COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

Communist Party of the Russian Federation: translation

(KPRF)

Political party. Known in Russian as theKommunisticheskaia partiia Rossiskoi federatsii, the KPRF is the political successor to the bannedCommunist Party of the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Party. Out of the ashes of the banned Communist Party of theRussian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,Gennady Zyuganovestablished the party in 1993, with the help of Sovietera politiciansYegor LigachevandAnatoly Lukyanov. Under the influence of Zyuganov, the party marriedMarxism-Leninismwith nationalism, sometimes called popular patriotism.Anti-Semitism, neo-Slavophilism, andStalinworship are also evident in the party platform, which shares certain attributes with other “great power” (Derzhava) political parties.

The ideologueAleksandr Duginexercised influence over the party during its early days, thus injecting a strain ofneo-Eurasianisminto the KPRF’s approach to domesticpoliticsandforeign relations. The Communist Party, like other ultranationalist parties, pays lip service to the restoration of Russia’s historical boundaries, including reincorporation of thenear abroadand abrogation of theBelavezha Accords.The KPRF is stridently anti–North Atlantic Treaty Organization(NATO) and is particularly suspicious of British and American foreign policy; anti-globalizationis also part of the party platform. On the domestic front, the party supports freeeducationandhealth care, an end to labor “parasitism,” collective rights and security, and the ultimate realization of Communism as the future of mankind. In order to obtain these goals, the KPRF advocates ending the mafia’s alleged control over the state andeconomy, terminating Russia’s forced capitalization, and introducing state regulation of all major economic sectors. While the newly formed KPRF fared rather poorly against Russia’s other political parties, particularly theLiberal Democratic Party of Russia(LDPR), in the 1993State Dumaelections, Zyuganov turned the Communists into the country’s most popular party by 1995 when the KPRF outpaced its nearest rival by more than two-to-one, taking 157 of the Duma’s 450 seats. The Communists were especially popular in the so-calledRed Belt, a band of regions in southern European Russia that favored continued subsidies of health care, support for localindustry, and restrictions onforeign tradeandinvestment.

In the1996 presidential election, Zyuganov emerged as the early front-runner asBoris Yeltsinscrambled to regain his earlier popularity. The KPRF established theRussian All-People’s Unionas a leftist umbrella organization in order to increase Zyuganov’s influence at the national level. Only after a hard-fought campaign, in which forces allied with the Kremlin—including theoligarchsand regional governors—branded the Communists as warmongers andchekists(secret police), and a second round of elections did Yeltsin emerge victorious over Zyuganov.

The KPRF continued its electoral success in the 1999 Duma poll, winning more than 24 percent of the vote, though the party obtained fewer seats than in 1995. With the ascent ofVladimir Putin, the Communists’ popularity suffered, particularly in the 2003 parliamentary elections. Putin’s use of Potemkin parties, a pliantmedia, and theterroristthreat allowed him to effectively sideline the KPRF. Recognizing the futility of running against the popular president, Zyuganov sat out the 2004 elections, throwing the KPRF’s support behind theAgrarianParty’s Nikolay Kharitonov. The party also suffered from several high-profile defections and attempts to split its constituency, though the KPRF has remained the largest opposition party in the country through the first decade of the new millennium. Zyuganov returned to presidential politics in 2008, running againstDmitry Medvyedev; he claimed a respectable 17.8 percent of the vote. Since the 2008–2009global financial crisis, Zyuganov’s popularity and influence are on the rise, and Prime Minister Putin has taken an increasingly conciliatory position toward the KPRF. Party membership exceeds 500,000, with nearly 20,000 new members joining annually. However, unlike the LDPR, the Communists tend to be older on average. The party has a well-developed media arm, including newspapers and radio.