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The same prudence guided his handling of the bloody rebellion against Yeltsin by opposition members of the Russian parliament in October 1993. Rather than endorse the hard-liners, Zyuganov publicly called for all sides to avoid violence, a move that angered leaders of the rebellion, several of whom landed in jail. But Zyuganov's judgment paid off. While other opposition parties boycotted parliamentary elections in December 1993, Zyuganov's participated and did well, giving it a legitimacy the sidelined parties lacked. In balloting two years later, the C.P.R.F. won the largest block of seats in parliament, putting Zyuganov in a powerful position to challenge Yeltsin.
Zyuganov's ample writings are full of the turgid prose of a Soviet bureaucrat, but they reveal a mind keenly affected by the centuries-old Russian struggle between pro-Western reformers and xenophobic Slavic purists. Zyuganov is one of the latter. "He has a deep historical view of Russia's mission as the opposition to the dissolute West," observes Freedom House president Adrian Karatnycky, who has pored over Zyuganov's books. ''He's a big believer in the decline of the West and the emergence of a new civilization." The emergence, in other words, of a reborn Russia, prosperous, powerful and pure.
Attempting to calm Washington and other Western capitals about his possible victory, Zyuganov has launched a charm offensive. In April, Sergei Ayvazyan, an English-speaking foreign-policy adviser, visited Washington with a message for U.S. officials: "Don't demonize Zyuganov." Dismissing the distinction between communism and social democracy as mere "semantics," Ayvazyan insisted that Zyuganov was "a progressive, democratic, pragmatic politician." He even regaled Clinton Administration officials with a story of how he and Zyuganov once sat in a cafe and contemplated removing "Communist" from the party's name. They decided against it, he said, for fear of alienating nostalgic older voters.
Artful politicians often defy ideological stereotypes. That may be the case with Zyuganov. In Russia the current debate is over what kind of leader Zyuganov would be. Even in Mymrino, opinion is divided. On a sunny spring day, a handful of the village's elderly gathered for a picnic on a patch of grass just 50 yards from Zyuganov's old house.
"We like him not just because he's from here, but because he's from a poor background," explained Anton Markin, 81. But Boris Levkovich, 68, remained worried. He recounted the horrors of the Soviet past to his comrades, including the "20 million of his own people Stalin killed." Said Levkovich, his face flushed with anger: "Stalin was a Communist. How do we know Zyuganov will be any different?" It's a question 100 million Russians are asking.