Russian communists

[Chris Doss]

The KPRF used to support Putin a lot more than it does today. They are for
his nationalist rhetoric but against his liberal economic policy. They were
pretty vigorously against teh new Land Code (allows buying and selling of
land) and the new Labor Code which it looks is going to be passed (it's hard
not to get something the Kremlin backs passed now that the Duma has
virtually been turned into a bill-ratifying organisation).

The KPRF is a big organisation with a lot of different people in it,
including Stalinists, Social Democrats, pro small-business and
medium-business lobbyists, red-browns, pan-Slavists, lobbyists for the
agriculture industry, populists all mish-mashed together in various ways.
It's an umbrella organisation you can't really pigeonhole. It doesn't have
an ideology beyond being anti-oligarch, pro-Russia and pro-revering the
memory of the USSR. It's new speaker is a capitalist, actually, who joined
because he wants to protect Russian business from foreign competition.

They can be kind of obnoxious but are hardly dangerous. Their program used
to be on the web in English but it seems they have taken it down.

Chris Doss
The Russia Journal

--------------------------------

- -What is KPRF?s stance towards Putin?s government? Is it true that the
KPRF
now
- -is more a nationalist (with some fascist tendencies) party instead of a
socialist
- -one???

			Alexandre Fenelon