"Witch hunt" in Russia's Communist party

Expulsion of parliament speaker Gennady Seleznyov and two leaders of parliamentary committees, Nikolai Gubenko and Svetlana Goryacheva, from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation "for violating the Rules of the KPRF" has in fact created a precedent of victimization of dissidents: this point of view was voiced by one of the victims, Svetlana Goryacheva, who chairs the Committee on Youth Affairs, Maternity and Childhood in the State Duma.

Possibly, the KPRF will soon initiate a "witch hunt" for dissidents, Goryacheva told a Tuesday press conference in Vladivostok. In her opinion, the whole business marks "the beginning of the end of the KPRF." Goryacheva said the KPRF Central Committee kept receiving letters and telegrams from different parts of Russia, all of them at odds with the Plenum's decision to expel the threesome from the Party. "And they prove, once again, that differences between KPRF leaders and regular Communists keep mounting," she said.