Despite the rich experience in absorbing other parts, SRZP such a huge piece may be just too difficult.
Leader of the party “Fair Russia – For the truth!” (SRZP) Sergei Mironov again announced his intention to unite with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation “in historical perspective” and under the new leadership of the Communist Party. Communists have traditionally responded that they do not believe Mironov and only see public relations in his words. Despite the rich experience in absorbing other parts, SRZP such a huge piece may be just too difficult.
On March 20, Sergei Mironov informed the RIA Novosti agency of his desire to join the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. According to him, negotiations on this subject “publicly or behind the scenes are in progress”.
“I really believe that the unification of our party with the Communist Party in the historical perspective will take place, but not under the current leadership of the Communists,” Mironov said, adding that he would certainly report on the results of consultations with representatives of the Communist Party.
The SRZP leader is convinced that the parties have “similar ideological platforms”. The Communists immediately hastened to refute Mironov. Communist Party of the Russian Federation press secretary and State Duma deputy Alexander Yushchenko says that “apart from pre-election political actions” the merger has “no prerequisites” . For example, the Socialist-Revolutionaries regularly speak of unification, but they have never gone to the essentials, and their declarations on this subject become “intrusive”.
Sergei Mironov talks about it really regularly. For the first time, he evoked such a prospect in May 2007, six months after the creation of Just Russia. And in the future, he will regularly promote this idea under different sauces. In 2010, that is already 13 years ago, Mironov also spoke of the merger as a “historically inevitable” event. A decade and a half is a long time, but nothing like this has happened. The last time the subject of unification came up was in mid-2022. But rather trolling. Anatoly Wasserman, who is a member of the Duma faction of A Just Russia, spoke of such an association and said that communists would play a secondary role in it. And another SRZP “fellow traveler”, State Duma deputy and candidate for mayor of Moscow, Dmitry Gusev, argued that it was the socialists who made the October Revolution of 1917, from which the Communist Party. Communists traditionally replied that they did not take these proposals seriously and rejected them outright, as they did not perceive the Socialist-Revolutionaries themselves as a real opposition party.
Dmitry Gusev. Photo: spravedlivo.ru Apart from a similar “leftism” in discourse, Kondovo-Soviet in Gennady Zyuganov and more “modern” in Sergei Mironov, the parties do not have much in common. And similar features are unlikely to please their constituents. The summit of the “socialists” of the SRZP has always been full of businessmen, clearly distant from leftist ideas. For example, the developer of Volgograd Oleg Mikheev (wanted for economic crimes), the current governor of Omsk Alexander Burkov, known for his connections in the business circles of Yekaterinburg, and the industrial oligarch of Chelyabinsk Valery Gartung have in turn tried to manage the federal elections of the SRZP.
Alexander Burkov In the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, too, there has never been a shortage of such “communists”, even more colorful than Mironov’s “SRs”. For many years, former Yukos leader Sergei Muravlenko sat in the Duma faction of the party, and now St. Petersburg great promoter Roman Lyabikhov and Podolsk sportsman-entrepreneur Boris Ivanyuzhenkov are listed as “communists” at the State Duma. The latter admitted to being friends with the alleged leader of the Podolsk organized crime group, Sergei Lalakin, nicknamed Luchok, and Ivanyuzhenkov himself would have been known in these circles as Rotan.
Boris Ivanyuzhenkov. Both parties have been regularly accused by observers of false opposition: the Communists have been accused of a “leaked” referendum on the abolition of the pension reform in 2018, and the right-wing Russians have been accused of several similar actions both deliberately failed, the most famous of which was the struggle to abolish paid parking in Moscow, which was magnificently failed by MP Ilya Sviridov.
The leaders themselves cast doubts on the sincerity of the fight for the welfare of the people. Gennady Zyuganov lives comfortably in the suburbs, his relatives are arranged in good places.
Gennady Zyuganov And Sergei Mironov is known for his joie de vivre: he has already been through at least four marriages, and his children, even those who are not officially recognized, deprive themselves little. For example, insta-blogger Veronica Orchid, who is considered Mironov’s daughter, is currently, according to her social networks, in Monaco. Where he loves oysters, just arrived from one of the fashion capitals of the world – Milan. She likes to show off her life of luxury, although some of her acquaintances question the truth of this chic. Moreover, the party is united by some defector politicians. At one time, former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev, who fled to Ukraine, managed to stay in both. Unlike him, the former communist Elena Drapeko led the regional branch of the SRZP in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Ilya Ponomarev Communists have something to fear even without all these circumstances: Anatoly Wasserman, speaking of his role in a hypothetical trade union, was hardly joking. After all, Sergei Mironov has a wealth of experience in the complete absorption and dissolution of parties. When A Just Russia was formed in 2006, its modest Russian Party of Life merged with the loud and well-known Fatherland, created by Dmitry Rogozin, and also having an extensive regional network of the Russian Party of Pensioners. A year later, there was no longer any trace of the “Rodintsy” and “pensioners” as organized “fractions”. All the head heights were occupied by “Mironovites”, prominent disloyal members of the newly formed party were simply not elected to the State Duma in 2007, and those who remained in the “cage”, like the same old “retired” Hartung, simply obeyed.
Mironov, even after the merger, continued to “suck up” the political “clearing”: soon the SERP party and the Greens joined the ranks of the Socialist-Revolutionaries without a trace. And already in 2021, another major “merger” occurred: with the party “Pour la Vérité! the writer Zakhar Prilepin and “Patriots of Russia”, who in 2003 split from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Gennady Semigin. Now Mironov “ends” these two parties. Of the “Semigintsy” of the SRZP, only Semigin himself remained, who now quietly sits in the State Duma and, unfortunately, goes as an observer to the elections in Kazakhstan. The “Prilepinites” are still fighting back, but already at the May congress, the “Mironovites” can simply remove many of them from the party leadership. And instead add the people of businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who, according to sources in the presidential administration, “has long been trying to institutionalize” in a parliamentary party.
Gennady Semigin. Photo: flickr.com Hardly anyone came out of those tenacious embraces of Mironov. A relatively successful example, in fact, is the new State Duma deputy Alexei Zhuravlev (under the spiritual mentorship of Rogozin) from the Rodina party. However, he no longer obtains former successes in federal and even regional elections. In 2019, Zhuravlev almost returned to the Socialist-Revolutionaries, but not as an absorber, but as an absorber. Then the businessman-monarchist Konstantin Malofeev, who collaborated with Rodina, actively tried to “buy” the party, as well as leadership positions. Zhuravlev even called on the Social Revolutionaries to unite at the then Fair Russia Congress. But these plans were severely rejected by the “old Mironovists” and the party apparatus, who did not want to abandon their positions. And Rodina’s return failed.
Our source, close to the presidential administration, reacted to the upcoming quarrel between Mironov and the Communists with irony.
“As you know, the “totem” beast of Mironov’s party is a muskrat. And now, before the elections, he, like a real muskrat male, chirps loudly (we checked, zoologists really describe games mating of this animal in this way – notebook note), and the Communists hum beautifully in response. But, unfortunately, he will not come to mating. Because the SRZP was designed and still remains a spoiler of the Party communist of the Russian Federation and, the path of the weakened and narrowed “left foot”, but “United Russia”. The unification of the left into one big party is harmful and useless for anyone. Therefore, the administrators do not will not allow it, even if suddenly Zyuganov and Mironov start talking seriously about the merger,” he explained.
Sergei Mironov’s post “chirped loudly”: why his desire to unite with the Communist Party looks like a desman mating game
