Russia’s Communist Party Dumps Veteran In Favour of Unknown “business man”

A Russia Truth exclusive article by Adam Garrie

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) has shocked many of its followers by failing to nominate long-time party leader Gennady Zyuganov as their official candidate in the 2018 Presidential election. 

Instead, the successor party to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union has decided to nominate a relatively unknown man with little political experience, called Pavel Grudinin. 

Grudinin “owns” a communist style collective farm on the outskirts of Moscow with an accompanying village where workers share the profits and live in a setting that considered ideal among traditional communists. 

The Lenin Sovkhoz is legally registered as a business, but it is internally run as a collective enterprise by the man who is now vying to be Russia’s next President.

 The Lenin Sovkhoz project

The Lenin Sovkhoz is something of an idealistic project, but it is one that is uniquely functional. The self-sustained community has schools, hospitals, modern living quarters and is a large producer of fruits and vegetables which are sold throughout Moscow. 

Perhaps oddly, the Lenin Sovkhoz is considered a “business” success story by outsiders, but for Grudinin, it is more accurately defined as a communist success story.

While Pavel Grudinin is not even formally a member of the Communist Party, he is seen as a living embodiment of the ideology. 

The biggest questions that remains are as follows: 

Is Grudinin a gimmick candidate designed to attract new attention to a party whose popularity is traditionally strongest among older Russians? Or alternatively, is he a kind of communist version of Donald Trump(if you’ll pardon the paradox)—a political outsider trying to revive life into a party whose old pro has voluntarily encouraged new blood? 

The answer appears to be a mix of the two. Gennady Zyuganov remains a towering figure in Russian politics, leading the KPRF since 1993 and contesting 6 Presidential elections in addition to leading the Communists in the State Duma. 

Indeed, if in 1996, the election wasn’t admittedly rigged by US actors in favour of the neo-liberal Boris Yeltsin, Zyuganov would have likely been the Russian President in 1996.

At 73 years of age, Gennady Zyuganov is as sharp as ever. His deep and at times professorial voice will almost certainly be heard throughout the campaign, as Russians begin to get acquainted with the younger Pavel Grudinin. 

In the election, Grudinin will face the incumbent President Vladimir Putin as well as political veteran Vladimir Zhirinovsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), as well as independents and candidates from smaller parties. 

In this respect, while people were expecting a battle of three veterans (Putin, Zhirinovsky, Zyuganov), in reality, the race between the three main parties will end up as a race between two very famous faces who will be going up against one man who likely wouldn’t be noticed on a crowded Moscow metro. 

In October of 2016, I stated publically that in future elections (both Duma elections and Presidential elections), the LDPR would emerge as the strongest challenger to United Russia—the party which endorses Vladimir Putin in the 2018 election. 

The recent battle for second place in the 2016 Duma elections was a close fight between the Communists and the LDPR, with the former just squeaking by and coming out with a few more seats than the surging LDPR. 

As Vladimir Putin is the strong favourite to win in 2018, it is likely that the Communists are testing the waters in order to better gauge what kind of candidate they should put up in future elections.

Because of the existing trend of the LDPR continuing to represent the foremost challenge to the Putin/United Russia status quo, it is increasingly likely that Vladimir Zhirinovsky will come number two in the polls, just behind the consistently popular incumbent Putin. 

In this sense, the Communists are using 2018 to test the waters for the future, while the LDPR will now push hard for a strong second place in order to convey the importance of its positions to the eventual likely winner, a man who has always listened carefully to opposition voices, President Vladimir Putin. 

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