Tech-savvy young Communists vow to hammer Putin
The party of Stalin has taken on a new guise after elections cast it as the main opposition to Kremlin
UNDER the bright lights of a Burger King restaurant in a Moscow suburb, a rising star in the Russian Communist Party dips his chicken nuggets in sauce.
Yevgeny Stupin, 38, a member of the capital’s city council, does not look or sound much like your archetypal Russian communist.
There is no hammer and sickle brooch, and you won’t find him clutching at red carnations at the Lenin mausoleum. He is more likely to appear on the social media platform TikTok, espousing better relations with the West and railing against local corruption in bitesize videos.
This is the Communist Party 2.0 and last weekend it won its greatest number of seats in Russian elections in over a decade. “People voted for me not because they strive for Communism,” Mr Stupin, dressed in jeans and a chunky knit sweater, said. “Most voters want lawmakers who will fight for their rights in their constituency.”
Russian Communists emerged as the main anti-Kremlin force in last week’s elections, having secured the backing of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Their victory is not about rekindling collective ownership. With most opposition marginalised or banned, the Communist Party is a haven for grassroots activists who do not care much for Communist ideals or the Soviet past.
That puts the newly-elected partly at odds with their septuagenarian leaders engaged in a balancing act of not crossing Vladimir Putin while attracting protest voters. Mr Stupin does not parrot the party’s leaders when asked about the president. He readily attacked the 68-year-old president, who is known to eschew gadgets and even the internet.
“Old people like himself bring him print-outs, and he can’t even doublecheck them by googling. How can you make decisions like that?” The Communists are going through a major generational change: at least a third of their regional chapters are led by activists in their early 30s.
Mr Stupin, who was eight when the Soviet Union collapsed, spent a decade working as an investigator when he moved to Nekrasovka, a Moscow suburb offering affordable housing.
His wife started to complain about the unbearable stench from a waste incinerator a few miles away. Two years later, he was a leading activist looking for a party nomination before beating the Kremlin candidate.
Many opposition-minded voters see Communists like Mr Stupin as a sound choice for social justice, while overlooking recent attempts by Communist leaders to recast Josef Stalin as a hero.
Mr Stupin, who condemns Stalin’s repressions, admits to schism within the party between those “toeing the Stalinist line” and “those who stand for socialism and equality.”
In Moscow’s affluent south-west, another up-and-coming Left-wing politician mounted an impressive Communist campaign for parliament this summer. Mikhail Lobanov, 37, initially avoided using red in his leaflets and put the hammer and sickle down the page. “We wanted to reach out to people so that they would first understand what we stand for,” Mr Lobanov said.
The lecturer’s campaign focused on heritage preservation and exposing corruption. He was beating a Kremlin TV anchor by five per cent before returns from e-voting came in on Monday, handing the Kremlin candidate victory.
Overnight e-voting results that wiped wins for a dozen Communist candidates in Moscow have been described as blatant fraud. The Communist Party has refused to recognise the results in Moscow and demanded a recount.