Word: zyuganov
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...challenge to the reformers comes from a restructured Communist Party that rose from oblivion to win the most votes in the Dec. 17 elections for the Duma, the national parliament. Although its 22% showing was not enough to control the Duma, it gave the party and its leader, Gennadi Zyuganov, a strong starting point in the race for the presidency--which is the real center of power in post-Soviet Russia...
Communist parties were banned in 1991, so Zyuganov joined several nationalist organizations and participated in a drive against Yeltsin, the President of Russia. When the ban was lifted in 1992, Zyuganov re-created his party and became chairman of its Central Committee, the post he still holds. He was an early supporter of the 1993 coup against Yeltsin, although he eventually disavowed violence. Today he leads a party of more than 500,000 members and a political machine with branches in every region of Russia...
...Zyuganov says the party "recognizes a mixed economy, has renounced atheism and is ready for serious political dialogue to persuade voters." That certainly does not sound like Marxist-Leninism. But there is more. The party's official program looks back longingly to Yuri Andropov, a former kgb chief and Soviet party head from 1982 to 1984, crediting him somehow with establishing "freedom of speech and freedom of political associations." As for Stalin's purges and Gulag and the corruption of the Brezhnev era, they were "mistakes" to be avoided in the future, Zyuganov says...
...party opposes privatization, but Zyuganov stops short of saying he would renationalize every industry; he does not want to scare away foreign investors. He would rebuild the shattered armed forces, and perhaps most ambitiously, he wants to re-create the Soviet Union or "a great Rus-sian state" of its former republics. Of course, he says, this must be done peacefully, in a "consistent, step-by-step voluntary way, on the basis of elections, referendums and international treaties." Meanwhile, he says, the West must not expand nato by taking in former Warsaw Pact members...
...maybe not. The results last month suggest that in the first round of voting for President in June, one of the two winners will be the Communist Party candidate, whether it is Zyuganov or someone else he decides to put forward. But who will be the other contender in the runoff? Unless the government and the splintered reform forces manage to unite in support of a single candidate, the other entry might not be Yeltsin or any other reformer. It could be the man whose party was the second favorite among Russian voters last month: Zhirinovsky...