Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov (; born 26 June 1944) is a Russian politician who has been the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation since 1993 and a member of the State Duma since 1994. He is also the chair of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001. Zyuganov ran for President of Russia four times, most controversially in 1996, when he lost in the second round to Boris Yeltsin.
Early life and education
Zyuganov was born in Mymrino, a farming village in Oryol Oblast, on 26 June 1944. The son and grandson of schoolteachers, he followed in their footsteps. His father fought at the Soviet-German front of WWII and returned home with serious injuries. After graduating from a secondary school, his first job was working there for one year as a physics teacher in 1961.
In 1962, Gennady enrolled into the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute. From 1963 to 1966, he served in a Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Intelligence unit of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany. Zyuganov joined the Communist Party in 1966.
He returned to the teachers' college in 1966. Three years older than most members of his class, he was already a party member and a popular college athlete. On his return, he married his wife, Nadezhda. He completed his degree in 1969.
CPSU career
Zyuganov taught mathematics but soon turned to Communist Party of the Soviet Union work in Oryol Oblast, beginning in 1967. He became the First Secretary of the local Komsomol and the regional chief for ideology and propaganda. He emerged as a popular politician in the area. Among many other functions, Zyuganov organized parties and dances as a local Komsomol leader while he was rising through the ranks of the party. Zyuganov rose to be second secretary, or second in command, of the party in Oryol.
He enrolled at an elite party school in Moscow, the Academy of Social Sciences in 1978, completing his doctor nauk, a post-doctoral degree, in 1980. He then returned to Oryol to become regional party chief for ideology and propaganda until 1983. In 1983, he was given a high-level position in Moscow as an instructor in the Communist Party propaganda department.
The oligarchs set aside their differences and held several private meetings in Davos hotel rooms, where they strategized how to defeat the perceived Zyuganov threat. The result was the "Davos pact", an agreement between Chubais and the oligarchs that he would lead an anti-Communist campaign against Zyuganov, that they agreed to fund. The subsequent months saw a massive media offensive as "money poured into advertising campaigns, into regional tours, into bribing journalists", all supported by the oligarchs who owned the major media. Yeltsin's subsequent victory in that election can be traced back to the events that took place in Davos between Chubais and those Russian oligarchs. At a meeting with opposition leaders in 2012, then-president Dmitry Medvedev was reported to have said, "There is hardly any doubt who won [that race]. It was not Boris Nikolaevich Yeltsin."
After 1996 election
After the December 1999 parliamentary elections, the number of Communist seats in the Duma was reduced. Communist support started to decline, given the widespread electoral support at the time for the government's invasion of Chechnya in September 1999 and the popularity of Yeltsin's new prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who was widely seen as Yeltsin's heir apparent.
2000 presidential campaign
Zyuganov placed a distant second behind Vladimir Putin in the March 2000 presidential election.
After 2000 election
thumb|[[Vladimir Putin and Zyuganov]]
thumb|[[Dmitry Medvedev and Zyuganov]]
Zyuganov has additionally served as the Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties – Communist Party of the Soviet Union (UCP-CPSU) since 2001, replacing Oleg Shenin.
In November 2001, in an open letter to Putin ahead of the summit between the US and Russian presidents in the United States, Zyuganov said that Russia was betraying its national interests. "It is blindly following US policy which has been characterized recently by open aggression". Zyuganov criticized Putin for his decision the previous month to close a Cuban listening post that eavesdropped on US communications and a key naval base in Vietnam, as well as Russian support for Washington using bases in former Soviet Uzbekistan and Tajikistan for its Afghan strikes. "Russia's national state and national interests may be betrayed" at the upcoming summit between Putin and US President George W. Bush, Zyuganov warned.
On 23 September 2003, Zyuganov sent a deputy request to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, in which he demanded to initiate an administrative case against Putin as an official of category "A" and to fine him in the amount of 22,500 rubles for conducting election campaigning outside the campaign period of the United Russia party. However, the Chairman of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, Alexander Veshnyakov, and the Chairman of the Federation Council, Sergey Mironov, objected that they did not see anything illegal in the President's speech. The head of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation tried to file a complaint with higher authorities, but not a single court examined the complaint on its merits.
In 2004, Zyuganov declined to run against Putin, who secured a landslide reelection victory.
2008 presidential campaign
In October 2005, Zyuganov indicated that he would run for president in 2008, making him the second person to enter the race for the Kremlin following former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. According to one report, Zyuganov pledged to quadruple pensions and state salaries, should he be elected.
In the presidential election on 2 March 2008, Zyuganov garnered 17.76% of the vote and came in second to Medvedev's 70.23%.
Post-2008
On Zyuganov's 65th birthday in June 2009, the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin presented him with a copy of the first Soviet edition of the Communist Manifesto. On the occasion of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's birthday on 21 December 2010, Zyuganov called for the re-Stalinization of Russian society in an open letter to President Medvedev.
After Putin's annual address to parliament on 20 April 2011, Zyuganov criticised it as inadequate in dealing with Russia's economic decline and warned that, "If the [parliamentary and presidential] elections are as dirty as before, the situation will develop along the North African scenario." Zyuganov denounced election irregularities in the Russian legislative election of 2011 but also expressed his opposition to the organizers of the mass demonstrations of December 2011 who he viewed as liberals who exploited unrest.
thumb|right|270px|Communist protesters with a sign portraying an "order of dismissal" for [[Vladimir Putin for "betrayal of the national interests", Moscow, 1 May 2012.]]
Zyuganov is a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, but states that his recipes for Russia's future are true to his Soviet roots. Zyuganov hopes to renationalise all major industries and he believes the USSR was "the most humane state in human history". On 29 November 2008, in his speech before the 13th Party Congress, Zyuganov made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in:
<blockquote>Objectively, Russia's position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the "heroic efforts" of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. Our country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation. The ruling group has neither notable successes to boast of, nor a clear plan of action. All its activities are geared to a single goal: to stay in power at all costs. Until recently it has been able to keep in power due to the "windfall" high world prices for energy. Its social support rests on the notorious "vertical power structure" which is another way of saying intimidation and blackmail of the broad social strata and the handouts that power chips off the oil and gas pie and throws out to the population in crumbs, especially on the eve of elections.</blockquote>
The CPRF cherishes the rule of Joseph Stalin. Zyuganov and the party support social conservatism and voted in favor of the ban on the "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors", commonly known as the Russian gay propaganda law.
2012 presidential campaign
right|thumb|Zyuganov campaigning on [[Red Square]]
In September 2011, Zyuganov again became the CPRF's candidate for the 2012 presidential election. According to Zyuganov, "a gang of folks who cannot do anything in life apart from dollars, profits and mumbling, has humiliated the country" and called for a new international alliance to "counter the aggressive policies of imperialist circles."
In the 2012 Russian presidential election on 4 March 2012, Zyuganov once again came in second place by receiving 17% of the vote.
Political views
thumb|Zyuganov in the background of [[Nikolay Kharitonov meeting with Zhang Hanhui in June 2021]]
thumb|Zyuganov, [[Alexey Nechayev and Leonid Slutsky at the "Russia-Africa" parliamentary conference in Moscow on 20 March 2023]]
thumb|Zyuganov receiving the [[Order of Alexander Nevsky from Vladimir Putin in 2014]]
According to Zyuganov, Jesus Christ was the first communist, stating that the Bible may be read through a socialist perspective.
After Russia was sanctioned for systematic doping in the run-up to the 2018 Winter Olympics, Zyuganov proposed sending Russian fans to the Games with a Soviet Victory Banner.
He is considered by Russian scholars as a neo-Eurasianist.
Reacting to the death of Mikhail Gorbachev in August 2022, Zyuganov declared Gorbachev was a leader whose rule brought "absolute sadness, misfortune and problems [for] all the peoples of our country".
In April 2026, Zyuganov warned that worsening economic conditions in Russia, including high inflation and declining living standards, could trigger unrest in the population.
Ukraine
Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the CPRF published a statement in support of the invasion and accused NATO of planning "to enslave Ukraine" and thus creating "critical threats to the security of Russia". It called for the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine.
The party officially supported the state-promoted narrative that Ukraine is governed by Ukrainian Banderites and "neo-Nazis", who have been allegedly perpetrating genocide against Russian speakers of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, and liberating Russian forces. The CPRF also accused the United States and NATO of deploying European fascist sympathizers and Middle Eastern terrorists to Ukraine to fight the Russian army. Two members out of 57 of CPRF's Duma caucus, Vyacheslav Markhayev and Mikhail Matveev, have expressed opposition to the war, although they support the "protection of the people of Donbass".
Some younger members of the CPRF spoke publicly against the war, condemning it as "imperialist" and contrary to Marxist–Leninist principles. In September 2022, Zyuganov called in the State Duma for a general mobilization.
Personal life
His wife, Nadezhda Zyuganova (née Amelicheva) graduated from History Department of Oryol Pedagogical Institute. They have two children: Andrey (1968) and Tatyana (1974). They have seven grandsons and one granddaughter.
Sanctions
In February 2022, Zyuganov, who voted for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, was placed on the sanctions list by the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union.
Electoral history
See also
- Architect amidst the Ruins
- A Word to the People
References
External links
- Official site Gennady Zyuganov
- The Communist Party of Russia
- Gennady Zyuganov's speech at the 13th Party Congress, SRAS
- Communism and the CPRF in Modern Russia, SRAS