Russia's central election commission on Friday said it had
registered Pavel Grudinin, who runs a farm business on the edge
of Moscow, as the party's candidate for the March 18 election
after the communists unexpectedly decided against putting up
their veteran 73-year-old leader Gennady Zyuganov.
Backed by state TV, the ruling United Russia party, and many
voters who live outside big cities, polls show 65-year-old
Putin, who has dominated Russian politics for the last 18 years,
is on track to comfortably win a fourth presidential term.
Grudinin, a fresh face in an otherwise stale political line-up
that has hardly changed in the last two decades, could
indirectly help Putin by boosting turnout amid signs of apathy
among some voters who assume Putin will win however they vote.
Though a shadow of itself in the Soviet era when it enjoyed a
monopoly on power, the Communist Party is also hoping a younger
less orthodox contender may be able to revive its fortunes and
appeal to younger voters.
The party has seen its share of the vote in post-Soviet
presidential elections more than halve from a high of almost 41
percent or around 30 million votes in 1996. In the last
election, in 2012, it won just over 12 million votes.
Yet it remains popular with millions of Russians, particularly
older people who live in rural communities, retains a nationwide
network, and regularly comes second to the ruling party in
elections.
UNORTHODOX COMMUNIST
Grudinin is not a typical communist candidate.
Zyuganov, who the party has fielded unsuccessfully in four
presidential elections, is known for hard line communist views,
his frequent quoting of Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and
once called for the re-Stalinisation of society.
Grudinin, a former Putin supporter, makes jokes, is open about
the fact that he earns 20 million rubles ($353,773.17) a year,
says modern communists should learn from the USSR's mistakes,
and advocates Russia borrowing some aspects of Chinese-style
communism.
Observers have noticed another big difference.
While Zyuganov in recent years would criticize the ruling United
Russia party, he was careful, in the tightly-controlled
political system, not to harshly criticize Putin.
Grudinin has been less coy, accusing Putin of making empty
promises and suggesting he has been in power too long, even
comparing him to veteran Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev whose
lengthy rule became synonymous with decay.
"When General Secretary Brezhnev sat in his post (for too long)
it was bad," Grudinin told a state TV talk show last month. "Why
are we repeating the same mistake?"
($1 = 56.5334 rubles)
(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
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