Who are the Russian communists today?

The membership got younger, the party became active on social networks and gained some popularity

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Photo: BBC
Photo: BBC
Disclaimer: The translations are mostly done through AI translator and might not be 100% accurate.

Since its foundation 30 years ago, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) has been an opponent of the current government.

The party was on a downward trajectory for a long time - the members were getting older and losing positions in the legislative bodies, and the party's post-Soviet rhetoric and style of politics did not appeal to the youth.

However, recently there have been changes - the membership has become younger, the party has become active on social networks and gained a certain popularity.

Thus, the party came under pressure from the authorities, and the third man on the KPRF electoral list, Pavel Grudinin not allowed to participate in parliamentary elections.

The BBC Russian service explains what the KPRF looks like today and what its members are fighting for.

'The parliamentary candidate must be ready to end up in prison'

About forty people are sitting in a small hall in the center of Moscow, properly respecting physical distance.

At the head of the table sits the former governor of the Irkutsk Region, Sergey Levchenko, a handsome man in a suit, and behind him is a KPRF banner.

All this is happening before the parliamentary elections in Russia, which were held between September 17 and 19, and in which the KPRF won 18.93 percent of the vote and came in second place, after the ruling United Russia party.

Levchenko is preparing to speak about the communists coming to power in Russia after the Second World War, but also the question of how the communists can win the elections and what they should do after that.

He talks about successes in agriculture, industrial achievements, investments.

Then he looks at the political pressures - his son, also a member of the KPRF Andrey Levchenko, was accused of fraud and is in prison.

"If you run in the elections, you must be ready to end up in prison!" were the words of the next speaker, the nationalist Dmitry Demushkin, whom the moderator presents as "a comrade from the other political wing".

Before he went out in front of the audience, Demushkin gave me his phone and asked me to take a picture of him with the communist flag.

Demushkin knows very well what he is talking about - he spent two and a half years in prison on charges of extremism.

Another "comrade from the other political wing" is the monarchist and nationalist Aleksandr Krasnov, who begins his speech with the words "Gentlemen".

"Comrades!", the whole hall corrects him in chorus.

"I can hardly say that word," he apologizes.

"Let it be - citizens! People!” he corrects himself.

The neck of seventy-two-year-old colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, who is sitting in front of me, is slowly starting to redden.

Kvachkov is a former colonel of the GRU military intelligence service and was once arrested for the attempted assassination of politician Anatoly Chubais.

He is not a member of the KPRF, but he is an honored and valued guest at numerous party events. He gets up and marches to the lectern.

"Look, everyone here is talking about elections, elections... We need to participate, devise strategies, we need to fight, I can't understand...", he begins moderately, and then his voice takes on a cold, commanding tone.

"What's wrong with you, are you all crazy?! What kind of black election? The land was occupied by our enemies," he says.

Kvačkov was escorted from the lectern with applause, and in his place a blonde with curly hair, in a low-cut blouse, calmly walked out.

"Comrades! Let's talk about smart voting," he smiles broadly.

'Too flashy'

It was thanks to the smart voting of Yekaterina Yengalicheva that she got into the Moscow City Duma ahead of the KPRF.

She was only nine years old when Gennady Zyuganov, the current lifetime leader of the KPRF, together with the first secretary of the Main Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Valentin Kuptsov, founded the party.

The KPRF emerged after Boris Yeltsin banned the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Jengaličeva belongs to the generation of members who did not have a ceremonial reception into the party - after the collapse of the USSR, the communists declared the accession ceremony unnecessary.

This decision, she says, upset her and the other children, because she desperately wanted a ruby-colored badge in the shape of a star with curly Lenin on it.

KPRF, the second largest party in Russia, and according to party data, has about 150 activists

Today they describe themselves as "KPRF - a party of patriots and internationalists, which stands for friendship between peoples and the protection of Russian civilization".

In the early nineties, the Communists were a radical and sometimes almost illegal party.

After the armed conflict between the president and the Supreme Council in 1993, in which the communists were directly involved, the party was banned, although it did not last long.

KPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov entered the second round of elections in 1996 together with President Boris Yeltsin.

After that, the communists long disputed the defeat of their leader, saying that they did not go out in mass protests only because they did not want to start a civil war.

Then the KPRF had an impressive representation in the Duma (first place in the number of mandates in the country in 2000) and directed its efforts towards cooperation with the ruling party.

From election to election, losing the electorate and dropping out, KPRF MPs voted more and more often as the government directed, and mass protests became a thing of the past.

In 2014, the KPRF fully supported Putin's annexation of Crimea.

However, in recent years, everything has started to change, and Jengaličeva regularly participates in protest events and even organizes them.

We are sitting in a restaurant across the street from the capital's parliament.

Yekaterina Jengalič's curls are still flawless, and she is making sure with the waiter whether the dish from the menu is really fasting, since Holy Sunday is starting before the Orthodox Easter.

The waiter tries to persuade her to add sweet cream to the squeezed carrots, which she flatly refuses.

I ask her how the party views Orthodoxy, but also the fact that she drives a Lexus, which is used as a parliamentary car and, according to various estimates, costs between 1,5 and 2 million rubles).

"Generally speaking, KPRF is the most democratic party we have," he says.

"Maybe someone doesn't like it, they say, this Jengaličeva is too young, too showy, walks around in a fur coat, but they never told me or showed me that.

As for my Lexus, it is seven years old, so it is not listed as an expensive car of a foreign brand," Jengaličeva says.

A few months earlier, MP Jengalicheva was detained at night on the way out of her office for violating the established procedure of organizing or conducting meetings, meetings, demonstrations, processions or protests at an illegal rally in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23, 2021.

Officers said they tracked her down using the receipts and the car.

“Guys, haven't you tried just calling me? My phone number is on the website of the Moscow City Duma," she told them.

She has her own theories about who could have tipped off the officers that she had arrived at the office and who was involved in her arrest, but categorically forbids the details to be made public.

"I am appalled, God will judge him!" she says.

Jengaličeva still meets that man and adds that he continues to contact her when they meet.

In the video of the portal that monitors police harassment in Russia, the OVD of the Tver region, Yengalicheva in a mink fur coat and with a fur coat mocks those who detained this "dangerous criminal".

She adds that she was at the meeting in the capacity of a journalist - she has journalistic accreditations from the media that publish her articles, as well as journalistic education.

However, two weeks later she will be fined 150 rubles because, according to the authorities, the offense is repeated - the first time she was fined because she herself protested against the investor.

Before joining the KPRF, Yengalicheva consistently defended the rights of citizens and now, like Sergey Mitrokhin, the former president of the Yabuka party, and current member of the Moscow City Duma, she is the first assistant of Muscovites in protests against construction in places of historical importance.

I ask her if she will continue to attend rallies.

"We are all people of ideology and we stand up for our beliefs, but the example of deputy Sheremetjev, as well as Iljdar Dadin, made me think better and I believe that I will no longer go as a journalist," she answers.

Deputy of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Oleg Sheremetyev was sentenced to four years of probation and deprived of his mandate.

The party believes that it is about political pressure.

Ekaterina Jengaličeva was born in 1984 in Leningrad, in a military family.

She says that she had a normal upbringing - she went to school, worked, and she was not interested in politics.

She moved to Moscow and became a very successful real estate agent.

However, when she earned money for an apartment and began to choose a future property, she almost became a victim of investors.

"It went bankrupt, and you could only become the owner through the courts, and I was the first person the court rejected," she recalls.

Jengaličeva says that she and her future neighbors were in shock and felt rejected.

Out of desperation, frustrated apartment owners started writing to all parties in the Duma.

"United Russia didn't care about us, the Just Russia party scheduled a meeting for us in a month, and Nikolay Kharitonov at the head of the KPRF not only received us, but also wrote a complaint," Yengalicheva explains.

In December 2011, Jengaličeva, who was not a member of the KPRF at the time, followed the elections as a party observer.

"I had a correct result, but I was disgusted by the rigging," she emphasizes.

"Can you imagine if they took a thousand ballots and shamelessly inserted them into the ballot boxes," he adds.

Then she went to the first rally on Blatni trg.

"I don't even remember how I found out about him, honestly, it seems like everyone around me was talking about it! It was very cold and nothing was heard, and there were many people, it hit me," she says.

At each subsequent meeting, Ekaterina went willingly and focused on the fight against illegal construction.

She continued to associate with communists and in 2012 she was promoted to deputy of Moscow's Marjino district.

"It's as if the secretary of the party branch persuaded me," Jengaličeva laughs.

"He told me, well, you're really cool, let's promote you, you don't need to do anything, you come to a meeting once a month"

"And I mean everything, even once a month I can go.

"I spent five years fighting, my income and interest dropped to some miserable values ​​because in real estate the principle is clear - as you sow, so shall you reap," he adds.

She joined the party in 2014.

Formal admission to the party takes place a few months after working in the basic party department.

Candidates are selected by a committee that checks their knowledge of Marxism and Leninism and assesses their motivation.

"I didn't go through those formalities, my work spoke for me," Jengaličeva says.

When asked if she has read Karl Marx, she stutters and laughs.

"You've read Lenin!" quips a colleague sitting at the next table.

"I read Lenin! A great man!", confirms Jengaličeva.

About Stalin, who is still an important figure in the KPRF hierarchy and is the reason why other opposition members distance themselves from the communists, Jengaličeva seems to remain reserved, but nevertheless engages in a discussion about his role in history and the Second World War.

"Remember the governor of Penza, who at that time, when people were dying of hunger, kept half a billion under his bed! In China there is the death penalty and nothing to anyone! Saudi Arabia!” he says.

"It seems cruel, but how do you eradicate the desire of people in power to rob a poor grandmother?

"Our country needs planned confrontations, how can we do without them?

"All those Colonels Zakharchenko, all those Vasilijes, or maybe it's easier to deal with two or three of them? I have two thoughts about Stalin!", he states.

She combined party work with her job - the company The land of space tourism which offered performing acrobatics with the MiG-15 aircraft, corporate tours with the Il-76 aircraft in weightlessness, as well as tours to the world's largest cosmodrome Baikonur and Istochny cosmodrome.

Yengalicheva lived in an unofficial marriage with Sergej Skuratov, which became a topic of conversation in the media.

When he died, Jengaličeva participated in the property distribution process with his family (in the end she got nothing).

I start questioning her.

Until recently, cheerful and ironic, suddenly her breathing is interrupted and her eyes fill with tears.

Once again, he resolutely demands that I turn off the recorder.

"I'll explain to you, but I don't intend to share details from my private life, I've had enough of the Moscow City Duma elections when they dragged me around on Telegram!" he says.

As soon as she was elected as a deputy in the Moscow City Duma, a series of posts appeared on Telegram channels close to Kristina Potupchik (former commissar of the Nashi movement, head of the Open New Democracy Foundation and founder of numerous Telegram channels) accusing Jengalicheva of trying to take over the family business of her late husband.

There were also photos, most likely taken from Jengalič's private email, which had not been published before.

"I'm actually a closed person and I don't like social networks, and I only have them for work," he says.

"When they told me that on a well-known dating site, my photo appeared in an unusual edition, I realized that my email had been hacked."

Immediately after that, Yekaterina was called by the famous Russian publicist and journalist Andrey Karaulov and asked if she considered her appearance and behavior suitable for an MP.

Jengaličeva does not claim anything with certainty, but the photo appeared, judging by the time parameters, at 16:15 p.m., and already at 16:45 p.m. a post appeared on Karaulova's social networks Sensation! First time on a dating site!

“Coincidence? I wouldn't say!", Jengaličeva laughs.

"Honey, understand, she's a member of parliament and she has to save face in front of her constituents, to smile, to be decently dressed, not in what she wore to bed," Karaulov tells me in an interview with the BBC Russian service.

"One of my colleagues brought me those photos and the most important thing is what happened with her lover and the apartments.

"People like Jengalic don't go to parliament to become poorer, but richer," he adds.

Karaulov offered Jengaličeva to sue him and added that it would make him happy.

The campaign against Jengalicheva launched another campaign in a series against her comrade, head of the Moscow City Committee of the KPRF and Duma deputy Valery Rashkin.

Unofficial Telegram channels, as well as national television, declared him a supporter of Navalny and showed all kinds of clips from hidden cameras - from secret conversations with party colleagues to information from his private life.

The consequence of that was the deletion of Valery Rashkin and Sergey Levchenko from the voting list of the KPRF presidency.

Two sources of the BBC Russian Service close to the party leadership agree that the protest activity of the Moscow City Committee is not liked by the president's cabinet, nor the top of the KPRF.

"During any protest Valery with his supporters runs around with a megaphone. Don't the laurels of Navalj give peace?! There's no problem, then you shouldn't pretend to participate in systemic politics," complains one of them.

Indeed, Valery Rashkin constantly organizes protest events in the form of a meeting with a deputy.

The head of the Moscow city committee of the party organized a protest against changes to the Constitution, for the protection of education (the meeting ended with the rough arrest of nearly 20 people), against distance education, against mandatory vaccination, where many people were also detained.

While walking to his car at one of the gatherings, Valery Rashkin, when asked by a BBC journalist for a comment, stops and puts his hands on his chest.

"My dear, don't even start! What an interview, can't you see what's happening to me?" he says and leaves.

The day before, on the eve of the rally, another in a series of debunking stories about Rashkin appeared on Ren TV.

Jengaličeva fervently supports her colleague in his views: she is a prominent person in parenting circles against distance education, which she believes dumbs down and denies opportunities, and she does not hesitate to speak about this in parliament.

Also, she is an opponent of mandatory vaccination, although she does not consider herself an anti-vaxxer.

To defeat the corona virus, she suggests stopping vaccination and says that people should alkalize the body by eating fermented pollen, turmeric and black cumin.

Anti-vaxxer content makes up the majority of her social networks.

In addition, she quotes ideological opponents with a touch of irony, and such posts are most liked by her followers.

She says that every protest that brings her excitement is important to her.

"Even because of Navalny? Gennady Andrejevch Zyuganov does not support these protests.

"Gennadiy Andrejevich does not condemn the actions, he himself sometimes goes on protest walks, but he believes that people go there because of Navalny."

"But no, people go there because of injustice, because of miserable pensions and little social assistance, distance education, the disappearance of Siberian forests, money that goes abroad!

"And there is Navalny," he says.

Jengaličeva finishes her Lenten salad, says goodbye and goes to work.

That evening, with a post on Instagram, he tries to take care of the cats found in the yard across from the Moscow City Duma.

Ekaterina says that she took them, cleaned them of parasites and offers her followers to adopt the "miraculous fur balls of happiness that purr".

Followers curse Putin in the comments, ask her about the Sputnik vaccine and praise her appearance.

If nothing else, she managed to adopt the kittens.

'Party Soldier'

In the parking lot in front of the Saratov State Duma, that is, the seat of the Saratov Region in the south-east of Russia, cars are glazed.

Among them, deputy Nikolay Bondarenko parks his dirty, ordinary car, blocking one Lexus and one Mercedes.

"What now, they'll call me if they need to, they know it's my car, no one but me drives one," he says, taking out a bag of pretzels and kefir.

Bondarenko is probably the most represented communist of the new generation in the media.

He was recently released from the hospital, where he found himself due to inflammation of the pancreas, and now he has to strictly follow his diet.

"When they brought me in, the doctors said - oh, Nikolaj, we've been waiting for you for a long time, but we bet that you would have a heart attack," says Nikolaj while nibbling on a pretzel.

In the cabinet of the KPRF faction in the Saratov Duma, it is quite tight - five deputies work for two tables.

There is a megaphone on the cupboard.

Bondarenko takes it and puts it around his neck.

"It is a tool of the proletariat! "When the government tries to shut us up, we don't stay silent," he says.

Thanks to his efforts, the sessions of the local parliament have become a kind of performance that must be filmed.

Bondarenko does not part with the selfie stick and mobile phone.

The whole of Russia heard about him after a heated discussion he had with the local minister of labor, and the topic was whether the local consumer basket, which is 3.500 rubles (about 4.800 dinars) and contains a lot of pasta, can make a decent living.

The video of the debate went viral, and Bondarenko even tried to live off that amount for a month, which he constantly posted on social networks.

In that month, the MP lost 7.5 kilograms.

In the bright, empty hall of the local Duma, Bondarenko recalls the battle he fought from his parliamentary seat number 13 ("I'm not superstitious!").

Here, right in front of the lectern, Bondarenko held a "praise for the budget of the Saratov region", and there he almost received a beating from the deputy of the ruling United Russia Dmitry Chernyshevsky.

The Saratov regional committee of the KPRF is crowded - there are many senior members, who skillfully assemble bundles of party newspapers and work as distributors.

A long-haired young man in a T-shirt with the image of rock musician Yegor Letov talks to the first secretary of the Saratov City Committee, Alexander Anidalov.

Then he turns to me and says that he is not a member of the KPRF, but he regularly comes here for a glass of talk about Marxism.

Several people drink tea from cups with the image of Bondarenko - on his website, one of these costs 600 rubles (about 820 dinars) and they sell well. Bondarenko dominates there: he is on the side of the table, constantly smiling and talking to everyone at the same time.

Anidalov, who is only ten years older than his colleague, looks at him almost fatherly.

"Aren't Nikolai's behavior and popularity a problem? And it's harder to negotiate something when the functions are so demanding," I ask him.

"On the one hand, there is a problem, and on the other, it depends on how you look at it," answers Anidalov.

"When they don't want to negotiate with us, I tell them okay, you won't go with me, now I'll send Kolja to you. And, of course, they are afraid of him," he adds.

The office of the local board is a beautifully equipped studio with soundproofing, technology and two plaques they received from YouTube, which are framed on the walls.

One is silver for channels that have exceeded 100 thousand followers and the other, gold for channels with over a million followers.

Bondarenko channel Diary of a deputy, on which he broadcasts the sessions of the assembly and records clips in which he calls out the current government, has over one and a half million followers and is growing day by day.

In February, he was accused of profiting from his status as a deputy, which he commented on as absurd and politically based accusations.

Bondarenko says that he became interested in communist theory as a student at the Faculty of Law.

"When I graduated, I realized that it was necessary to engage in political struggle," he says.

"People generally, after college, think about their first job, marriage and how to buy their first car on credit...", I continue.

"I bought it too!", Bondarenko immediately interrupts me.

"Of course I bought it on credit, I still drive it..." he adds.

Bondarenko worked in a relative's company, but he was increasingly attracted to party activism.

I ask what it was like for a young and obviously ambitious guy to join the party of red directors, where people from the Soviet era sat and who, on several occasions, accused him of making deals with the authorities and trading mandates.

"You know, when I came here, none of my friends understood my decision, they told me that I was another fool who wanted to be a hero, they laughed, but now they don't laugh at all," he says.

"And the party had everything, when I came I liked everything.

"Look at the people of Penza, look at Levchenko, and finally how the Duma votes - give me the anti-people law that the communists voted for," he adds.

The MP took us for a walk in the center of Saratov.

In just 20 minutes, ten people came to him.

Bondarenko patiently posed for photos with them, showing his trademark - a raised, clenched fist.

Someone asks him for help, to which the deputy replies that they should contact his inbox.

All the while a Daevu car is following us, slowing down when the MP stops to talk to the citizens.

It is said that the local authorities do not like Bondarenko, but no one wants to talk about it publicly - the BBC Russian service tried to get in touch with a dozen prominent members of the ruling United Russia.

Everyone read the messages, but only businessman and former deputy of United Russia Sergey Kurikhin (he was speculated to be the person who personally finances Bondarenko) replied: "Forget about this phone number and never call it again."

Bondarenko denies relations with Kurikhina and says that they have no relationship, adding that they never had one.

"They kicked him out of the party, and the KPRF welcomes the friction within United Russia - only you give each other a liver, and we will deal with the problems of the citizens," he says.

Yulia Litnyevskaya of United Russia is often Bondarenko's sparring partner in the Duma.

She also vlogs.

He agrees to an interview with the BBC, calling Bondarenko a strange and detaining person whom he hopes to expose.

However, when the press team arrived at the agreed meeting place, she called and said she had urgent obligations.

When asked who forbade her to talk about Bondarenko, she recorded four voice messages apologizing.

"Nobody threatened me. We wanted the best possible, but that's how it turned out, as it always does. I put you in an unpleasant situation, I understand that now in your eyes Bondarenko will be a much better person than me," she stated.

"At one point, I began to objectively and critically question myself and think that they really distorted my reason," says Bondarenko.

It stands in the middle of Zavodski, one of the most underdeveloped areas of Saratov, where he has lived since birth.

To the right of it is a pond, to the left is a pit. Two cats and a drunkard sleep on the hot water pipe.

"I started to think more radically, I've never been as angry and unyielding as I am now," he says.

"I would love to do some other job, but I can't - just look around you."

"And they will raise the retirement age!

"And once again everything will be more expensive! The clerk says that fuel is undervalued and should be more expensive, and I grind my teeth in anger!" he continues.

Bondarenko lives in the most ordinary apartment, not far from his parents.

The road around the houses is such that Bondarenko's car goes off the road several times, but then he usually pulls it out to a drier and leveler place.

For now, national television has only found Bondarenko guilty of two sins - going to a cafe and smoking hookah.

Bondarenko regrets smoking hookah.

"I'm weak to it, and I love it!" he admits.

As he says, he doesn't mind living under the watchful eye of unintended attention, because he has nothing to hide.

Bondarenko is ready to channel his hatred only within the limits of the law.

He refers to Lenin who said that one must go the legal way as long as possible.

"The possible ban of the Communist Party is not a ban on legal struggle, we just won't fight under the auspices of the KPRF...", he explains.

"Rathers are now banned, once the government bans elections, when arrests are made for criticism, when there is criminal prosecution, then yes, it is possible that we will admit that a legal fight is no longer possible, and then they will shoot at us," he adds.

"How long do you think you have until someone thinks of trying to assassinate you?" I ask.

Bondarenko is silent and laughs.

He ran for the State Duma in the same constituency as the prominent politician from Saratov, Vyacheslav Volodin.

"Bondarenko has no other way out, only with me in the district, only with me!" A man said, a man did!" Volodin declared before the elections.

Bondarenko speaks with restraint about the main opponent of Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny.

"We all have the same enemy and regardless of the fact that we are opponents and that our views are opposed, we must be united in this fight and I am sure that this is inevitable", he states.

He immediately hedges and clarifies that he is speaking as a citizen and communist, not as a member of the Communist Party.

The relationship towards Navalny in the KPRF is complex - even though he is fundamentally alien to them in terms of ideology, Navalny is playing on the well-known communist protest ground.

We return to the KPRF headquarters and in front of Stalin's portrait Nikolai Bondarenko says that it is important at the moment that there is as little disagreement as possible and that the main goal is to overthrow United Russia.

I ask him what his relationship is with Stalin.

"And you ask the same thing! My hair is standing on end from everything that's happening!", he begins.

"The government gave the entire Soviet heritage to the oligarchs and friends of the president! The people are dying of misery! Every fourth child in Russia lives below the poverty line, and you want to talk about Stalin?

"Okay, I can talk about it, but I don't see any point," he says.

Bondarenko receives a message from his wife.

"Oh my God!" he exclaims and grabs a bag of pretzels.

Because of running around the city all day, he missed the obligatory meal.

When asked if his pancreas hurts, he answers: "It hurts a lot, but my soul hurts more!"

'Deputy in the countryside'

It was minus 20 in Penza on February 25 of this year.

Local journalist Yevgeny Malishev arranged to meet Alexander Smirnov, the leader of the local faction of the KPRF in the city parliament, near the local committee.

The journalist was furious - Smirnov was late and did not answer the phone.

When the journalist was already freezing, Smirnov appeared.

"Sorry, they are arresting us, so I decided to cut my hair because if you spend a month in special custody, you already know," said Smirnov.

That morning, the police detained KPRF member and the youngest member of the City Duma, Alexander Rogozhkin, as well as the leader of the local Left Front party, Sergei Padalkin.

The pension branch of KPRF announced the action For a Russia without castles and oligarchs and against political repression for February 23, otherwise an important day for KPRF.

On that date, the Day of the Soviet Army and Navy is celebrated (the name they use most often in their speeches and documents).

The KPRF usually marks it by organizing large gatherings across the country, but this year the Central Committee canceled the event due to "compliance with epidemiological measures, increased security regime and weather conditions".

Nevertheless, the Penza branch of the KPRF decided not to delay, and Alexander Smirnov promised that on February 23 he would participate in Šetnji with the deputy.

The walk was stopped by the police, and in the end the court fined Sergey Padalkin 10 thousand rubles, Rogozhkin got 20 days in prison, and Smirnov seven.

The day after the trial, Aleksandar Smirnov started a hunger strike.

Smirnov smokes next to the monument to Stalin in the courtyard of the local party committee and recounts with pleasure how he and his comrades opened the Stalin Center in Yekaterinburg in spite of the Yeltsin Center.

Among the exhibits are photographs of Stalin, several portraits and artifacts from Soviet times.

The monument is golden in color, and behind it, on the wall, there are inscriptions LKSO (Lenin's Communist Youth League) and Punk's not dead(Punk is not dead).

He takes another cigarette and says that of course it's a bad habit, but he regretted not taking them with him to prison.

Aleksandar Smirnov is 41 years old and used to work as a programmer in the local police.

He is thin, short and very intelligent - he does not fit the image of the average Russian policeman at all, which I draw his attention to.

"Don't be silly, there are all kinds of people in the police!", he replies offended.

Smirnov entered politics in 2015 when he lost his job in Serdobsk, an industrial town in the Penza region.

"At that moment I have a wife, a small child, I lose my job and I start reading Stalin, by the way, it's very interesting - I recommend it!", he says.

"I was the youngest member of the KPRF local committee. When I arrived, a grandfather gave me a bundle of newspapers and told me to distribute them.

"That offended me, but of course I listened, what should I do," he adds.

"Elections were coming up. I was on duty there, talked with my friends, sometimes even helped.

"And what did you live on?" I ask.

"Well, a little later I received a salary of 14 thousand rubles (about 165 euros), and before that my wife supported me, she understood the situation and is a real expert.

"But what did YOU need in your life anyway?"

"Maybe I'm an idealist!" replies Smirnov and lights another cigarette.

After the elections in Penza in 2019, 12 communists entered the city Duma.

"My opponent was the richest man in the City Duma," says Smirnov.

"My income was 14 thousand roubles, and his - of course. What was my job? Just to talk to people.

"My job was to encourage them to express their dissatisfaction, in that sense also in the elections," adds Smirnov.

He agitated even during his stay in temporary detention - together with him, two raw material collectors were arrested who were caught stealing non-ferrous metal several times.

They sold metal to earn money for a bottle of vodka.

"And I ask them - Rdo you understand why life has become so difficult that you have no work, no progress, but you collect metal? Well, you can call it agitation, but I'd rather say it's a normal human conversation," he laughs.

He didn't taste anything for three days and says that at the end his ears were ringing, he became weak, and during the one call he is entitled to during the day, his wife told him that it sounded like he was no longer able to think.

"If I continued, the meaning would be lost," says Smirnov.

"Imagine that, for example, I asked them to drive me to the Duma session, and that I ended up in the hospital instead.

"I decided to stop, who knows, maybe something would happen to me, but it's good, I didn't care," he recounts.

Smirnov says he respects the courage of Alexei Navalny, who went on a hunger strike for 24 days, even though he has no sympathy for him as a politician.

However, he would not repeat the hunger strike and hopes that there will be no occasion for such a thing.

Smirnov believes that the KPRF has a future and that it is reflected in the protest.

"I'm not a supporter of violence - if you're forced to resort to it, it means you're not doing something right," he believes.

He says he is not ready to run for parliament at the federal level.

"It's a difficult and thankless job and I'm not ready for it," he admits.

"And would you work in the President's Cabinet?", I ask.

"It is crystal clear to everyone that it is easier to be a deputy in the countryside," he answers.

"True, you won't get a job and you won't make money, but you won't lose anything - for example, your conscience," he says.

Aleksandar Smirnov is on the list Mostand changing the Constitution - Putin's resignation!

In the vote on the constitutional changes, by means of which Putin ensured that he would remain in power almost for life, 43 deputies of the KPRF abstained.

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Fautographs: KirilZikov (AGN Moscow), Denis Tirin (TASS) and Sergey Padalkin(leftpenza.ru)

Who is Vladimir Putin, the longest-lived leader in the history of modern Russia

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