KPRF 'Flash Mob' Hits Movie Premiere
KPRF 'Flash Mob' Hits Movie Premiere: "In a bid to win the youth vote for the Communist Party, or KPRF, young Communists floated several hot-air balloons featuring photos of their leaders into the gray skies above Moscow on Wednesday.
In the evening, the agitprop action switched to the Pushkin movie theater, as three dozen young Communists staged a flash mob event on the steps of the movie theater ahead of a showing of 'The Matrix Revolutions,' which was being premiered simultaneously in 80 countries.
'People think of the Communist Party as a pensioners' party, but we set out to change this perception with our program 'Upgrading KPRF' or 'The New Left,'' said Oleg Bondarenko, the director of youth projects at the KPRF.
'We want more young people to join our ranks. And we want to convey to them that the KPRF is cool.'
In a PR stunt that owed as much to Hollywood sci-fi as to Soviet movie icon Sergei Eisenstein, the party dispatched 32 'cool,' suitably attired young Communists to hold what it described as a flash mob at the movie's Moscow premiere.
A flash mob, according to the New York creator of the concept, is supposed to be about strangers responding to an anonymous e-mail who meet in a public place and do something inexplicable. But the KPRF's flash mob appeared to be about as spontaneous and unscripted as a Soviet party congress.
The activists donned KPRF T-shirts and 'Budennovka' helmets, of the type used in the 1918-1920 Civil War, and trademark Matrix sunglasses, as worn by Keanu Reeves' character Neo. The neon letters on their T-shirts read 'We Are Neo-Communists' and 'Destroy The Matrix.'
But police appeared not to share the KPRF's view that its flash mob was a cool, harmless event, and it took organizers some time to convince them that the Neo-Communists, along with about 100 of their supporters, were not holding an unsanctioned rally or demonstration.
'Our law enforcement bodies have yet to learn what a flash mob is,' Bondarenko said. 'But in the end they let us go ahead with the event and everything went fine.'
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Communist Party of the Russian Federation
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