Voters spurn Communist Party
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MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Russia's Communist Party, banned then reborn in the chaos of the 1990s, faced a second death on Monday after voters spurned nostalgic appeals to the red flag and the Soviet past.
Gennady Zyuganov, party leader for the last decade, accused the Kremlin of fixing results of Sunday's parliamentary poll and manipulating media to promote President Vladimir Putin's allies and "silence" the communists.
"You are all participants here in a revolting spectacle which for some reason is called an election," he declared.
His complaints of media bias have the ring of truth. State-run media lauded the pro-Putin United Russia party, which garnered almost 40 percent of the vote, and gave short shrift to communists.
But Zyuganov's protests were unlikely to salvage the party in its present form which has surrendered its position as biggest group in the Duma lower house, its share of the vote falling to about 12 percent from 24 per cent in 1999.
Zyuganov's embrace of market reforms has always appeared a fraught affair. He failed to convince emerging middle classes to accept him, but in courting wealthy businessmen did enough to alienate core voters, veteran communists and the poor.
"My father would tell me there's nothing like the Soviet Union and never will be," he told factory workers on a campaign trip to the Volga river industrial town of Tver last week. His father, he said, was right.
Alexander Prokhanov, editor of the pro-communist Zavtra daily, said he now expected "quite dramatic" developments.
"I believe there will be an internal split, an explosion within the Communist Party, and the powerful, Soviet-style socialist ferment will yield to a faded and flabby social democracy," he told local television.
The Duma elected on Sunday will likely be dominated by United Russia and nationalist allies.
The Communist Party has been under siege for the past decade by parties Zyuganov says have been set up as part of a plot to siphon off the communist vote. First came the passionately anti-communist ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, preying on the disillusioned in the ranks.
The Agrarian Party took some of its rural voters; then only three months ago, the socialist-nationalist Motherland (Rodina) party appeared from nowhere to draw off communist votes and win some nine percent in the Duma poll.
The old Russian Communist Party was killed off with the stroke of a presidential pen in 1991 after a failed hardline communist coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. The reborn party would be more likely to fade away in its present form as the political landscape of Russia changes.
Copyright 2003
Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
