“Iceberg,” an anti-Zyuganov television spot

This ad, created by Oleg Kozyrev of the Pilot animation studio (established in 1988 and known internationally for a short film titled “Gagarin”), is part of the massive “black PR” effort that Russian oligarchs and their international supporters launched against Communist Gennady Zyuganov during Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election campaign.

Like all anti-Zyuganov propaganda from this period, this spot, titled “Iceberg [Aisberg]” sought to sway voters away from Communism by raising the specter of a drab, meager, violent Soviet past. A square-headed Zyuganov blathers incoherently in a vaguely “Soviet” vein while standing on the tip of an iceberg which, on closer inspection, turns out to be a nuclear submarine. Behind each of the sub’s portholes is a Soviet-era contradiction in terms that would be all-too-familiar just 5 years after the collapse. Banners trumpeting WORLD PEACE fly over a landscape teeming with soldiers, tanks, and bombers; the word FREEDOM is emblazoned above a cramped prison yard filled with miserable inmates; and, finally, a flag reading ABUNDANCE flaps over the heads of a gigantic, hungry queue. At the cartoon’s end, the camera zooms out to show the vastness of the hidden underwater menace. A final intertitle reminds viewers to “look to the root” of Zyuganov’s speechifying—and, presumably, vote Yeltsin.