spacious and simple, its occupant tanned and well attired.
He is not a dollar millionaire, he says, unless you factor into his wealth the Moscow flat, the house and the Audi A8.
The trappings of Alexei Kondaurov's life are not unusual for a senior executive, especially one at Yukos, Russia's biggest oil company. But they are not the accoutrements normally associated with a former KGB general, or a man running on the Communist ticket in Sunday's parliamentary elections.
"The question shouldn't be 'Am I rich or am I a Communist'?" Mr Kondaurov argues. "I've always been a man of the left, and just because I'm not poor it doesn't mean I think this country's inequalities are acceptable."
Mr Kondaurov (54) is one of several men pumping serious wealth and business savvy into the Communist Party's battle with United Russia, the Kremlin-backed bloc that revels in the slogan "Together with the President!"
They bring much-needed money and modern thinking to the stolid powerhouse of the left, but Mr Kondaurov insists there is no clash between these sharp-suited, stock-optioned men and the millions of poor Russians who still look to the Communists to restore the certainties and social benefits that disappeared with the Soviet Union. Mr Kondaurov spent decades rising through the KGB's ranks, until he was in charge of investigating the bomb attacks and assassinations that were a closely guarded Soviet secret. He was a loyal party member, but resigned from the KGB in disillusionment at the collapse of Moscow's empire. He doesn't hide his contempt for Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he blames, or for Boris Yeltsin.
But Mr Kondaurov says his faith in communism remained, even after he joined Menatep, the bank that Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky created and which bought Yukos for a pittance in a rigged privatisation in 1995.
Mr Khodorkovsky became Russia's richest man, and Mr Kondaurov became one of his advisers, a senior official at the company feted in the west as Russia's most transparent and efficient, a poster boy for the country's fledgling capitalism.
Now Mr Khodorkovsky is in prison, charged with massive tax evasion and fraud, and Mr Kondaurov is fighting from a Communist platform against the President and the party he says are determined to destroy all opponents, including his jailed boss.
"Russia isn't in a great economic situation today, and the population is poor, so to attack a company like Yukos, which was really helping the economy develop is, to say the least, unwise," Mr Kondaurov said."This is a sign that presidential power is weak, unenlightened and short-sighted."
The arrest of several major Yukos officials has provided months of fodder for Moscow's chattering classes. But ordinary Russians feel little sympathy for the nation's magnates, and most look certain to back President Vladimir Putin and tick United Russia's box on Sunday's ballot paper.
The Communists are set for second place, with liberal challengers again destined to play a vocal but toothless role in parliament, where Mr Putin's will is rarely opposed. His supporters, led by United Russia, have ripped into "red millionaires" like Mr Kondaurov, hinting at dodgy business dealings as much as suspect ideology.
Their most prominent target has been Mr Viktor Vidmanov, a Communist Party stalwart, former Soviet deputy minister and current head of Rosagropromstroi, a huge holding of some 5,000 enterprises and 700,000 workers, building farm machinery and infrastructure. He says the Kremlin is behind allegations that he channelled millions of government dollars allocated for his company's projects into Communist Party coffers.
He also denies reports that his firm - and Yukos - help fund the Communist Party, of whose central committee he is a member, insisting that the party only holds meetings in the Rosagropromstroi building, and pays for the privilege.
"This is unforgivable disinformation spread among the voters, aimed at the party, its leaders and myself, to besmirch our name," Mr Vidmanov told The Irish Times.
He did not deny that Mr Khodorkovsky might have made donations to the party, arguing: "It is a matter for each citizen how he decides to help out." Mr Vidmanov, a bricklayer and building-site foreman in his early years, says he only earned $50,000 last year and is no "red oligarch".
"But some pretty rich people are coming to join us, as well as medium and small-scale businessmen," he says with a rumpled smile, "and they are patriotic people".
"Our entrepreneurs know that to develop their business they need to know it well, strengthen the state, observe the law and sort out their workers' problems."
Mr Vidmanov says the Communist Party wants Russia's natural resources, defence industry and rail network to be state-controlled, but supports private ownership in such sectors as machine-building, trade and light industry.
He agrees with Mr Kondaurov that the campaign against Mr Khodorkovsky is less about cleaning up business than cracking down on a critic of the Kremlin.
The former KGB man calls United Russia "an artificial party of bureaucrats and money, designed to cement the presidential power of Putin and the oligarchic system. Perhaps new oligarchs will appear in place of the old ones, but the system will remain."
On Revolution Square, between the Kremlin and Moscow's flashiest shopping street, a huddle of pensioners hold pictures of Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin and small placards lambasting Mr Putin and Russia's tycoons. "We'll take their money and then lock them up when we win power," said Valentina (62), of the new generation of "red millionaires".
Mr Gennady Boburin (70), selling Communist Party newspapers nearby, was more charitable. "We've got away from orthodox communism a bit, but in modern times the combination of politicians and entrepreneurs is logical," he said.
"They see that what we have now - wild capitalism combined with disorganisation and corruption - is just a nightmare."
Mr Kondaurov, former KGB general, looks down on Moscow from his eyrie in the Yukos building and says he wants to inject more socialism into Russia's capitalism.
Mr Vidmanov, former Soviet minister and party linchpin, still works beneath a painting of Lenin that has hung on his office wall for 30 years.
He produces a silver pocket watch with a hammer-and-sickle on the case, pops it open to reveal a white face and the silver letters CCCP, the Russian acronym for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, engraved on a little red map of the Soviet Union.
"Russia will once more be great, Soviet and socialist," Mr Vidmanov says as he raises a glass of Armenian brandy. "And only we Communists can make it so."
Dan McLaughlin is Moscow Correspondent of The Irish Times