AFP/Moscow


Russian Communist Party supporters prepare to lay flowers at the mausoleum of Soviet leader Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, on the Red Square in Moscow, yesterday to mark the 88th anniversary of his death
Around 2,000 Communist party stalwarts gathered yesterday near Moscow’s Red Square to mark the 88th anniversary of Vladimir Lenin’s death and protest elections they say were rigged against their candidates.
Brandishing red flags, the demonstrators including many elderly people filed past the mausoleum of the Russian revolutionary, and Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov left a bouquet of red carnations.
An AFP photographer estimated the crowd at 2,000, while police said 1,500 people turned out.
In a statement read out at the rally, the Communist party – the largest opposition force in the lower house Duma – blasted the December 4 parliamentary elections, saying that they were “rigged to the benefit of the ruling United Russia party”.
“The campaign for the presidential elections has barely begun but it is already clear that the government’s promises are no more than propaganda,” the statement said.
The Communist Party won 92 seats of the Duma’s 450 after scoring 19% in the elections.
Zyuganov, 67, a former Soviet apparatchik who has led the Communists since 1993, is standing for president for the fourth time in the March 4 election.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is seeking to win back his old Kremlin job.
The Russian strongman has seen his approval ratings plummet to record lows amid a wave of protests, indicating that he may for the first time need a second round against Zyuganov.
During the parliamentary polls, many Russians, including young people and middle-class voters, chose to support the Communists in an attempt to prevent Putin’s United Russia party from winning the vote.
The Communist party is closely associated with the Soviet era and continues to defend the memory of the dictator Joseph Stalin.