ABSTRACT
Boris Yeltsin’s decisive victory over Gennadii Ziuganov on July 3, 1996, when he received almost 54 percent of the total votes cast compared to slightly over 40 percent for the communist leader, was a source of gratification for the West and a relief for the majority of politically active Russians. And the additional eight percent of voters who chose Ziuganov over Yeltsin in the second round of the presidential race, their initial preference for a non-communist candidate notwithstanding, suggested the depth of popular disenchantment with both the president and life in post-Soviet Russia. On the specific issue of the party’s relationship to the People’s–Patriotic Union of Russia, Valentin A. Kuptsov took the customary communist “frontist” approach. The blandness of Ziuganov’s Eighth Plenum address was doubtless related to the fact that the founding congress of the People’s–Patriotic Union of Russia was set to take place the following day. Russia’s communists were thus plainly at a crossroads after the 1996 election.
