Communists Play Second Fiddle

Communist leader Gennady A. Zyuganov, perspiration beading on his forehead, climbed down from the speaker’s platform Wednesday after a speech urging the government’s resignation, and posed with elderly supporters. It had been a fair-sized May Day rally, yet there still was a sense of futility written on his ruddy face.

Although tens of thousands of people had turned out under sunny skies for the party’s annual march, there was little evidence of the seething anger that Communists claim is stirring in Russian society.

And there was little reason to believe that the demonstration would change anything.

“The government has deteriorated into a criminal dictatorship that imposes conditions of banditry all across the country,” Zyuganov told The Times before stomping away behind a phalanx of bodyguards. “The conduct of the government is supported by 5-10% of the population at most.”

Be that as it may, pro-Kremlin parties and trade unions loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin brought more than 100,000 people to Red Square, dwarfing the 40,000 or so supporters that the Communists could muster to their meeting in front of the nearby Bolshoi Theater.

Increasingly, the Communists style themselves as the only real opposition voice in Russia, saying most other groups have been co-opted into a broad coalition directed by Putin’s Kremlin. But even die-hard Communists wonder whether anybody is listening to their demands and whether their party, Russia’s largest with more than 500,000 members, is capable of standing up to Putin.

Zyuganov said he believes that in general the country “is waking up” and showing more active opposition to Putin. But he did not sound very convinced, nor did many of the people who attended Wednesday’s rally.

“I don’t really see results,” said Vladimir Derevyansky, a 38-year-old physics teacher from Kharkiv, Ukraine, who is working in Russia. “This is miserably too few people for such a big city.”

The teacher, attired in a frayed shirt and plastic-rimmed spectacles, said issues being raised by Communists--corruption, high prices, the collapse of industry and education, and the loss of the country’s prestige--are important to most citizens, especially those living outside Moscow. And yet, few bother to demonstrate.

He said it only shows how firmly Putin’s people have control of the situation: “They have managed not only to fool the people, but to turn them into zombies.”

Since Putin assumed the presidency in 2000, he and his allies have worked to reduce chaos in the countryside and impose discipline on the news media, regional governors, big industries and wayward tycoons. The pro-Putin political bloc has an effective majority in parliament, and has enacted several economic measures, including private land sales, a 13% flat income tax and a new labor code that were anathema to the Communists.

Irina Pishchikova, a 50-year-old oil industry engineer at the Zyuganov rally, said she was not sure the current Communist Party leadership was up to the challenge of providing an alternative to Putin’s camp.

“I think it has exhausted itself as an opposition already,” she said. “Oh, there are honest people in the party, but I am talking about the leaders--they have been too well fed by the authorities. It is time to let the younger people run it.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.