Looking for Reds in the Communist Party

This is the first of a five-part series investigating the Communist Party, its beliefs and its aims. Tomorrow: How the party handles its history.


Gennady Zyuganov, chief of the Communist Party, was being grilled on live television. He was rattled, making mistakes, and he knew it. Pressed to say who President Zyuganov would appoint to his cabinet, Zyuganov said that decision rested with "the coalition."


Yevgeny Kiselyov, anchorman for NTV Independent Television's "Itogi," challenged that: "You as president decide [on your ministers], the cards are in your hand." Zyuganov agreed uncertainly: "The cards are in my hand, yes. But the bloc has its own laws ... we must gather together and discuss it."


Truly it was an unpresidential moment: In Russia, a country famous for its love affairs with strong leaders, Zyuganov had screwed up. Not only had he allowed a notoriously mild interviewer to bully him; he had admitted that President Zyuganov was incapable of independent decision-making.


Zyuganov has brought that 20-minute April interview up repeatedly on the campaign trail. He seems troubled by his performance and accuses Kiselyov of ambushing him. At one point, Zyuganov said former prime minister Yegor Gaidar was once backed by 60 percent of the country. Kiselyov cried, "That's not true!" Zyuganov meekly said, "Well, that's at least what I heard."


The bloc -- or in communist parlance "the collective" -- does indeed have its own laws. In 1994, Zyuganov was said repeatedly the next president ought to abolish the presidency in favor of a government of "soviets." As late as February, he was still arguing to strip the presidency of many of its powers, transferring them to a State Council that could run the country instead.


But as the June vote approaches, Zyuganov has backed away from his earlier positions One of the most popular sports of the press is to report that the communists are fighting among themselves. For example, Amurskaya Pravda, a Siberian provincial paper, recently carried a dubious report that Zyuganov had called his campaign manager, Valentin Kuptsov, "odious."


Running a close second as a media favorite are stories on the close relationship Zyuganov enjoys with the most radical elements inside and outside his party and about deals he supposedly has cut to give them powerful positions in his administration.


Dozens of lurid accounts have Zyuganov appointing retired general Albert Makashov as defense minister, or radical communist Viktor Anpilov press minister. Makashov is credited with organizing the October 1993 attack on Ostankino that resulted in over 60 deaths, Anpilov with whipping up the frenzied and bloody May 1993 demonstrations that caused the death of a policeman.


The aim is to persuade voters that if they support Zyuganov, they will find themselves ruled by radical and dangerous bolshevik fanatics. But is it true?


Zyuganov and Makashov go way back. Both were active in the National Salvation Front, a movement formed in 1992 that sought to unite communists and nationalists. But Zyuganov was never as fond of violence as Makashov. In fact, Zyuganov betrayed Makashov and his ilk in 1993, going on television to ask Russians to ignore Supreme Soviet speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov's calls for a national strike in support of "the defenders of the White House."


Anpilov is a more complicated case because he heads a neo-Stalinist movement, Working Russia, that picked up a healthy 4.53 percent of the vote in 1995's State Duma elections. Zyuganov needs those votes and Anpilov has promised to deliver them. But if Zyuganov has offered Anpilov a government post in exchange, it will surely be nothing major, for these two have absolutely nothing in common: Anpilov is a violent revolutionary, Zyuganov is not.


There would be little room for hotheads like Anpilov and Makashov in President Zyuganov's administration, and they are almost certain to remain on the fringe of power or even in disgruntled opposition.


Surprisingly, it may be more likely that some prominent Yeltsin ministers would find jobs. Keeping several on might make Zyuganov look more reasonable and moderate, and he has let a few know that they might have a future with him in power.


Zyuganov has been unfailingly flattering when speaking of Vladimir Kadannikov, the former AvtoVaz head hired to replace economic tsar Anatoly Chubais. He is also favorably disposed toward Yeltsin's nationalities minister, Vyacheslav Mikhailov. Zyuganov has repeatedly suggested Yeltsin make Mikhailov a deputy prime minister and put him in charge of executing a Chechen peace plan.


But none of these figures would wield real power in a Zyuganov government. His collective -- the bloc, with its laws that must be followed -- is peopled by other figures, not all of whom are party members.





The Nationalists


Ever since his National Salvation Front days, Zyuganov has worked hard to meld communists and nationalists into a single force. Fittingly, his collective is fractured along those lines: those who are old guard communists, those who are nationalists and those who are neither.


The nationalists are closest to Zyuganov. Chief among them is Alexei Podberyozkin, who heads an organization called Spiritual Heritage and who, although not a communist, was nevertheless elected to the Duma on the Communist Party list. Podberyozkin and Spiritual Heritage played a prominent role in writing Zyuganov's presidential platform, which mentions the Fatherland 19 times, yet the word "communism" just once.


Two other nationalists close to Zyuganov are Yury Belov, a Communist Party deputy in the Duma and prolific Pravda contributor whose writings link socialism and nationalism as twin pillars of the Russian experience; and Alexander Prokhanov, editor of the anti-Semitic nationalist newspaper Zavtra.


These nationalists greatly influence Zyuganov, who believes that "combining the national-patriotic idea and idea of social justice is one of the main tasks facing this country."


Zyuganov is thus unlikely to be friendly to such traditional Russian scapegoats as Jews, the West and peoples from the Caucasus. Newspapers sympathetic to the KPRF have already carried articles praising the 1944 deportation of the Chechens, while Zyuganov has done nothing to rein in the anti-Semitism of Prokhanov's Zavtra, where he sits on the editorial board.


Asked once his opinion of anti-Semitic literature distributed at nationalist and communist rallies, Zyuganov said he deplored nationalism in all its forms -- and then cited Israel's persecution of the Palestinians and the United States' treatment of American Indians as nationalism gone bad.





The New Apparat


But while the Podberyozkin-Prokhanov-Belov troika is close to Zyuganov's heart and greatly influences his thinking, a second faction holds most of the formal levers of power within the party. This faction is headed by easily the most powerful figure within the communist hierarchy aside from Zyuganov, Valentin Kuptsov.


When Yeltsin outlawed the then Russian Communist Party in November 1991, Kuptsov was its chief. Kuptsov immediately sued to overturn Yeltsin's decree, and the so-called Trial of the Century was born: a hearing at the Constitutional Court that opponents of communism hoped to transform into a Nuremburg-style proceeding. But Kuptsov, working closely with comrade Viktor Zorkaltsev, marshalled a successful defense, and the November 1992 verdict struck down Yeltsin's decree, opening the door for a communist revival. Kuptsov immediately set about organizing one.


Zyuganov was also active in the Trial of the Century, working closely with Kuptsov and Zorkaltsev. But at the same time he was instrumental in forming the National Salvation Front and the Russian National Assembly (Sobor). So while Kuptsov seemed the logical leader of the new communists, Zyuganov was chosen at a congress in February 1993 to head the new KPRF -- largely out of recognition for his more visible efforts uniting nationalists and communists.


Kuptsov has remained loyal to Zyuganov, and Zyuganov has rewarded him by granting him practically unlimited powers to run the Communist Party's regional structures.


"Zyuganov is an ideologue, he is occupied with his nationalist theories. Kuptsov is not an ideologue, but he is a magnificent organizer, and Zyuganov lets him do that. He has given him enormous powers to run things," said Sergei Markov of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who is writing a book about Zyuganov and the party. "As far as I know they have a very good working relationship."


Today Kuptsov is officially in charge of Zyuganov's presidential campaign. Podberyozkin is his assistant, and Spiritual Heritage handles much of the public relations. Yet Kuptsov is also the de facto head of a social democratic wing of the KPRF. It is not a popular current within the rank and file -- it smacks too much of Gorbachev's "socialism with a human face" -- but many of the party's leaders subscribe to it, including Zorkaltsev, Duma speaker Gennady Seleznyov and KPRF ideology chief Alexander Shabanov, who lectures on Marx and Lenin at Moscow State University.





The Old Guard


Kuptsov and Seleznyov wield real, formal power in the party, controlling the Duma and the regions. But a group of old guard hawks who are anything but social democrats wield a different, more intangible sort of power. Chief among them is Anatoly Lukyanov, who chaired the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in Gorbachev's day and was one of the main architects of the August 1991 failed coup. Close behind Lukyanov are Yury Maslyukov and Nikolai Ryzhkov: Maslyukov was the last head of GosPlan, the organization that planned the Soviet Union's command economy, while Ryzhkov was Gorbachev's prime minister and turned against him during the coup.


Today Ryzhkov heads Power to the People, a loyal little sister of the KPRF that earned 1.61 percent of the 1995 parliamentary elections. Maslyukov heads the Duma's committee for economic policy. But in the rarified atmosphere of Russia's new communists, such old guard officials carry an authority earned in their Soviet days that is difficult to quantify.


Another old-timer and coup martyr is retired general Valentin Varennikov, who commanded the army during the coup attempt and did time with Lukyanov. Varennikov has earned fame for his widely reported claim that the Communist Party has a secret "maximum program" it would institute following a Zyuganov victory, but he does not enjoy Lukyanov's stature.


Zyuganov is not an economist. For now he seems content to let the hardliners and the social democrats -- the Lukyanov-Maslyukov-Ryzhkov troika and the Kuptsov-Zorkaltsev-Seleznyov troika -- duke it out over economic policy. But it seems the hardliners have the upper hand at the moment. If Seleznyov once spoke of building Swedish socialism in Russia, he has since disavowed social democracy, as has Zyuganov. Maslyukov has been put in charge of developing the KPRF's economic anti-crisis program, which they have been unveiling in dribbles for months; according to Kuptsov, Maslyukov is the KPRF's economic "brigadier."





Zyuganov at the Helm


Arguments could be made for other figures in Zyuganov's circle. Markov believes the Communist Party leader will be beholden to spies and sitting generals who still remain secret for obvious reasons. Certainly Viktor Ilyukhin, who heads the Duma's committee for security and has close ties with the security services and the military, would wield influence and earn a high post in a Zyuganov administration.


Zyuganov often cites Svetlana Goryacheva and Aman Tuleyev, who held the No. 2 and 3 spots on the Communist Party's Duma list. Both are popular among voters in key regions -- Goryacheva is from the Far East, Tuleyev from the coal mining Kuzbass -- so dropping their names helps the cause.


But in all the talk of collective rule, it is important to remember that Zyuganov has consistently run a tight ship and has crushed all challengers. Among a wide field of nationalists, Zyuganov's political successes have so far been surpassed only by Vladimir Zhirinovsky's. Among communists, he is unrivaled. He took the party away from Kuptsov in 1993, defeating Anpilov at the same time.


In 1994, the KPRF formed an umbrella group called Accord for Russia, which was yet another effort to unite opposition to Yeltsin. Alexander Rutskoi, the charismatic former vice president, sought to take it over and use it as a platform for a 1996 presidential campaign. Today Rutskoi backs Zyuganov. That same year, press reports suggested Lukyanov and another coup plotter, Oleg Shenin -- who is more a radical Anpilovite than a brooding old-timer -- attempted to unseat Zyuganov. Today, Shenin is persona non grata, while Lukyanov, like the others, follows Zyuganov.


In 1996, Pyotr Romanov, a prominent Siberian communist and a Hero of Socialist Labor, was yanked back by the party when he tried to run against Zyuganov for the presidency. Tuleyev is running, but has promised to step aside in Zyuganov's favor at the last minute. No one who saw Tuleyev and Zyuganov campaigning together in the Urals can doubt Tuleyev will do so. When the two candidates toured a museum there, both were urged to sign the visitor book. Zyuganov wrote a flowery, complimentary note. Tuleyev, with great reluctance and only after much urging by the museum staff, wrote in tiny letters beneath Zyuganov's signature, "Aman Tuleyev."


The bloc may have its laws, but one of them at the moment is that Zyuganov is in charge of it. He runs a tight ship, has picked his team and will sail through the elections -- perhaps into power -- with the same crew. If he loses, expect mutiny.