The head of Russia's Communist Party, a candidate in a presidential election next month, has said key industries should be "returned to the people," the party said in a statement on Sunday.
Speaking during a campaign stop in Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of historic Communist leader Vladimir Lenin, Gennady Zyuganov also said the policies of the current government were killing off ethnic-Russians.
"Support me and we will carry out nationalisation. We will return to the people the riches that were taken away from them," Zyuganov was quoted as saying in a speech in a concert hall in Ulyanovsk.
"We want the most important sectors of the economy... to be public, state-owned. Starting with electricity and ending with railways and telecommunications," he added. Zyuganov also accused the current government of "waging a war" on ethnic-Russians by failing to halt demographic decline and by encouraging gambling and violence on television.
"Russophobia seeps through every pore of the current government," he said. Russians go to the polls on March 2 in a contest that is seen as a sure-fire win for President Vladimir Putin's chosen successor Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy prime minister and the chairman of gas giant Gazprom.