Metropolitan communists weakened by a third – Kommersant

Deputy of the Moscow City Duma (MGD) Yevgeny Stupin, expelled from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, including for criticizing the special military operation, has also lost his membership in the party faction. This decision was made at a meeting closed to the media, but on Thursday Mr. Stupin posted his video clips on his YouTube channel. Since the beginning of the work of this convocation of the Moscow State Duma, the Communist Party faction, for various reasons, has already lost 5 deputies, and its number has decreased from 13 to 8 people. The expert believes that the refusal of the Communist Party of the deputies for ideological reasons will not lead to a split among its core electorate, for which the brand of the party and continuity with the CPSU are important.

Evgeny Stupin published a message about his exclusion from the Communist Party faction in the Moscow State Duma on the evening of April 26 in his social networks. The faction leader Nikolay Zubrilin, his deputy Leonid Zyuganov, as well as deputies Lyubov Nikitina, Sergey Savostyanov and Viktor Maksimov voted for this decision. Against, according to Mr. Stupin, he himself, another deputy head of the faction, Pavel Tarasov, and deputies Elena Yanchuk and Ekaterina Engalycheva spoke out. “The main reason: the exclusion from the party that took place earlier. My argument: the decision was made with many violations, starting with an error in the date, and this decision was appealed, the complaint has not yet been considered by the Central Control Audit Commission. But this argument was not taken into account,” the deputy wrote. “In more detail about how the heated discussion went with an attempted assault,” he promised to tell the next day.

Almost half an hour video from the meeting of the faction Yevgeny Stupin published in his YouTube channel on the evening of 27 April. In these fragments, the conversation, indeed, goes on raised tones. For example, deputy Maksimov several times tried to convince Stupin’s colleague that the meeting was closed and it would be better to stop filming, but he continued to film. Yevgeny Stupin was defended by Ms. Engalycheva, saying that the leader of the faction could explain to the newly minted deputies the “rules of the game” in the Moscow State Duma and warn Mr. Stupin what actions he should not take. Nikolai Zubrilin, in turn, accused Evgeny Stupin of self-promotion and the desire to entertain his Internet audience with scandalous posts.

Mr. Stupin himself reported a factual error in his personal file (in one document, 2022 is listed instead of 2023) and recalled that he had appealed his expulsion from the party to the control body of the Communist Party.

The complaint, he said, will be considered in May.

Recall, Evgeny Stupin was expelled from the Communist Party on March 14, 2023. There were three reasons for this: the signing of the letter “Socialists and Communists Against the War” on the day the special operation began in Ukraine, the provision of a positive reference to Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader and ex-deputy of the Krasnoselsky district of Moscow, convicted later for fakes about the army (included in the register of foreign agents) and voting against the report of the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin, to the Moscow State Duma in 2022.

Yevgeny Stupin has already become the fifth deputy who, for one reason or another, left the Communist Party faction in the current convocation of the Moscow State Duma. In June 2020, less than a year after the 2019 elections, as a result of which the faction almost tripled (from five to thirteen deputies), from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for “systematic rejection of party discipline” expelled Elena Shuvalova. She was accused of non-payment of the party minimum, unauthorized promotion to the post of head of the Communist Party faction in the Moscow State Duma and cooperation with “ideologically alien” liberals (in November 2019, she invited Alexei Navalny and other non-systemic oppositionists to her round table). In February 2021 from the party expelled Deputy Dmitry Loktev – for the fact that in 2019 he voted against the adoption of the city budget. And in March 2021, they were both expelled from the faction in the Moscow State Duma for “systematic discrediting of the faction in the eyes of a wide range of voters.”

The communists lost two more deputies for reasons beyond their control. In August 2020 died Deputy Chairman of the Moscow State Duma from the Communist Party, actor and director Nikolai Gubenko, whose mandate in the by-elections 2021 was won by Yabloko Vladimir Ryzhkov. And the deputy powers of Oleg Sheremetyev have been discontinued in January 2021, after the conviction came into force: in October 2020, Mr. Sheremetyev was found guilty of fraud on a large scale (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code) and sentenced to four years probation. The reason for the criminal case, according to investigators, was fraud with bonuses to the deputy’s assistant. The communist mandate following the results of the same by-elections-2021 went to the candidate from the “United Russia” Elena Katz.

Political scientist Alexei Makarkin believes that the exclusion from the Communist Party of those members who do not agree with the party line will not lead to a split in the party’s core electorate.

“The nuclear electorate is focused on the brand of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as a successor to the CPSU and, to a lesser extent, on personalities,” the expert explains. He recalls that in the history of the Communist Party there were many high-profile departures, but this did not affect the support of its loyal supporters. In addition, Evgeny Stupin, according to Mr. Makarkin, did not work with the nuclear electorate of the Communist Party, but with the democratic and protest ones. “But these voters left the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with the start of the special operation. If the Communist Party ever wants to return the democratic electorate, it will be more difficult to do this, because there are fewer and fewer such communicators in the party. But now the Communist Party is focused on other issues,” the political scientist sums up.

Elena Rozhkova