Addressing the gathering, "Red governor" Gennady Starodubtsev called the intra-party opposition as a "bunch of political pygmies," who attempted to remove Zyuganov and his associates from party leadership. Mr. Starodubtsev accused the Gennady Semigin-Sergei Potapov group of using business tycoons' money to weaken the party. He also praised and thanked Mr. Zyuganov for his resilience in the face of a "barrage of attacks."
Yevgeny Lysenko, of the KPRF's Moscow branch, pointed out, for his part, that "Moscow's communists support the efforts by the Central Committee and Comrade Zyuganov to cement the party's unity. Speaking on behalf of the party's Moscow branch, he said that it had denounced the "dissenters' actions, leading to the threat of the party's bourgeois degeneration and transfer onto a social-democratic footing." He went on to criticize Alexander Kuvayev, the First Secretary of the party's Moscow City Committee who is attending an "alternative" KPRF congress. "Moscow Communists have denied him their trust, and deem it impossible to elect Kuvayev to the Central Committee," Mr. Lysenko said.
Agro-Industrial Union leader Nikolai Kharitonov, too, censured the intra-party opposition's actions against Gennady Zyuganov. He compared the stance of former Central Committee Secretary Tatyana Astrakhankina, outspoken in her criticisms of Mr. Zyuganov, to "the deadly gunshot by Fanni Kaplan" [the female terrorist who made an attempt to assassinate the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin]. Mr. Kharitonov branded Gennady Semnigin and his associates "pseudo-Communists," and said he found it hard to picture Mr. Semigin as leader of the People's Patriotic Union of Russia, alternatively known by its Russian acronym, NPSR.
"I am certain that you will reelect Gennady Zyuganov as party chairman," Mr. Kharitonov stated to a thunderous applause from the audience.
The delegates elected Vladimir Lenin as a participant in their current forum. "I am proposing that Mandate 1 of the Russian Communist Party's 10th congress should be issued in the name of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and transferred to a museum," Mandate Commission Chairman Svyatoslav Sokol said in a speech. The gathering responded with a rapturous applause.
Mr. Sokol reported that 317 delegates had been selected to attend the congress, but that one of them-former Central Committee Secretary Sergei Potapov-had been expelled from the party ranks in the lead-up to the forum. Thus, the mandates of the remaining 316 delegates were confirmed, although only 247 have come along. Twenty-four delegates are known to be absent for a good reason while the other 46 absentees have failed to provide any explanations.
The congress may close later today. There have been electricity blackouts in the Izmailovo concert hall throughout the day, so delegates have had to use pocket torches to be able to read out the texts of their speeches.
