Zyuganov Outlines Soviet-Style Economic Plan
Russian Communist Party candidate Gennady A. Zyuganov on Tuesday published his economic program calling for the restoration of much of the Soviet-era economy.
The lengthy document, while tempered with moderate language, makes clear that if Zyuganov beats President Boris N. Yeltsin in the mid-June election, the state will reassert control over the country’s economy, regulating prices and wages and controlling production.
The plan also outlines protectionist trade policies aimed at allowing Russia to draw into itself for several years to improve production before re-emerging onto the world market.
Zyuganov’s Communist-dominated bloc “acknowledges the need to reform the economy but rejects the course chosen by current authorities,” says the document, published in Sovetskaya Rossiya, a Communist Party newspaper.
The plan does not call for a complete reversal of Yeltsin’s free-market initiatives; for instance, it largely ignores the complicated issue of what would happen to property privatized during recent years.
Yeltsin supporters have consistently warned that a Zyuganov victory would set the stage for renationalization of the homes, stores and factories that Russians have acquired in recent years. But Zyuganov’s campaign staff insists that only property privatized illegally would be renationalized, and then only through the courts.
Still, pro-market economists quickly denounced the program as a recipe for disaster that would send inflation spiraling out of control and again isolate Russia from the world economy.
“It would mean again shortages, lines and everything disappears,” said Nikolai P. Shmelyov, a leading Russian economist.
“We already lived under those conditions for generations.”
Yeltsin supporters - and even some of the more strident leaders of Zyuganov’s bloc - called the blueprint a campaign ploy aimed at assuaging the concerns of voters who appear to be deserting the Communist candidate for Yeltsin by the millions.
xxxx CLOSE RACE The latest public-opinion polls show Gennady A. Zyuganov running a close second to Boris Yeltsin. Until recently, Zyuganov had a healthy lead.