Stalinist Bloc Woos Voters With Old Images
By Sarah Karush, Staff Writer
Moscow – It has been 43 years since Nikita Khrushchev toppled the cult of personality, but suddenly Stalin's portrait is popping up everywhere.
On posters and billboards across the city, the mustachioed generalissimo gazes out at voters – who will find his name among the parties on the ballot for State Duma elections Dec. 19.
The Stalinist Bloc for the USSR, led by Viktor Anpilov, Stanislav Terekhov and Stalin's grandson Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, is banking on the once-revered leader's reputation to carry them past the 5 percent barrier into the lower house.
"It is our obligation not only to lift up Stalin's name as an icon but to revive the true essence of his epoch," Anpilov, perhaps the best-known of Russia's radical communists, said at a news conference last Thursday.
It may not be such a bad campaign strategy. According to a September poll by the Public Opinion Foundation that put historical figures on a hypothetical ballot along with contemporary political figures, 7 percent of the country would choose Stalin for president.
Anpilov's bloc came within an inch of victory during the last Duma elections when it received 4.53 percent of the vote. And while Anpilov was open about his fondness for Stalin even then, the name of his bloc had yet to include the word "Stalinist," and he had not yet teamed up with Dzhugashvili – who bears a strong resemblance to his grandfather.
Dzhugashvili, 63, is valuable to the bloc mostly for his lineage and last name – also Stalin's before he adopted his nom de guerre. Before teaming up with Anpilov, he headed an organization devoted to defending Stalin's name but was not active in politics. He was quiet for most of last Thursday's news conference.
Anpilov, a former radio correspondent in Nicaragua, and Terekhov, who leads the Union of Officers, were both jailed in 1993 for their roles in that year's parliamentary uprising. After spending a few months in Lefortovo Prison, they were amnestied along with other coup leaders.
The group called the news conference in honor of Stalin's 120th birthday, which falls on Dec. 21 and which the bloc will formally celebrate at a congress in Moscow on Saturday.
The bloc supports resurrecting the Soviet Union, undoing the results of privatization and punishing those involved, and abolishing the presidency and other executive offices.
Dzhugashvili used his short speech to speak out against the government's decision two years ago to remove the nationality clause from internal passports.
"Nationality should be written [in one's passport]. Russian, Chuvash, or Tatar. What is there to be ashamed of? It's simply the further destruction of our state!" he said. Under Stalin, an ethnic Georgian, minorities were Russified, Volga Germans and Chechens were exiled to Kazakhstan, and Jews were targeted in the purges.
As far as history goes, Dzhugashvili said there is a lot of exaggeration where Stalin is concerned.
"Look at the truth, not the fantasies that have been purposely invented about these 'repressions,'" he said. "There are people who really suffered, but there are others who are just confused. They need to be told the truth."
The Stalinist Bloc has several prominent billboards in Moscow – an unheard-of luxury for a fringe party. It is unclear where the money for such advertising is coming from, but one possibility is that it is funded by people who want to take votes away from the main Communist Party.
It also looks like Anpilov & Co. have learned from past mistakes. According to a paper by Tatyana Shavshukova published by the Panorama Research Center, in 1995 Anpilov did not think his bloc had a good chance of getting into the Duma by party list. Thus, the bloc's activists focused most of their efforts on the single-mandate districts where they were running. In the end, only one single-mandate candidate made it into the Duma.
Shavshukova suggests that had Anpilov focused more energy on the general party list campaign, he would have had a better shot at a Duma seat.
But Boris Kagarlitsky, a leftist analyst at the Institute of Comparative Politics, said that despite the apparent financial backing and Stalin's name, the bloc may have a hard time beating its 1995 performance. While Stalin remains popular in some circles, Kagarlitsky said true Stalinists would likely vote for Gennady Zyuganov's Communist Party, the successor to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
"The typical Stalinist is disciplined and will follow the Party. Even if the Party is wrong, he'll vote for the Party," he said.
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Carl
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