[1][5] Zyuganov taught mathematics but soon turned to Communist Party of the Soviet Union work in Oryol Oblast, beginning in 1967.

[6] He enrolled at an elite party school in Moscow, the Academy of Social Sciences in 1978, completing his doctor nauk, a post-doctoral degree, in 1980.

As the party began to crumble in the late 1980s, Zyuganov took the side of hard-liners against reforms that would ultimately culminate in the end of CPSU rule and the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Zyuganov wrote several influential papers in the early 1990s attacking Boris Yeltsin and calling for a return to the socialism of the pre-Gorbachev days.

He argued that the collapse of the Soviet Union led to a decline in living standards, that economic power was left concentrated in the hands of a tiny share of the population, that violent crime increased, and that the Soviet collapse allowed ethnic groups throughout Russia to embark on campaigns, sometimes violent, to win autonomy.

Russians who felt left behind in the new Russia emerged as Zyuganov's supporters, including a number of workers, clerks, bureaucrats, professionals, and the elderly.

In the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections, the newly revitalized Communist Party of the Russian Federation made a strong showing, and Zyuganov emerged as a serious challenger to President Yeltsin.

[7] The oligarchs set aside their differences and held several private meetings in Davos hotel rooms, where they strategized how to defeat the perceived Zyuganov threat.

In November 2001, in an open letter to Putin ahead of the summit between the US and Russian presidents in the United States, Zyuganov said that Russia was betraying its national interests.

[11] On 23 September 2003, Zyuganov sent a deputy request to the Prosecutor General's Office and the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, in which he demanded to initiate an administrative case against Putin as an official of category "A" and to fine him in the amount of 22,500 rubles for conducting election campaigning outside the campaign period of the United Russia party.

In October 2005, Zyuganov indicated that he would run for president in 2008, making him the second person to enter the race for the Kremlin following former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov.

[15] On Zyuganov's 65th birthday in June 2009, the then Prime Minister Vladimir Putin presented him with a copy of the first Soviet edition of the Communist Manifesto.

[16] On the occasion of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's birthday on 21 December 2010, Zyuganov called for the re-Stalinization of Russian society in an open letter to President Medvedev.

[17] After Putin's annual address to parliament on 20 April 2011, Zyuganov criticised it as inadequate in dealing with Russia's economic decline and warned that, "If the [parliamentary and presidential] elections are as dirty as before, the situation will develop along the North African scenario.

[19] The communist party played only a minor role in the protests, with one of its speakers, who called for restoration of Soviet power, being booed off the stage.

[19] Zyuganov is a harsh critic of President Vladimir Putin, but states that his recipes for Russia's future are true to his Soviet roots.

[22] 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.

According to Zyuganov, "a gang of folks who cannot do anything in life apart from dollars, profits and mumbling, has humiliated the country" and called for a new international alliance to "counter the aggressive policies of imperialist circles.

[27] After Russia was sanctioned for systematic doping in the run-up to the 2018 Winter Olympics, Zyuganov proposed sending Russian fans to the Games with a Soviet Victory Banner.

[32][33] 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.

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