18 Facts About Gennady Zyuganov

Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov is a Russian politician, who has been the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and served as Member of the State Duma since 1993.

Gennady Zyuganov was born in Mymrino, a farming village in Oryol Oblast, on 26 June 1944.

Gennady Zyuganov's father fought at the Soviet-German front of WWII and returned home with serious injuries.

In 1962, Gennady Zyuganov enrolled into the Department of Physics and Mathematics of the Oryol Pedagogical Institute.

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

Gennady Zyuganov 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.

Gennady Zyuganov then returned to Oryol to become regional party chief for ideology and propaganda until 1983.

Gennady 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.

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

Gennady Zyuganov entered the 1996 presidential election, as the standard-bearer of the Russian Communist Party.

Gennady Zyuganov placed a distant second behind Vladimir Putin in the March 2000 presidential election.

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

In 2004, Gennady Zyuganov declined to run against Putin, who secured a landslide reelection victory.

In October 2005, Gennady 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.

On 29 November 2008, in his speech before the 13th Party Congress, Gennady Zyuganov made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in:.

In September 2011, Gennady Zyuganov again became the CPRF's candidate for the 2012 presidential election.

In September 2022, Gennady Zyuganov called in the Duma for a general mobilization.

In February 2022, Gennady Zyuganov, who voted for the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, was placed on the sanctions list by the United States, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, Australia and the European Union.