The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF; Russian: Коммунистическая партия Российской Федерации; КПРФ, romanized: Kommunisticheskaya partiya Rossiyskoy Federatsii; KPRF) is a communist political party in Russia that officially adheres to Marxist–Leninist philosophy.

[11][12] Immediate goals of the party include the nationalisation of natural resources, agriculture, and large industries within the framework of a mixed economy, with socialist relations of production that allow for the growth of small and medium enterprises in the private/non-state sector.

[7] Zyuganov had been a harsh critic of Alexander Yakovlev, the so-called "godfather of glasnost", on the CPSU Central Committee.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, he became active in the Russian "national-patriotic" movement,[17][18] being the chairman of the National Salvation Front (some authors call him a nationalist).

[20] After the election—which Yeltsin won with 54% of the vote—on 7 August 1996 the coalition supporting Zyuganov was transformed into an official organisation, the People's Patriotic Union of Russia (NPSR), consisting of more than 30 left-wing and nationalist organisations, including the Russian All-People's Union, led by Sergey Baburin.

Zyuganov called the 2003 elections a "revolting spectacle" and accused the Kremlin of setting up a "Potemkin party", Rodina, to steal its votes.

[28][29] The CPRF also accused the United States and NATO of deploying European fascist sympathizers and Middle Eastern terrorists to Ukraine to fight the Russian army.

[30] Two members out of 57 of CPRF's Duma caucus, Vyacheslav Markhaev and Mikhail Matveev, have expressed opposition to the war, although they support the "protection of the people of Donbass".

[32] As a result of the party's actions of endorsing the invasion of Ukraine, 55 of the 57 CPRF lawmakers, including Zyuganov, have been sanctioned by the United States Department of Treasury, HM Treasury of the United Kingdom, Global Affairs Canada, Japan, Australia and the European Commission.

The CPRF considers the multi-sector socialist market system as developed in China to be a model which should be emulated within Russia.

The party supports state ownership over major industries, the renationalization of businesses privatized after the collapse of the Soviet Union, giving out subsidies to currently existing state-owned firms and maintaining large welfare benefits.

The CPRF has also maintained stable relationships with many businesses, including small and large private companies, worker cooperatives, and organizations which trace their lineage to the Soviet era.

According to the party, there comes a "confrontation between the New World Order and the Russian people with its thousand-year history, and with its qualities", "communality and great power, deep faith, undying altruism and decisive rejection of lures mercantile bourgeois liberal-democratic paradise".

Achieving this goal will help eliminate the devastation from the standpoint of the party, the consequences conducted in the past decade of reforms, in particular by the nationalisation of property privatised in the 1990s.

However, in this case small producers will remain and moreover will be organised to protect them from robbery by "big business, bureaucrats, and mafia groups".

A gradual transition in the economy will be made to a socialist form of economic activity, but a small private equity is still retained.

[47] Zyuganov and the party support social conservatism and voted in favor of the ban on the "promotion of non-traditional sexual relations to minors", commonly known as the Russian gay propaganda law.

Left-wing nationalist newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya has also friendly ties with the Communist Party, but is not officially affiliated with it.

[66] One of the few polling stations that gave a success to the CPRF during the 2007 Russian legislative election was at Moscow State University.

[74] In February 2005, the CPRF defeated the ruling pro-Kremlin party United Russia in elections to the regional legislature of Nenets Autonomous Okrug, obtaining 27% of the popular vote.

In 2008, Roman Grebennikov switched his allegiance to United Russia, angering many Communists who accused him of using the CPRF as a tool to become elected.

[80] Marxist theoretician Boris Kagarlitsky wrote in 2001: "It is enough to recall that within the Communist movement itself, Zyuganov's party was at first neither the sole organisation, nor the largest.

This occurred not because the organisations in question were weak, but because it was the CPRF that had received the Kremlin's official approval as the sole recognised opposition".