Word: prokhanov
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Back in the early 1990s, when Russia's Communists seemed to be fading into irrelevance, Gennadi Zyuganov used to visit an apartment overlooking Pushkin Square in Moscow, his arms laden with pastries and other delicacies baked by his wife. The apartment belonged to Alexander Prokhanov, a virulently nationalistic newspaper editor, and the occasion was an unlikely gathering of politicians, generals and intellectuals from the far right and far left of Russia's ideological spectrum. With little in common save a shared conviction that Boris Yeltsin was destroying the motherland, the members of Prokhanov's salon would practice running the country...
...Prokhanov says his friend is "like velvet, with no sharp edges," which is why he appeals to so many different constituencies. Because he is so flexible and cautious, as Prokhanov explains it, ''Zyuganov is the buffer, the go-between for all sides. All these political trends seem as if they're struggling with each other, but the idea of compromise is ripening within them. They need Zyuganov, and Zyuganov needs them. Having received Russia falling apart in his hands, he wants to be the one who puts it back together. Russia and Zyuganov have found each other...
Zyuganov's career as an opposition leader has been characterized by caution and measured ambition. In July 1991 he and 11 others signed an open letter titled "A Word to the People," a blistering plea to save the Soviet Union from Gorbachev's reforms. The letter, which Prokhanov wrote, marked the birth of the union between Communists and nationalists that some fear will transform Zyuganov's coalition into a Russian version of Hitler's National Socialist party. It also foreshadowed the failed coup by party hard-liners the following month. Although he proudly calls himself a "leading ideologist...
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