Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 For the Hindustan Times From: Fred Weir in Moscow MOSCOW (HT Nov 10) -- Several Russian politicians have called for banning the Communist Party -- the country's largest political formation -- after it failed to publicly condemn one of its members for anti-Semitic remarks. "The Communists should be banned as the carrier of an idea that could break Russia apart," financier Boris Berezovsky told a TV interviewer at the weekend. Mr. Berezovsky is a former deputy chairman of the Kremlin Security Council and current secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States. "They are turning into nationalists and for the first time they have declared this absolutely openly. . . The Communists have placed themselves outside the laws of the civilized world and outside the laws of Russia," he said. Mr. Berezovsky's demands were echoed by a number of leading politicians. Former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar accused the Communists of turning into Nazis and said "if Russia wants to remain a democratic country it should ban the Communist Party." The controversy erupted last week when the vast majority of Communist parliamentarians refused to support a resolution of criticism against General Albert Makashov, a Communist deputy who referred to Jews in public speeches using an ethnic slur, blamed them for causing Russia's economic crisis and suggested they should be rounded up and jailed. The motion of censure in the Duma, Russia's lower house of parliament, was sponsored by film-maker Stanislav Govorukhin, a left-wing parliamentarian who warned that Gen. Makashov's inflamed rhetoric was a threat to Russian national unity and a disgrace to the Communist Party. But the measure failed when only a handful of Communists, who hold nearly half the Duma's seats, voted for it. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov said the resolution was unnecessary because Gen. Makashov had already been reprimanded inside the Party. "We have a pluralism of opinions, and people can say what they want," says Yuri Ivanov, a Communist Duma deputy. "Makashov has been criticized by his comrades, and that's enough." But at a Moscow rally marking the 81st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution last Saturday, Gen. Makashov repeated his attacks on the Jews, and Communist Party leaders also present made no move to curb him. "The Communists have a serious internal problem," says Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. "Zyuganov does not want a split, and so he's had to make allowances for Makashov". Mr. Zyuganov slammed Mr. Berezovsky's call to ban the Communist Party as "an expression of utter extremism" and warned that all such appeals are contrary to Russia's Constitutional law. The Communist Party was banned after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but revived when Russia's Constitutional Court upheld its legality. But it has never declared a clear post- Soviet ideology, and Mr. Zyuganov tends to appear in the guise of nationalist, social democrat or Stalinist depending on his audience of the moment. It remains Russia's largest political party, and Mr. Zyuganov routinely leads the pack of possible presidential candidates in opinion polls. But the same polls show the Communists not only the most popular, but also the most unpopular party in the country -- a paradox that led to Mr. Zyuganov's defeat in 1996 presidential elections and would likely do so again. "This controversy reveals the basic problem the Communists have," says Mr. Petrov. "The Party's internal disunity and lack of ideological cohesion makes it impossible for Zyuganov to create an electable image for himself. The Party's enemies find it easy to exploit situations like this controversy over Makashov." -- Gregory Schwartz Department of Political Science York University 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada tel: (416) 736-5265 fax: (416) 736-5686 mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci