MOSCOW—In spite of freezing temperatures in the Russian capital on Wednesday, a crowd of Communist Party protesters grew outside Moscow city hall. Anti-coronavirus measures, one leaflet claimed, are “the revival of fascism.”
Though its top leaders have mostly stayed clear of the issue, the rank-and-file in Russia’s Communist Party, the direct successor of the once giant Soviet party, have become the most visible coronavirus deniers and anti-vaxx agitators in Russia. Rising leaders in Russia’s largest opposition party have taken up the issue by refusing to wear masks, downplaying social distancing, dismissing quarantine plans, and even insisting they will not take Russia’s own vaccine.
Mass vaccinations against the coronavirus began in Russia over the weekend. Many Russians are torn about taking it. Russian scientists have published an open letter accusing the developers of the vaccine, called Sputnik V, of “gross violations.” The Communist street protest against the vaccine and quarantine measures drew hundreds of people to Moscow’s central Tverskaya Avenue.
ADVERTISEMENT
There are no lines to get a shot of Sputnik V—59 percent of Russians say they don’t trust the vaccine. Virus dissidents handed out leaflets promoting the conspiracy that Bill Gates is using vaccinations to “microchip” the world’s population, somehow even with Sputnik V.
In an interview with The Daily Beast, the leader of the Communist Party in Moscow, Valery Rashkin, who is also a member of Russia’s Parliament, said he has no need to get a Sputnik V shot. “I have had a Soviet ideological vaccine against thieves and liars, it keeps me healthy,” the 65-year-old said, suggesting the vaccine developers have misled Russia.
Rashkin said the Kremlin’s quarantine measures designed to slow the spread of the pandemic were unnecessary and hurt the most vulnerable people whose loss of income is not being compensated. “Don’t believe Moscow is rich, it is a city with an immense number of poor people and the largest number of oligarchs; people are left without help to survive on pennies, while authorities spread gloom and fear,” he said. “People trust Communists, since we are the last fighters left, when 20 million Russians live in absolute poverty.”
Much like President Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the U.S., Rashkin says the impact of the pandemic is exaggerated and restrictions must be lifted to save businesses. He claims nearly 1,000 small and medium businesses have gone bankrupt during the pandemic. “Putin’s Russia has a declining economy and lives behind an iron curtain in the world’s backyard,” he said.
Rashkin said he didn’t promote the more extreme conspiratorial theories, which the Communist Party leader appeared to amplify earlier in the year, but still did not trust the vaccine. “I have no opinion about Bill Gates,” he said. “Somebody brought the leaflets [about Gates] to our protest to discredit our reputation.”
Most opposition rallies, even one-person protests, have been banned in Moscow since spring because of the pandemic. Police detained two activists of another party, Left Front, last month for protesting. But this time, police did not detain anybody, though several police buses were parked near the city hall.
People brought letters demanding that authorities cancel remote education and allow Russian students to return to in-person classes at school. “Children study 10 percent of the time online, they watch cartoons during the classes, we have thousands of written complaints from parents,” Rashkin explained.
A district council member and liberal opposition leader, Ilya Yashin, said the police “would never dare” to detain the Communist leader, though he has tested the limits of opposition to the Kremlin. “Rashkin is the only State Duma deputy gathering a crowd in the heart of Moscow, unlike the party leader, Gennady Zyuganov, who is loyal to Putin and financed by the Kremlin. Rashkin has ambitions to run and win the elections,” Yashin told The Daily Beast on Thursday. And fomenting anti-vaxx sentiment has been his ticket this fall.
Rashkin is a well-known COVID-19 dissident, demanding the Kremlin “immediately declare the end of the pandemic and bring the country back to normal life.” In reality, Russia suffered a record 613 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, bringing the total to more than 45,000 as the virus rips through the country.
Communist leaders claim the party’s popularity has been growing during the pandemic, which concerns the Kremlin’s administration. In local elections in September, 32 percent of the capital’s residents voted for Communists.
Last year, Siberian Communists demanded Putin’s resignation in an open letter. The authors blamed Putin for “ignoring the people’s will” and for “dismissing” the governor of Irkutsk. Rashkin was among three Communist deputies who did not vote for the constitutional amendments allowing Putin to hold onto power until 2036.
According to social polls by Levada Center, about 10 percent of Russians are ready to vote for Communists, while 29 percent of the population still support the ruling party United Russia. More than 30 percent of Russians would either ignore the elections or simply have no clue which party to support.
Just like Soviet communists, modern Russian Leninists inspire confrontations between poor and rich, although the modern party accepts the market economy and international trade, and has taken to recruiting small business owners. “Don’t believe Moscow is rich, it is a city with an immense number of poor people and the largest number of oligarchs,” Rashkin said. “We explain to workers around the regions how authorities fool them, the necessity to have honest presidential elections and not Putin for the fifth or sixth time; we need to replace the thieves in power, have a diverse economy and trade with the West, like China—but our activists get arrested, silenced.”
