For Russia’s Communists, Ousting Putin Is a Priority

November 8, 2009

By YULIA TARANOVA

MOSCOW — Along with the perennial calls for “land for farmers” and “factories for workers,” Communists who marched in Moscow on the Saturday anniversary of the 1917 revolution offered a slogan of more recent vintage: “Russia without Putin.”

As the Nov. 7 holiday approached, leaders of Russia’s Communist Party — with 13 percent of the electorate the country’s largest opposition faction — have made it clear that they prefer President Dmitri A. Medvedev to his predecessor, and the current prime minister, Vladimir V. Putin.

Speaking at the party’s annual plenum last week, the party’s president, Gennady A. Zyuganov, said the so-called tandem government of Mr. Putin and Mr. Medvedev was collapsing.

He said opposition politicians “are eager to support the president if he ever decides to go on a real but not declarative struggle for those principles that he stands for.”

Mr. Putin remains Russia’s most popular politician, with Mr. Medvedev trailing him by around 10 points in most polls. Approval ratings for both leaders dipped last month amid widespread allegations of fraud in local elections; on Oct. 25, the Public Opinion Foundation reported that Mr. Putin’s trust rating fell to 66 percent from 72 percent, the lowest point since he became prime minister, though he regained four points of that loss last week.

Sergei A. Markov, a State Duma deputy with the governing United Russia Party, said opposition forces had long sought to drive a wedge between the leaders “in order to weaken the system and create more room for themselves.”

“In this tactic there is a seed of reason,” he said. “This is the common position of the opposition. I personally think Zyuganov is under the influence of the more radical wing, which calls itself liberal.”

Frustration with Mr. Putin’s government was a common refrain at Saturday’s Communist marches, which drew some 150,000 across Russia, according to the Interfax news service. Demonstrators’ posters aired grievances about mortgage fraud, unemployment and police corruption; most of those interviewed had little to say about Mr. Medvedev.

“We consider Medvedev and Putin to be parts of one whole,” said Yevgeny I. Kopyshev, 48, who joined the march in Moscow. “However, we prefer to cultivate our leaders rather than confronting them. That is why, when Medvedev declared priorities that were so close to ours, we could not fail to appreciate it.”

Ellen Barry contributed reporting.