ommunist leader G.A. Zyuganov
at the State Duma 15 October.

Communist leader G.A. Zyuganov at the State Duma 15 October: (communist party candidate for President of Russia in the previous election).

"An illegal power triangle emerged in 1993 whereby the president has unlimited powers and is subject to nobody's controls, and where the government has essentially proved to be subordinate to nobody. Essentially there is no normal power in the country, only an imitation of power. Russia does not pay those who work, teach, or treat the sick, and it enriches those who are essentially destroying and robbing the country. If GDP falls by more than 30 percent, the deindustrialization of production and society begins. Our production slump has been more than 50 percent. So a terrible time bomb is being placed under the country's entire economy. The richest enjoy incomes 25 times that of the rest. Today 31 million people are below the poverty line, half of them 50% below. They cannot be guaranteed survival. World practice shows that if there are more than 5,000-6,000 crimes per 100,000 of the population, there will be a mass criminalization of society. In our country this indicator is currently 6,500. One in every two crimes goes unrecorded. Around a million people are the subjects of a criminal prosecution every year. That is twice as many as in the darkest days of repression.

It is well known that, if alcohol consumption exceeds eight liters per individual, the nation begins to degenerate. According to specialists, today around 42 percent of new-born infants are backward in their mental development. The country's death rate has rapidly accelerated of late. Russians are now dying faster than any of the other peoples living on the European territory of the country. The country is essentially losing every year a population equivalent in size to Kursk or Belgorod Oblast. Half of those who are currently 16 years old will not make it to pension age. The Kuban's 3 million peasants do not even have the money to bury their dead. Cases of insanity in the have doubled. That is equivalent to a town with a population of 25,000.

Today 70 percent of children do not get any school dinners. Go into any school canteen where there is a waiting line and they will tell you that the children stand with hands outstretched for a piece of bread. Today only one teenager in 10 is in satisfactory health. And against that backdrop 50 children's hospitals have been closed and 7,000 pediatricians dismissed in the past few years alone.

There are 4 million homeless in the country. Messrs. Nemtsov, Sysuyev, and Chubays are proposing that the government cut the "Orphan Children" program by 35 percent and the "Disabled Children" program by 36 percent.

Very large debts are owed to children in the country, but they have not been cut, as promised, over the past 18 months; instead they have increased from 10 trillion rubles [R] to R11 trillion. (Debts are appropriated funds never disbursed.)

Veteran's savings of R317 billion have been confiscated. Pensions have been reduced by a half or a third. A moral terror has essentially been launched against the older generation -- one's heart cannot withstand such derision. The situation in the country will continue to deteriorate.

Our educational system is being destroyed and switched to a private footing. The new educational budget provides for around $2 billion for science and education. South Korea will be investing $10 billion and the United States $170 billion. Schools, the pride of the country, have essentially been sacrificed to so-called reforms that are increasingly reminiscent of genocide.

The 21st century will be one of poverty for our citizens. Today 70,000 specialists with higher scientific qualifications have effectively been expelled from the country.

Essentially, the country is being deprived of sight and hearing. Its electronic monitoring systems have been virtually destroyed. Almost all its satellites are completely worn out. Geological prospecting is being destroyed. The collapse of the sanitary and epidemiological service and a whole series of other subunits continues.

Gaydar took pride in having destroyed waiting lines in the country. But today the kinds of lines that had not been seen for a thousand years have appeared. The line of cheated depositors -- a line of 80 million people -- could stretch from Moscow virtually to the Urals. Today the longest line is the line for the cemetery and for jobs. These shameful waiting lines are the result of the ill-considered policy of so-called reform.

The Land Code adopted by the Federal Assembly gave land to 46 million citizens, who control 13.7 million hectares. It gave land to the peasants, who control 120 million hectares. And if you want to add more -- let's give every townsperson 25 ares for free. Let them build their own homes and live normally. Let's give every peasant another half-hectare to grow what they can. But distributing and selling off land under the current conditions, when it is being mainly bought up by crooks and foreigners, is a crime against our nation.

I want to state yet again that today television has turned into an infernal machine that is destroying our country's morality, culture, and identity. Three viewing subjects are constantly in evidence: violence, pornography, and lies. These three components, taken together, are essentially destroying the morality not just of children but of adults too -- destroying everything there is in our fatherland.

Privatization is being carried out But we have sold 125,000 enterprises for an average of R7 million each. That is less than a worn-out Zhiguli.

Our government is pursuing a policy which will leave our country and our children without a future. "

(Comments: Whether or not he is using the truth for political purposes, is it possible that the Communist party offers sanity and hope in the midst of chaos? Is the word Communist so offensive that we prefer the Democracy of criminals rather then words of truth from Communists? Are semantics clouding our view? Where is America's moral leadership? What have we to offer Russia's suffering masses? What was it we stood for during the cold war? What was it all about? What was it all for?)