Zyuganov vows to back Grudinin if he wants to join Communist Party
MOSCOW. Feb 20 (Interfax) - Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said he will support presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin if he wants to join the party.
Grudinin is the Communist Party's presidential candidate.
"If he [Grudinin] would like to become a party member, I will support him," Zyuganov said at a press conference at Interfax' main office on Tuesday.
"Because he knows how to work, knows how to think, and knows how to explain complicated things in perfect Russian, and he also has a conscience, and he offers the best social package in the country," Zyuganov said.
Grudinin is the director of and principal shareholder in a major farming business outside Moscow, "Sovkhoz Imeni Lenina."
The Communist Party leaders denied that there is any split in the party.
Dmitry Novikov, a deputy chairman of the Communist Party's Central Committee, said, "In the 25 years that our party has existed since its revival, it has never been through a period of split. Even in 2004, during the so-called 'Semigin saga,' we could have talked about an underground, but not about a split in the party. There is nothing of the sort today; the party is consolidated and stands ready to keep offering its program to society and actively conducting an election campaign."
Yury Afonin, another deputy chairman, said that there are "no splits and no problems in the party."
He invited "journalists to any regional or local branch of the party in the country" to see that " for a long time, there hasn't been the sort of mobilization, the sort of consolidation around our party and our leader, Gennady Zyuganov, as there's been during this election campaign."