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Moscow Times. 20 January 2002. Dissatisfied Party Re-elects Zyuganov. MOSCOW -- The Communist Party re-elected Gennady Zyuganov as its leader Saturday, but cracks appeared in the ranks with some members suggesting selective cooperation with the Kremlin. Zyuganov was backed by all but a handful of the 300 delegates at a special congress, said Gennady Seleznyov, a Communist and the speaker of the State Duma. But Zyuganov, beaten in the last two presidential elections by Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, came under attack after his 80-minute address from some delegates who wanted a new strategy to boost their electoral chances. Mikhail Mashkovtsev, governor of the Far Eastern region of Kamchatka, said Communists should consider cooperating with Putin on "key issues" as he was sure to be re-elected in 2004. An attractive, dynamic Communist candidate was needed for 2008, he said. "Large sections of the population denounce the ills of capitalism but have no intention of going back to socialism for the moment," he said in televised remarks. "Our task, a long and difficult one, is to work on society's views for a return to a socialist form of development. You cannot achieve that merely by criticizing everything." The Communist Party gave up its constitutional monopoly on power in 1990, a year before the collapse of Soviet rule. It wins about a quarter of the vote in parliamentary elections. After an initial period of tacit backing for Putin when he took office in 2000, it is now firmly in opposition. Zyuganov accuses the president of leading the economy to ruin and yielding too much to the United States in foreign policy. "Putin in essence is surrendering the whole geopolitical space of a thousand-year-old state. At the beginning of last year nobody could dream in a nightmare that the United States would have military bases in Central Asia," Zyuganov said before the congress started. Zyuganov also criticized the government for keeping the economy dependent on oil exports and for utility tariff hikes, which he said had "essentially devaluated those slight increases gained for the workers." After the congress, called to bring party rules into line with a new law on political parties, Zyuganov dismissed any talk of a major rift. "You only get unanimous votes in a cemetery. We all want the same thing," he told reporters. He told the party the situation in Russia was "extremely serious and getting worse" and said it was "the essence of nature to make calls in favor of socialism." Delegates at the closed-door congress heard greetings from Putin wishing them a "constructive and creative meeting" and saying Russia's problems needed "the unity of efforts of all positive forces in the country." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: [email protected] EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
