Calculating Communists
In Moscow, on December 25, 1991, as millions celebrated Christmas in the West, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned from the presidency and the “Red Banner” flag of the Soviet Union was taken down from the Kremlin for the last time. The following day, the briefly re-named Soviet of Republics (formerly known as the Soviet of Nationalities) — the highest legislative body in the USSR — officially dissolved the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. To most historians and former Sovietologists, those monumental events — which took place in less than 48 hours — marked the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of communism in Russia. However, despite repeated and exaggerated claims of its collapse in the early 1990s, the Communist Party is in fact alive and well in Russia today, and has been for quite some time. Russia’s Communist Party remains an influential force within the Kremlin and over Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Communist Who Never Left
On February 14, 1993, roughly a year and a half after Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued various decrees officially banning the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (CP RSFSR) — Soviet Russia’s republic-level branch of the ruling Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) — Leninist adherents formed the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF). The CPRF immediately declared itself the official successor of the banned CP RSFSR. Gennady Zyuganov — a former Soviet-era protagonist, CPSU ideologue, and outspoken critic of Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost reforms — was named general secretary of the CPRF. And almost 30 years later, Zyuganov remains general secretary of the party. Zyuganov is also an elected member of the State Duma (the lower chamber of Russia’s Federal Assembly), where he leads the “opposition” Communist Party faction.
Zyuganov faced off against incumbent President Yeltsin in the 1996 election, and ran as President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent in the presidential elections of 2000, 2008, and 2012. Whereas other leaders opposed to Putin have been imprisoned or killed, Zyuganov has not. Instead, he’s been more of a friend and mentor to Putin than one would expect from an opponent. Clearly, Zyuganov is Putin’s designated and approved challenger for Russia’s staged wrestling-match-style elections. He provides faux legitimacy, boosting the image of Russia as a multi-party state. At the same time, he reinforces the image that Putin is the ruling opposition to communism and that he’s broken with his KGB past.
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