Russian Communist Party win the 1996 Election

Commies would experience serious soul-searching. Their program didn't offer a lot of alternatives, they were feeding off many ills of Yeltsin's regime, saying "This and that is bad". But they were seriously short in "what would we do differently" department. Although some doomsdayish scenario is not absolutely impossible, I don't believe this pack of greying Commie apparatchiks would do something radically serious, something like turning Russia into North Korea. They likely would start with political processes against oligarchs, masked as "tax courts" or something of this nature (OTL Khodorkovsky affair, repeated ten times), most likely returning most lucrative pieces of privatized property (oil, gas, resource industry in general) under state control. They are unlikely to go into short-term bonds the way Yeltsin's government did, therefore 1998 crisis would likely be avoided. All in all, I would look at Belarus for clues as to where this "post-Communist Russia rulled by CPRF" would go economically. State ownership of major industrial assets, combined with significant and slowly increasing private sector in retail and services.

It is hard to say what would President Zyuganov's regime do as far as foreign policy is concerned. One thing I'm very sure about is more pro-Serbian policy. Off the top of my head I can count exactly 2 cases when Russian public opinion was united across the political spectrum, one being belief that Serbs are unfairly singled out and demonized by Western political games during Balkan war and another being strong distaste of Baltic glorification of Nazi collaboration and turning Russophones there into second-class residents. OTL Yeltsin's quiet mumbling of disapprove of NATO operations in support of Albanian and Croatian ethnic cleansers was caused by his regime being dependent on Western credits, not his feeling that joint NATO-KLA operation was "peacekeeping".
 
Yeltsin beat Zhuganov by over 13% in the second round. I don't think this is particularly likely.

In any case, wouldn't it just be rigged if Zhuganov looked like he had any chance of winning?
 
Yeltsin beat Zhuganov by over 13% in the second round. I don't think this is particularly likely.

In any case, wouldn't it just be rigged if Zhuganov looked like he had any chance of winning?

Hmmm...so it could have been rigged in OTL and we just didn't know?
 
So you don't think they'd try and limit democaracy?
I think it is a misunderstanding. I never said that they're going to nurture democracy. Some major curbs (Putin regime on steroids) are likely, but not all the way back to Brezhnev's times.

Hmmm...so it could have been rigged in OTL and we just didn't know?
Frankly speaking, I wouldn't dare to say it is impossible. Irregularities were massive, but they weren't widely reported, as Yeltsin was seen as a "good guy". You might want to read "Who Killed The OSCE?" Ames is pretty opinionated guy, but he hit the nail in the head in this case.
 
If anything, former WP countries that kept their communists did better in the long run than those that didn't :p

However, KPRF are just...I don't know, but they're too old and too bitter to be trusted. That's detailed scientific analysis for you.
 
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