Moscow
Support for the Communist Party has reached its highest level since the fall of the Soviet Union, a respected Russian polling organization reported this week. The VTSIOM poll found that 31 percent of voting-age Russians support the Communists, compared with just 21 percent for Unified Russia, the party of President Vladimir Putin. Most Russians agree with Putin’s stance against the war in Iraq—Putin called it “the most serious global conflict since the end of the Cold War” and a threat to international stability—but many would go further than Putin in expressing anti-American sentiment. Communist Party leader Gennadii Zyuganov has called for an international boycott of U.S. products to protest the war.
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