Anna Malpas -
A debonair businessman who boasts million-dollar earnings, Pavel Grudinin came as a surprise choice as Russia’s Communist candidate for president.
Nicknamed the “strawberry king”, the 57-year-old has a pick-your-own fruit farm and dairy herd on a chunk of valuable real estate on Moscow’s outskirts.
He is the first fresh face in years to stand for the red-flag-waving party led by 73-year-old stalwart Gennady Zyuganov.
In a predictable March 18 presidential election, Grudinin is likely to be runner-up to President Vladimir Putin, though he lags far behind in state-run opinion polls at around seven per cent.
He appears to have all the credentials for a Communist candidate: he runs an agribusiness named after Vladimir Lenin and has praised Stalin, to whom he bears a passing resemblance.
Yet he is not a member of the Communist party and much of his wealth comes from renting and selling highly valuable land bordering the Moscow ring road to hypermarkets.
“My earnings over the last six years were 157 million rubles. I don’t earn badly,” he said. He hit controversy in March when the Central Electoral Commission ruled that he failed to declare Swiss bank accounts containing $1 million before registering his bid.
The commission finally ruled there were no grounds to deselect him but decided to display notices in polling stations saying he provided unreliable information.
Analysts see his role in the Kremlin scenario as boosting turnout — but not taking votes away from Putin.
Grudinin is willing to criticise policies but not the strongman himself.
“This is not a battle between people, it’s a battle of ideologies,” he said.
In the past he publicly supported Putin and even joined the ruling party. Communist leader Zyuganov has praised Grudinin for enacting socialist principles, from building a turreted Disney-style kindergarten to paying workers above-average wages.
The Sovkhoz Imeni Lenina, or Lenin State Farm, covers a whole district, entered through elaborate gates decorated with strawberry motifs.
Zyuganov calls it a “territory of social optimism”.
Grudinin may be a “capitalist”, but his treatment of workers and the local community play well with Communists too, said political analyst Konstantin Kalachev.
Communist MP Valery Rashkin insisted there was “no schism” in the party over Grudinin’s candidacy, calling him “our man, flesh of our flesh”.
Grudinin is a “dark horse” and the only candidate who could do better than the Kremlin intends, analyst Andrei Kolesnikov from the Carnegie Moscow Center told Vedomosti business daily. — AFP
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