Russia's communist party trying to reinvigorate itself.

Byline: Mark McDonald

MOSCOW _ President Vladimir Putin's popularity is likely to carry his United Russia party to big gains in parliamentary elections Dec. 7, but the runner-up almost certainly will be the Communist Party, a somewhat modernized reincarnation of the big red machine that once ran the Soviet Union.

The Communist Party was briefly banned in the early 1990s, after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics imploded. But the Communists came back to win the most seats in Russia's 1995 elections. Although they've since lost most of their key legislative posts, they remain the largest opposition party.

Allied with a kindred agrarian party, the Communist bloc holds 126 of the 450 seats in the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament.

"We didn't disappear; we're still here," said Alexei Kondaurov, 54, a former general in the KGB, the Soviet intelligence service, who's running for parliament on the Communist ticket and is virtually assured of a seat. "There's a great difference between the current Communist Party and the Soviet one."

The party now favors a free press, encourages the practice of Russia's traditional religions and accepts the concept of private property.

Making money has become downright politically correct, as it's long been for communists in Western Europe. Kondaurov, for example, is a wealthy, BMW-driving senior executive at oil giant Yukos.

The No. 2 man in the party is Nikolai Kondratenko, a former regional governor who was promoted to the Federation Council, Russia's version of the U.S. Senate. He's lauded in party literature as "a fighter against global Zionism."

Other leading Communist candidates include a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a former cosmonaut, a former board chairman at Yukos and Russia's ambassador to Norway.

"Today's Communists are not revolutionaries, not in the least, and they've agreed to live under the rules of the new system," said Valery Solovei, a political analyst and historian at the Gorbachev Foundation, a research center for socioeconomic and political studies. "They know it's inconceivable to restore socialism. I'd call them social democrats."

The Communist Party's platform does have a leftist coloring, similar to some social democratic parties in Europe.

In an appeal to elderly Russians and the working poor, the Communists want an increase in pensions and salaries to "a subsistence minimum," along with a freeze on utility bills, bus and train fares, fees at public health clinics and other services.

Party ideologists haven't completely unshackled themselves from Marxism: They oppose the open sale of land and call for renationalizing the oil, gas, minerals and electricity industries.

The core of the party's support is the fixed-income elderly, many of whom are struggling financially and wax nostalgic for the security of the Soviet system.

"I feel such compassion for our pensioners," said Mikhail Kalashnikov, 84, a retired general and the designer of the famed AK-47 assault rifle. "Most of them aren't living. They're just surviving."

Many voters of a certain age also long for the lost power and prestige of the Soviet empire.

"Look at a map of Russia today compared to a map of the old Soviet Union," Kalashnikov said. "Russia looks like it has been nibbled by jackals."

Other key Communist constituencies: farmers, the working poor, anti-Western nationalists, die-hard socialists in the so-called Red Belt of southwestern Russia and unemployed factory workers, especially in cities where state defense plants have shut down.

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"The party has a strong base and a strong nationwide structure," Solovei said. "The advantages of capitalism can only be seen in Moscow and a few other big cities. Elsewhere, against the backdrop of widespread poverty, the achievements of the old Soviet system sound very convincing."

With its legions of elderly voters dying off, Communist organizers have been frantically courting younger Russians. Communist posters, handbills _ even Internet messages _ are hitting hard at issues that anger and frustrate young Russians. These include a chronic lack of jobs, the high cost of university and vocational educations and the virtual impossibility of getting a decent apartment.

"These are very sensitive issues for young people and young families," said Yuri Afonin, 27, the newly elected head of the Komsomol, the party's youth wing. "Our young people see that everything they want was once available to the young people of the USSR. Their parents tell them."

The party's leader, Gennady Zyuganov, lacks charisma, to say the least. He's stiff, aloof and more than a bit old-fashioned. Party underlings still address him as "Comrade."

Even Kondaurov, the Communist candidate, admitted that Zyuganov presents "something of an obstacle" to the party's rejuvenation efforts.

But Zyuganov appeals to many old guard Communists and to the party's hard core. In the 1996 presidential elections, he got almost as many first-round votes as eventual winner Boris Yeltsin.

In 2000, he was the runner-up to Putin. When the results were announced, even Zyuganov's campaign manager reportedly breathed a sigh of relief and said to a colleague, "Thank God we lost."

"Nobody could ever imagine a President Zyuganov, not even Zyuganov himself," said Solovei, the political analyst. "It would be good if he stepped aside, but he doesn't want to, and that's creating a real tension inside the leadership."

One thing the leadership agrees on: keeping the party's name and its symbols. The word "communist" might evoke bad memories for many Russians, but for others it carries heavy political currency. For pure brand recognition, it's hard to beat.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Russia+communists

(c) 2003, Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.