The Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (CPLO or CP; Russian: Коммунисты Петербурга и Ленинградской области; КПЛО, КП; Kommunisty Peterburga i Leningradskoy oblasti, KPLO, KP) is an interregional public organization that was founded on April 12, 2003.
[4] There is an opinion that the CPLO functions as a clownish organization, whose task is to provoke and discredit the communists by disseminating shocking statements on their behalf.
[7][8] In the official documents of the CPLO it is noted that "We, the Communists, value the theoretical and practical legacy of K. Marx, V. I. Lenin, J. V. Stalin, as well as, albeit to varying degrees, Plekhanov, Gramsci, Luxemburg, Che Guevara, Gandhi.
Unlike other communist parties, factions and platforms are allowed in the CPLO: there is a socialist trend, guevarist, anti-globalist, national-patriotic, left-wing radical, etc.
[4] Thus, in January 2005, the Communists of Petersburg urged veterans and pensioners not to pay for public transport; from that moment on, all the initiatives of the KPLO began to be covered with more or less regularity by the media.
[15] CPLO rarely conducts unauthorized actions, but its leaders were repeatedly detained during pickets and rallies,[16][17] and the party's office was subjected to violent searches.
[18] Despite their status as a public organization,[2] the Communists of Petersburg immediately began to actively participate in election campaigns, playing on the contradictions between the various flanks of the left movement.
[19] In the second round of the gubernatorial elections, the Communists of Petersburg announced their support for the former vice-governor in the government of Vladimir Yakovlev, candidate Anna Markova, which was widely publicized by her headquarters.
However, by this time the Communists of Petersburg and the Leningrad Oblast (received Interregional status in 2006) were already a well-known organization and were simultaneously invited to several coalitions.
In crisis conditions, the leader of the CPLO, municipal deputy Sergey Malinkovich, was invited to represent SEPR at the debates on the RTR TV channel.
These speeches, in which the SEPR was presented by Malinkovich as an "electoral union of socialists and communists" and an extremely populist program (the speaker promised to cancel the rent if the bloc wins), according to CPLO's own statements, made the organization widely known to the city, and also significantly raised the SEPR rating from the level of statistical errors up to 1.5-2 percent.
"[26] In the fall of 2007, CPLO turned to the St. Petersburg branch of the CPRF with a proposal to form a joint list of candidates for elections to the State Duma and was refused.
In 2004, 2005, 2009 СPLO has invariably sought the election of its leaders - Sergei Malinkovich, Viktor Perov, Yuri Savin and other deputies of the municipal councils of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region.
Previously, CPLO again turned to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with a proposal to form a single list, but was again refused by the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPRF.
At the same time, using the support of the CPLO, A Just Russia successfully took part in the elections of municipal councils in the Leningrad Region, having received almost the same number of mandates as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (56 versus 59).
Having ceased to be a member of the CPRF in 2001, Malinkovich, unlike other opponents of Gennady Zyuganov (Seleznyov, Podberezkin, Potapov, Kuvaev, Semigin, Tikhonov, etc.