THE UNDEAD RED

By Bruce W. Nelan

IF ANY CITY DESERVES TO BE called the mausoleum of Soviet communism, it is Ulyanovsk, the industrial center on the Volga where Vladimir Lenin, ne Ulyanov, was born in 1870. It contains a varied assortment of Lenin shrines, from his parents' apartments to his classroom to a modernistic museum complex on a bluff overlooking the river. The city is so resistant to political and economic reform that some Russians refer to it as a "communist preserve." It has been ruled since 1990, except for a brief interval, by its "Red Governor," Yuri Goryachev, who was once First Secretary of the region's Communist Party. He continues to operate in the peremptory style of a party boss from his colonnaded, four-story administration building on Lenin Square.

But Goryachev is a government official now, not a party leader, and his building is no longer Ulyanovsk's party headquarters. Instead the Communist Party of the Russian Federation makes its regional base in a single-story wooden house next door to an animal hospital on a rutted, dead-end lane. The Second Secretary here is Zhavdets Ilyasov, 49, a retired colonel of Interior Ministry troops. The peeling wallpaper and crumbling ceiling in his office do not discourage him. He takes pride in the obvious differences between his austere communist organization and the fat cats of the old Soviet nomenklatura, who in the new Russia have profited from their high positions. "It is a myth," he says, "that we have a 'Red Governor' in Ulyanovsk. Those in charge here are former party secretaries who are now comfortably well off."

In Russia as in Ulyanovsk, politicians like Goryachev represent communism past. Lean and hungry ones like Ilyasov claim they are the country's communist future. The new reds became the largest party in parliament with 22.3% of the vote in last December's elections, and they are mobilizing their national network to take the presidency, the really important post, in June. If they manage it, they intend to do communism right this time. They plan to reconstruct and revive the monster of the Soviet Union as a communist state. They would reimpose price controls and central economic planning, renationalize key industries and, probably, turn back toward authoritarian rule. If they pull it off, they would inflict immense damage on Russia and its relations with the rest of the world.

The Communist Party's standard-bearer in the presidential race is Gennadi Zyuganov, a smooth customer and an opponent of Boris Yeltsin's in the last days of the U.S.S.R. As observers both Russian and foreign point out, Zyuganov can preach it round or flat. He sounds like a social democrat when he meets with Western businessmen and diplomats, reassuring them that he favors a "mixed economy." To the party faithful, however, he puts forth a harsher anti-Western, sometimes anti-Semitic message.

Zyuganov enjoys a considerable lead in the polls over President Yeltsin and the two other leading candidates, Grigori Yavlinsky and Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In his effort to build a coalition that could swell the ranks of communist voters to the more than 50% he needs to avoid a run-off in the presidential vote, Zyuganov has cut back on Marxist verbiage, and is making an effort to include all groups that could help him defeat Yeltsin. Yet a large percentage of the nation's voters are profoundly suspicious, fearing that Zyuganov's talk of popular fronts and his promises to play by parliamentary rules are a smoke screen to mask his real ambitions.

It is true the Zyuganov program makes obeisance to such democratic principles as unfettered political activity and freedom of opinion, religion and information. But the former Soviet constitution contained similar guarantees, all of which were ignored or defined out of existence. Zyuganov is not the communists' strongman, and if elected, he will be expected to carry out the will of the organization, which may be harsher than it admits to being.

Some Russians give Zyuganov credit for being sincere but assume party hard-liners behind the scenes are using him as a stalking horse. One of the doubters is General Alexander Lebed, a national hero and presidential candidate being wooed by Zyuganov. Lebed believes the communist candidate probably holds social-democratic views but, he told a Russian newspaper, that "those who stand behind him are communists of a Stalinist type. If they should come to power, in all likelihood they will try to turn the country back" to Soviet-style rule. Yeltsin's handlers will focus on this apprehension during the campaign and argue that Zyuganov cannot be trusted. They have begun with the slogan "Russia cannot afford another 1917."

Even well-informed Russians are reduced to theorizing about the core beliefs of Zyuganov's followers because they come in so many shapes and sizes. Sitting in the seats the communists already hold in parliament are such ill-matched party comrades as General Albert Makashov, who led the armed assault on Moscow's main television center during the abortive coup of October 1993; the so-called red millionaire Vladimir Semago, who is reported to own a string of city casinos; and Yuri Maslyukov, the last head of the Soviet State Planning Commission and a candidate member of Gorbachev's Politburo. He still believes, as Gorbachev did, that with some fine-tuning the communist system can be made to work.

Another Zyuganov colleague is General Valentin Varennikov, a former commander of Soviet ground troops who was acquitted of charges arising from his involvement with the putsch against Gorbachev in August 1991. Varennikov perhaps forgot how many audiences his party is now addressing and assured an assembly of retired military officers in mid-March that they should not be misled by the moderate propaganda they have been hearing from communist leaders. "You have read only our minimum program," said Varennikov, his dress uniform glittering with medals. "But there is also a maximum program that has never been published. Let's take power first and then agree on how the power should be used."

This hint that the party has something up its sleeve was so broad that even hard-liners felt they had to deny there was a plan for anything more specific than restoring Soviet power. General Makashov said sardonically, "What is our maximum program? The Kingdom of God on earth--or communism, as we call it--before the third millennium." But Zyuganov apparently felt real damage had been done. He told reporters at a press conference last Friday that his election front, which he calls "a patriotic, popular coalition," was preparing "short-term, middle-term and long-term programs" and that they would be presented for public debate this month.

Even if those programs have not yet appeared, it is possible to discern where the communists are headed by studying the legislation the party is preparing for action in the Duma. One proposal calls for renationalizing industries "that have been privatized contrary to law, the rights of labor collectives and the interests of the country." Another would establish workers' councils in every enterprise and give them the right to control "production, finances and distribution and uses of income." Other new laws would impose state-regulated prices, restore central planning of the economy and give the state a monopoly over foreign trade. If enacted and enforced, this program would utterly destroy the substantial progress Russia has made toward a market economy.

One objective all the Russian communists and their allies seem to agree on: the humiliating breakup of the Soviet Union must be reversed. A nonbinding resolution to that effect passed in the Duma last month and generated a powerful backlash from the West and from former Soviet republics that are now independent, especially Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic states. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher called the resolution "intimidation" and a "dark vision." The communists were unrepentant, though Zyuganov did repeat his usual line that of course the reunification of the U.S.S.R. will be "gradual" and "no one will encroach on anyone's independence."

The neighbors might not like it, but remaking the Soviet empire is a bedrock issue for the communists' new coalition. It is central to Zyuganov's strategy of pulling in non-Marxist nationalists and anti-Western and pan-Slavic ideologues. This is not something completely new for communists. Even in the heyday of Soviet power, there were two tendencies in the leadership. The internationalist wing of the party put Marxist revolutionary goals above Soviet national interests. The opposing "statist" group--followers and admirers of Stalin--put Russia first. So do they now.

For Zyuganov's collection of Russian communists, the emphasis on the word Russian is perhaps heavier than on the word communist. In building a new statist movement, Zyuganov seems to be readying another version of the red-brown--that is, communist-nationalist--alliance that shook the democrats in parliament a few years ago. Zyuganov is calling on all "patriots" to rally around his banner in the cause of a powerful Russian state, an alternative to the West. His basic appeal is to all who feel anger, pain and shame at the demise of the great Soviet Union and the decline of their own personal fortunes. One recruit is Alexei Podberyozkin, chairman of a patriotic political organization called the Spiritual Heritage Movement, who argues, "Russia is an empire. It is Russia's historic fate that it cannot exist on any other scale." Says General Makashov: "Russia will be restored to its historic borders."

Statements like that worry foreign governments. But experts around the world wonder not only about what the communists mean but whether they are capable of doing what they intend. There are many skeptics. Russia's relations with the West would certainly be strained under a communist administration, but the military debacle in Chechnya does not indicate that Russia would have the strength to retake Ukraine, for example, let alone occupy Poland.

At home it would require the use of force, real coercion, for the government to renationalize industries, reimpose price controls and take over the banks. It is not obvious that a Zyuganov government would have that kind of power and authority. "I just happen to think it's impossible," says a senior official in the U.S. State Department. To the extent it is possible, the most likely result would be a domestic disaster--hyperinflation, unemployment and a devalued ruble.

Worse than that would be the potential political consequences of a communist victory. Hostility toward liberal values and democratic practices is embedded in the party's genes. With a communist President in the Kremlin and a red-led parliament, the future of opposition parties and the independent Russian press would be bleak. The most threatening outcome of a free election that brought Zyuganov and his ilk to power could be the end of free elections.

Reported by Dean Fischer/Washington and John Kohan and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow

With reporting by DEAN FISCHER/WASHINGTON AND JOHN KOHAN AND AND YURI ZARAKHOVICH/MOSCOW