Leonid Zyuganov

Leonid Andreyevich Zyuganov (; born 22 July 1988) is a Russian politician from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) who has served as a member of the Moscow City Duma since 2014. Leonid Zyuganov is the eldest grandson of CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov.

On 19 April 2023, he was nominated by the CPRF as a candidate for mayor of Moscow in the 2023 mayoral election.

Biography

Early life and education

Leonid Zyuganov was born on 22 July 1988 in Moscow in the family of engineers Andrey Gennadievich Zyuganov and Tatyana Yuryevna Zyuganova, an engineer. Andrey Zyuganov's father is Gennady Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation since its foundation in 1993. Leonid is the eldest son of Andrey and Tatiana. The family has a younger son, Mikhail.

Leonid Zyuganov graduated from linguistic gymnasium No.1531. During his school years, he studied at the same time at a music school in the class of wind instruments, played in brass and jazz bands.

From the fall of 2018 to 2019, Zyuganov headed the Communist Party faction in the Moscow City Duma, replacing Nikolai Gubenko.

Leonid Zyuganov was re-elected to the City Duma on 8 September 2019. According to the head of the CPRF faction in the Moscow City Duma, Nikolay Zubrilin, the official nomination of a candidate for mayor of Moscow from the Communist Party was going to take place at a conference of the Moscow City Party Committee, which was tentatively scheduled for late May–early June 2023.

Incidents In October 2022, Leonid Zyuganov was detained for not paying for gasoline at a gas station. Zyuganov himself explained that he paid for gasoline with a card in the terminal, after a beep he put it in his wallet. Allegedly, none of the employees told him that the payment did not go through. Later, the CPRF leader Gennady Zyuganov reacted to the incident, calling it a provocation.

Political positions According to Leonid, his grandfather never tried to impose his views on children and grandchildren. Nevertheless, Leonid himself became interested in politics while still at school. Rejecting the ideas of capitalism, "because he despised people who are chasing endless accumulations", Leonid began to study communism, realizing that socialist ideas were much closer to him.

Leonid Zyuganov does not accept the idea of a "democratic society". In an interview, he says: "...democracy is life according to the principle “man is a wolf to man”. And life in a society of socialism, a society of social justice, where the dogmas of collectivism prevail, is life according to the principle "man is brother to man".