The leader of a Russian pro-Communist party said this week in a televised interview that Russian television must be freed from the Jews.
Victor Anpilov, leader of the Working Russia Party, told the NTV channel that “most of those who appear on Russian television are people of Jewish descent.”
Anpilov may become part of the Russian Cabinet if Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov is successful in Sunday’s presidential elections.
Zyuganov has not yet made his Cabinet list known, but people both inside and outside the party say Zyuganov wants Anpilov to head Russian television.
President Boris Yeltsin is expected to garner 35 percent to 37 percent of the vote, while Zyuganov, according to recent polls, is expected to win 23 percent to 26 percent in a race that includes eight other presidential contenders.
In December’s parliamentary elections, Anpilov’s party won about 5 percent of the vote.
Anpilov, a former journalist, spent several years in the 1980s as a correspondent in Nicaragua.
When asked what steps he would take if he is named to head Russian television, he said he would “first of all raise the [Russian] national spirit of country’s television.”
“There should be people of indigenous origin” who include those “who pronounce [the letter] `r’ correctly and whose faces represent the most typical [ethnic] Russian features,” Anpilov said.
He also claimed that no “Russians” had been seen on national television for a long time.
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