ABSTRACT
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) was quickly to become the leading communist organization in post-Soviet Russia. In June 1990 the Russian Communist Party emerged as a potential organizational vehicle for those Russian Communists who actively opposed Gorbachev’s increasingly far-reaching reformism. The presence of a Russian Communist Party would be needed to offset the influence of the emerging anti-communist forces elected to the new Russian parliament. The original impetus for the formation of a separate Russian Communist Party came from the militant neo-Leninists grouped around the United Front of Labor and the Communist Initiative Movement. Yeltsin’s post-putsch suspension of communist activities and his November 6, 1991, ban on the Russian Communist Party affected the party’s three main tendencies in significantly different ways. Competition for members among the existing pool of communist activists was, however, just one of the consequences of the CPRF’s entry into the communist playing field.
