ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) preliminary discussion of an official program during the first half of 1994, starting with the program theses considered by the Central Executive Committee in March 1994 and continuing with the deliberations at the party’s Second All-Russian Conference the following month. It focuses on the contrast between that October 1994 “Ziuganov draft” and the document ultimately endorsed at the Third CPRF Congress on January 21–22, 1995. The chapter deals with an analysis of the reasons for the seemingly paradoxical turn to the left at a time when the CPRF was gearing up for the coming round of parliamentary and presidential elections scheduled for late 1995 and mid-1996. As the CPRF settled into its new role as one of the larger parliamentary fractions in the State Duma, its leaders began to grapple with the task of clarifying their party’s political profile.
