“People’s leaders” of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation reported at the plenum on electoral and economic successes

The next plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation was held in the Moscow region on Saturday. At it, “people’s leaders” of the party, including governors Andrei Klychkov and Valentin Konovalov, who were re-elected for a second term, as well as the director of the Lenin state farm Pavel Grudinin, made reports on “work among the masses,” who reported on their successes in the confrontation “with the internal and an external enemy.” The expert believes that the communists should not exaggerate their electoral merits, since voters in 2023 voted not so much for the opposition, but for “reconfirming the powers of the current leaders.”

Before the start of the plenum, delegates were shown a film about how the gubernatorial campaign took place in Khakassia and the Oryol region, where communists Valentin Konovalov and Andrei Klychkov won the elections on September 10. Against the first, as they said on the screen, an information war was launched, the customer of which “was the three-headed dragon – coal, aluminum, hydro” (the largest coal mines, the famous Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station and large aluminum enterprises are located in the republic). Nobody hounded Mr. Klychkov, so the authors of the film focused on his achievements, one of which was last year’s unprecedented harvest: “In the Oryol region, 6 tons of grain were collected for each resident of the region.”

The plenum itself, according to tradition, began with a minute of silence in memory of the communists who died during the special military operation (SVO). “We have already lost 49 of our commissars at the front. In the last three months alone, 15 of our talented leaders have died or passed away,” said Gennady Zyuganov, Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. But “new fighters are taking the place of those who left”: at the plenum, party cards were presented to new members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, among whom was the “combat general”, the head of the Zaporozhye regional branch of the party, Vyacheslav Kuznetsov.

Then the communists moved on to the main issue on the agenda – “On the work of people’s leaders among the masses and the tasks of implementing the victory program.” The first on the list of “leaders” was Andrei Klychkov, who on September 10 was re-elected to a second term with 82.09% of the votes. He said that during the campaign he held more than 1.5 thousand meetings with voters, and especially noted that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation program was supported by 99.7% of Oryol residents of the SVO. This category of citizens and their families are treated carefully in the region, the governor assured: for example, more than 2 thousand social passports have been compiled to provide targeted support. Mr. Klychkov did not forget about his opponents: “All these years, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has been living in conditions of tough confrontation with internal and external enemies – with the aggressive plans of NATO countries and the insidious plan of strategists of psychological and information warfare, adherents of the liberal destruction of Russia.”

Gennady Zyuganov prefaced the speech of the head of Khakassia with a little background: “The authorities did not like the fact that a young talented man was running for election. I asked the president to meet him and see: he is a modern, competent, well-trained man. The President met. But, unfortunately, the party in power does not know how to conduct a full dialogue.”

“Perhaps the most difficult, most competitive and most open elections in the country took place in the republic,” said Valentin Konovalov, not without pride. “We managed to pass the municipal filter and prevent the introduction of remote electronic voting. We took a particularly careful approach to people’s control during elections and to training observers.” The communist called his result (63.14% of the vote) “more than convincing.” Let us note that his main opponent, State Duma deputy from United Russia Sergei Sokol, withdrew from the elections due to illness a week before the vote. In the elections to the Supreme Council of Khakassia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation also showed a good result on the lists (39.1%), ahead of United Russia (36.4%), the head of the republic added: “This is the best result of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the country this year and in Khakassia for the whole story.” Mr. Konovalov kept silent about the fact that thanks to the victories of single-mandate members, United Russia won 34 seats out of 50 in parliament against 14 for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Like his Oryol colleague, the governor boasted of his visits to the people: “He was even where the residents had never seen, not only the head of the republic, but even the head of the municipality.” Talking about the achievements over five years, Valentin Konovalov noted that “tax revenues from coal miners increased eight times, from aluminum miners – seven times.” “They complained to me that he (the governor.— “Kommersant”) squeezes out, I said: pay your taxes in full, and no one will bother you,” confirmed Gennady Zyuganov.

The director of the Lenin state farm near Moscow, presidential candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the 2018 elections, Pavel Grudinin, reported that his enterprise, which celebrates its 105th anniversary this year, “survived five raider attacks, one more severe than the other.” But the state farm was defended, and recently Mr. Grudinin was unanimously elected to the position of leader for the next five-year period. “When you walk around the state farm, you can see that people are smiling,” the director rejoiced. “Looking at this oasis, you begin to realize that even in the midst of gangster capitalism you can engage in creative work,” the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation supported his comrade-in-arms. He also admitted that he sent one of his grandchildren to the state farm to work as a loader: “He worked for two years, he earned enough money for sneakers and textbooks.”

The mayor of Novosibirsk, Anatoly Lokot, spoke, in particular, about the work of the city’s defense enterprises. “The Su-34 fighter-bomber is being manufactured in Novosibirsk, which Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu called a “workhorse.” The task has been set to increase the production of these combat vehicles,” said Mr. Lokot, according to whom the workers are already “working in three shifts, just like during the war.” And the co-founder of the Mari agricultural holding “Zvenigovsky” Sergei Kazankov reported not only on the successes of the enterprise (“150 tons of meat and 100 tons of dairy products daily”), but also that “the best-selling sausage is called “Testaments of Stalin”.”

The head of the Civil Society Development Foundation, Konstantin Kostin, believes that the success of the Communist Party governors who won the elections should not be taken personally. “As we established in our study, the main thing that influenced the expression of the will of citizens in 2023 was the factors of delayed choice and the “new normal.” Voters voted primarily for the reconfirmation of the powers of the current leaders of the constituent entities, and not in support of representatives of the opposition party,” the expert emphasizes. The best confirmation of this thesis, in his opinion, are the “rather modest” successes of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the elections to the legislative assembly: “Even in Khakassia, where a representative of the Communist Party won the elections as a result of a competitive campaign, United Russia received a majority in both the legislative assembly and the parliament of the capital subject.”

Ksenia Veretennikova