Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Communist Party of the Russian Federation was founded on the 14th of February 1993 at the Second Extraordinary Congress of Russian Communists. It was established as the successor to the Communist Party of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic after the CPSU was banned by Boris Yeltsin in 1991.
Gennady Zyuganov has led the CPRF since its founding congress in February 1993. He is also a co-founder of the party and previously served on the CPSU Central Committee, where he was known as a critic of Alexander Yakovlev.
The CPRF publicly supported the invasion of Ukraine, accusing NATO of planning to "enslave Ukraine" and framing the conflict as a campaign against Ukrainian "Banderites and fascists." As a result, 55 of the party's 57 Duma deputies, including Zyuganov, were sanctioned by the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Japan, Australia, and the European Commission.
The CPRF's candidate has finished second in every Russian presidential election. Zyuganov's strongest showing was in 1996, when he received 32.03% in the first round and 40.31% in the second round. The party's weakest presidential result came in 2024, when Nikolay Kharitonov received 4.37% of the vote.
The CPRF officially adheres to Marxist-Leninist philosophy and classifies itself as a left-conservative party. Its 2008 programme describes a three-phase plan to build "Socialism of the 21st century" through peaceful means, with the nationalisation of industries privatised in the 1990s as an early priority. The party also points to China's socialist market system as a model to emulate.
On the 6th of July 2025, a CPRF congress adopted a resolution declaring Nikita Khrushchev's 1956 report "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences" to be erroneous. The resolution effectively repudiated the foundational document of Soviet de-Stalinisation, consistent with the party's long-standing celebration of Joseph Stalin's rule.