Post by RedFlag32 on Nov 29, 2007 23:44:11 GMT
Lenin's heirs seek new lease of life in Russia vote
Wed Nov 28, 2007 2:57pm EST
Ninety years on from the Bolshevik revolution, Russia's Communist party will present the Kremlin with its strongest opposition challenge in Sunday's parliamentary election.
But it is a mark of the weakness of Russia's opposition that the Communists -- direct heirs to the party of Lenin and Stalin -- will at best win a quarter of the votes picked up by President Vladimir Putin's dominant United Russia party.
Party leader Gennady Zyuganov does not talk about victory in the election, just about winning enough votes to weaken the United Russia stranglehold in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
"We are certain that in the new State Duma we will be able to get an amount of seats that will actually influence politics in this country," he told a news briefing on Wednesday.
The party has a tough task. Voters have seen their incomes rise under Putin and they believe his team -- not the Communists -- is best placed to make sure the economy keeps growing.
But analysts also question whether the Communists are really interested in challenging for power in the first place.
"The Kremlin needs the Communists because this is a good way to let off steam for the disenfranchised," said Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, a think tank.
"This suits the Communist leadership very well. They are assured of the privileges ... being part of the political elite, but not in charge of policy making," Lipman said.
"It's the best of both worlds -- all of the status and none of the responsibility."
Communist parties elsewhere in eastern Europe have remodeled themselves as social democrats and sought new voters.
Russia's Communists have stuck to their roots: the party is the legal successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and portraits of Lenin still hang in party offices.
Pollsters say the core of its electorate is still made up of elderly people, now struggling on meager state pensions, who used to vote for the party in its Soviet heyday.
GREY HAIRS
On a windy afternoon in Moscow this month, around 70 party faithful -- most of them grey-haired -- donned red party aprons and stood on street corners to hand out party literature.
"I've been in the party since 1966," said 61-year-old Vladimir, a physicist who refused to give his last name, as he handed out campaign leaflets.
"It's not right the way the government treats its people now, not right that everything is in crisis, that inflation means people can't afford meat."
Party officials say the campaign is going well. They have benefited from a sharp rise in consumer prices that has dented some people's faith in Putin's economic management.
And Zyuganov has tried to tap into unease that Putin is growing too powerful. He said last month the Kremlin was trying to engineer an "authoritarian coup" to keep Putin in power after his term in office expires early next year.
Some opinion polls suggest the Communists might be the only party other than United Russia in parliament. The rest of the field are hovering on or below the 7 percent threshold to qualify for seats in the parliament.
Whatever the outcome of Sunday's vote, the Communists are unlikely to alarm the Kremlin by making inroads into its electorate.
One of the few young faces among the party activists handing out leaflets in Moscow was 18-year-old Svetlana Romanova. Dressed in a white down jacket, she was scurrying after pedestrians and trying to give them party calendars.
She said she was a committed party member but when asked to describe how her peers view the Communists she said "fuflo" -- a slang expression for "crap."
(Editing by Richard Williams)
Wed Nov 28, 2007 2:57pm EST
Ninety years on from the Bolshevik revolution, Russia's Communist party will present the Kremlin with its strongest opposition challenge in Sunday's parliamentary election.
But it is a mark of the weakness of Russia's opposition that the Communists -- direct heirs to the party of Lenin and Stalin -- will at best win a quarter of the votes picked up by President Vladimir Putin's dominant United Russia party.
Party leader Gennady Zyuganov does not talk about victory in the election, just about winning enough votes to weaken the United Russia stranglehold in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma.
"We are certain that in the new State Duma we will be able to get an amount of seats that will actually influence politics in this country," he told a news briefing on Wednesday.
The party has a tough task. Voters have seen their incomes rise under Putin and they believe his team -- not the Communists -- is best placed to make sure the economy keeps growing.
But analysts also question whether the Communists are really interested in challenging for power in the first place.
"The Kremlin needs the Communists because this is a good way to let off steam for the disenfranchised," said Maria Lipman of the Carnegie Centre in Moscow, a think tank.
"This suits the Communist leadership very well. They are assured of the privileges ... being part of the political elite, but not in charge of policy making," Lipman said.
"It's the best of both worlds -- all of the status and none of the responsibility."
Communist parties elsewhere in eastern Europe have remodeled themselves as social democrats and sought new voters.
Russia's Communists have stuck to their roots: the party is the legal successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and portraits of Lenin still hang in party offices.
Pollsters say the core of its electorate is still made up of elderly people, now struggling on meager state pensions, who used to vote for the party in its Soviet heyday.
GREY HAIRS
On a windy afternoon in Moscow this month, around 70 party faithful -- most of them grey-haired -- donned red party aprons and stood on street corners to hand out party literature.
"I've been in the party since 1966," said 61-year-old Vladimir, a physicist who refused to give his last name, as he handed out campaign leaflets.
"It's not right the way the government treats its people now, not right that everything is in crisis, that inflation means people can't afford meat."
Party officials say the campaign is going well. They have benefited from a sharp rise in consumer prices that has dented some people's faith in Putin's economic management.
And Zyuganov has tried to tap into unease that Putin is growing too powerful. He said last month the Kremlin was trying to engineer an "authoritarian coup" to keep Putin in power after his term in office expires early next year.
Some opinion polls suggest the Communists might be the only party other than United Russia in parliament. The rest of the field are hovering on or below the 7 percent threshold to qualify for seats in the parliament.
Whatever the outcome of Sunday's vote, the Communists are unlikely to alarm the Kremlin by making inroads into its electorate.
One of the few young faces among the party activists handing out leaflets in Moscow was 18-year-old Svetlana Romanova. Dressed in a white down jacket, she was scurrying after pedestrians and trying to give them party calendars.
She said she was a committed party member but when asked to describe how her peers view the Communists she said "fuflo" -- a slang expression for "crap."
(Editing by Richard Williams)