In an open letter, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov claimed there is a Zionist conspiracy to seize power in Russia and asserted that “Zionist capital” has wrecked Russia’s economy. The letter appeared to be aimed at the Russian business tycoons known as the “oligarchs,” who were instrumental in reelecting President Boris Yeltsin over Zyuganov in 1996. Most of these business people are Jewish, including Boris Berezovsky, who has called for outlawing the Communist Party in Russia. Zyuganov wrote the letter in the aftermath of criticism in parliament of Albert Makashov, a member of his party. In recent months, Makashov has made virulently anti-Semitic statements. The lower house of parliament, the State Duma, in which Zyuganov’s party is the largest single faction, has refused to condemn Makashov. “Zionism has in reality revealed itself as one of the varieties of the theory and practice of the most aggressive imperialistic circles striving for world supremacy,” according to Zyuganov, who also compared Zionism to fascism. “The only difference between them is that Hitler’s Nazism was performing under the guise of German nationalism and sought world supremacy openly. And Zionism, performing under the guise of Jewish nationalism, is operating stealthily, using other people’s hands.” Zyuganov said that by attacking Zionism he did not mean to attack Jews. “We have never put an equation mark between the notions of a ‘Jew’ and a ‘Zionist,'” he said. “The spread of Zionist ideology among the Jewish people is by far not the fault, but a misfortune of the Jewish people.” Zyuganov added that Jews were welcome to leave Russia, or recognize Russia “as their only “Motherland,” or “assimilate” into its ethnic groups, but they could not be some kind of “inner emigrant in it, acting for the damage of her interests in favor of another state or an international corporation.” “One of the reasons of the present catastrophic conditions of the country, mass impoverishment and dying out of its population,” Zyuganov insisted, was the “Zionization of the government authorities.” He claimed these officials were ignoring “the aggressive, destructive role of Zionist capital in ruining Russia’s economy and plundering her property owned by all.” Source: Washington Post, December 25, 1998. http://www.washintonpost.com/