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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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Where I saw it first, people honed in on the "We don't have the right to repeat [1917]" part as further proof of the CPRF being controlled opposition or "SPD in WW1" social chauvinists, pointing to other instances of "Zyuganov asking Putin to do socialism". However people on Lemmygrad and other communist parties seem to view them favourably. I remember hearing more young people becoming members. Then there's the mess of establishment Russian politics being essentially this photo:
Three massive flagpoles in Saint-Petersburg, flying the flags of the Romanovs (beloved by ultranationalists), USSR and Russian Federation; behind them is the supertall headquarters of Gazprom.
So what is the situation with the CPRF? What do they stand for and would they be more than socially conservative social democrats if they ever supplant United Russia, electorally? Is the party evolving behind the scenes? And are their pleas to the bourgeoisie just political theater and not to be taken seriously?
As for the accusation of "controlled opposition", the KPRF have already responded to this:
As for the contradictions of the Russian society which could be pictured in the massive flagpoles that you shared, this was also mentioned in this post by the KPRF: "Mimicry of the system: Soviet words, oligarchic deeds". In the comments, I also added my brief observation of the two conflicting identities and their dynamics in the comments.
As for the rest of the questions in the last paragraph which is basically the same one, the KPRF is using every platform at their disposal to agitate the masses. From the State Duma, Grassroot Organizations and actively creating strong cadres for unions; they are actively out there organizing. The results varied but the most visible one are:
Over four years, more than 63,000 people have become party members, with most of the new recruits being young people under 30 and “people of prime working age.”
“We are now seeing not just nostalgia for the past, but a conscious choice by millions of citizens in favor of the socialist path of development,”
We restored all ties with the Communist Parties of China, Vietnam, the DPRK, with India, with the Arab countries, with Latin America, with Cuba, with Venezuela, with Nicaragua.
The expansion and astronomical growth of grassroot movements like the Inmortal Regiment. This movement grew so large that plenty of countries around the world organized a similar march. It started small until it grew in a international movement.
On March 24 2026 in Beijing, a delegation of the KPRF held an official meeting with Liu Haixin from the CPC. Particular attention was paid to the role of Komsomol and Pioneer organizations.
In Leningrad, diplomas were awarded to graduates of the 11th cohort of the trade union school. This activity helps develop paths for
On November 7, 2025 in Mariupol, Komsomol members and young communists led the city's youth in a mass march. This was the largest event of young communists in the past 11 years
One of the first monuments to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin has returned to Orenburg after seven years of absence.
Karelia. Communists discussed China's experience of building socialism at a meeting with young people.
In summary, there is active work there. They go beyond what a Western socdem(or even leftists) do in Europe or the USA(perfect example of a socdem is Mamdani where he denounced Cuba and Venezuela).
I read the posts you linked and they literally propagate the replacement theory, e.g. this critique of the govt migration policy:
Migration is a messy subject because the issue comes from the understanding of the grassroot base of the Russian society and even Chinese society. Add to the mix the ethnic strife that sometimes appear in Russian society and it is a horrible mix that leads to this type of statements. However, in no way shape or form, should we project the Western filth into Russia. Russia is not the same as the white supremacist West which is the sole origin of our current issues including the siege against Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba. If Russia were like that, it would be treated differently by the West.
As for the position of the party, Obukhov, which is the one that mentioned that statement that you quoted, shared the following in other publications:
This is the most recent roundtable regarding this topic -> https://kprf.ru/dep/gosduma/activities/243324.html
Those "principles" are more fascist than what the current wave of far right Western parties are proposing. I used to think CPRF is controlled opposition, now I think they are "national socialist", thank you for educating me.
I don't have the time [or honestly the knowledge] to go super in depth, but basically a lot of the old guard who currently runs the party are more in line with "Patriotic socialism." [As in, socialism that supports the current state.] Meanwhile the younger generation who gave joined the party more recently are more principled.
The SMO makes things complicated since, to my knowledge, the CPRF was on board with it before even United Russia/Putin was on board with it.
That's an incorrect usage of the term "patriotic socialism". That term refers specifically to socialists in the imperial core who fail to correctly reckon with the imperial (and settler-colonial) nature of their country. Russia is not a part of the imperial core. There is no such thing as "patriotic socialism" in Russia any more than there is in Iran or Vietnam. Socialism in countries that are threatened by imperialism is by definition "patriotic". This does not have the same reactionary implications it does in the US.
Also, the KPRF only support the current Russian state insofar as this is necessary to be allowed to operate in Russia. If they could, they would much prefer to restore the Soviet Union. What they don't support is the destruction and balkanization of Russia by imperialist forces, as indeed no communist should in any country that is in the crosshairs of imperialist aggression.
My view is that arguing about them being controlled opposition is like arguing that the CPC was controlled opposition of the KMT during the Japanese invasion in ww2.
In the grand scheme of things, Russia is a nation under siege even if the SMO makes it seem like they're the ones doing the siege and the KPRF chose to mantain an united front, we'll see if it's a succesful strategy or not.
Agreed. The hostility may not be as overtly violent by United Russia toward the KPRF as it was by the KMT (who committed actual massacres) toward the CPC, but there is nonetheless open aggression by the much larger and dominant ruling party against this smaller opposition party in the form of vote rigging, dirty political maneuvering, media warfare, arrests of its members, etc.
In my opinion a big part of why the "controlled opposition" accusation appeals to some western leftists is because they are not used to communist parties actually being a meaningful force in politics in their own countries. But to remain that the KPRF has to, for now, operate within the bounds of the bourgeois law.
We could argue about the validity of their choice to pursue an electoral strategy for now (though that is far from the only thing they do), but we have to remember that even Lenin said that whether or not to participate in a bourgeois parliament is not a matter of ideological dogma (always right or always wrong), but rather is determined by the present conditions.
From a dogmatic ultra-left perspective choosing anything other than "we need to do violent revolution right now!" will appear as "controlled opposition. To me, real controlled opposition looks like what the Bernie Sanders/AOC/Mamdani types are doing in the US.
I just didn't have a better term off the top of my head. Conservative socialism isn't exactly a helpful descriptor but I didn't want to say like Tailism either or anything.
I think "socially conservative socialists" is a perfect term.
National socialists?
That has a whole different connotation
It's what I thought of, reading your original post. But I have a distinctly Western, particularly US, frame of reference.
They are just something to catch people unhappy with current conjucture, i may disagree with Rudoy, however i agree on him that CPRF is nothing more than just controlled opposition, they support SMO, that is imperalist war, and can't be supported as Lenin states in 21 tome. They don't organise revolutionary masses, and they are actively against revolution (recent statement by Zyganov). They don't fight back in any levels against a man who reads f***** Illiyn, nor do they fight back against religious idiocy or monarchist/fascist political movements. Idk why call them communist apart from campism
This is a very idealistic and uneducated take. In no way is the KPRF "controlled opposition".
They didn't support the SMO only because the Russian government declared it, they supported anti-fascist intervention in Ukraine to protect the Russian speaking population from the Maidanite Neo-Nazis long before the Russian government came around to the idea. The communists were lobbying for this for years while the liberal Putin government was still being fooled by the West's false promises and sham negotiations. This reflected a real desire from the Russian people to intervene and help their brethren suffering under fascist bullets and bombs.
The SMO is fundamentally not imperialist. That is just a very shallow and incorrect assessment, ignorant of the reality on the ground and incorrectly analyzing the world geopolitical situation. It is about actively pushing back against imperialism, directly challenging and halting NATO imperialist expansion for the first time since 1991.
The KPRF very much do in fact engage in worker organizing and participate in labor struggles, and put forward political demands on behalf of the working class. What they don't do is commit the ultra-leftist error of assuming that the conditions are more advanced than they actually are. Russia is not in a revolutionary situation right now, the masses would not support that, and right now all that provoking a revolutionary conflict would do is play right into the hands of the imperialist West that has been desperately seeking Russia's final destruction.
They would prop up reactionary and counter-revolutionary forces, stirring ethnic and religious conflict, then they would directly and through their Ukrainian fascist and other proxies in the region (Poland, Finland, etc.) militarily intervene under the pretext of "stabilizing the situation" and "securing the nuclear weapons", Russia's neighbors would annex territory based on irredentist historical grudges, and NATO would create puppet states that they could easily control on Russian territory, like they did when they destroyed Yugoslavia, to exert military control and extract Russia's resources.
And i'm sorry but it is very ignorant to say that the KPRF doesn't fight against fascist forces or doesn't push back against monarchism. This shows that you do not have any idea what the KPRF actually do and say. It is correct to criticize their tailist attitude on certain cultural issues, but it would be absurd to expect that they completely denounce Orthodox religion as a whole. Just as it would be absurd for a communist party in Latin America to completely reject Catholicism or a communist party in the Muslim world to reject Islam. That would entirely alienate them from the masses.
You and i might not like it, but the reality is that there just is not the same anti-clerical mood in Russia right now as there was in 1917.
A communist party has to operate within the real material and cultural conditions that exist. It is not 1917 and the conditions are not the same. The world dynamics are drastically different, the internal domestic dynamics in Russia are drastically different. To blindly try to impose 1917's solutions on 2026 would be a recipe for failure. It is a common tactic of counter-revolutionary sabotage to use ultra-leftism and accusations (from the real controlled opposition which portrays itself as radical and leftist but is really just wreckers) of insufficient radicalism to goad communists into commiting fatal errors. Don't fall for it.
Support our communist comrades in Russia. There is no other communist force in Russia, or in any other European country for that matter, that has more popular support and better chance of actually gaining and exercising some real political power, even if they do not control the state yet.