By Oksana Yablokova

        Prominent Communists, after largely keeping their peace during the 16 months since President Vladimir Putin took office, have broken their silence with a hard-hitting open letter warning about the march of capitalism and crime across the country and appealing for the secret police to stop "destructive" reforms.

The letter, signed by 43 people including Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Anatoly Lukyanov and cosmonaut Svetlana Savitskaya, was published last Tuesday in the Sovietskaya Rossia newspaper and on Monday in the Zavtra weekly. Lukyanov has been named by Boris Yeltsin as the ideologist behind the bungled 1991 coup. The so-called "Appeal of 43" is addressed to "the people" and the "constructive and healthy forces" on Putin's team, which is dominated by former secret service officers.

It criticizes "the second wave of reforms" started under Putin and predicts that "Russia will not stand for even half" of the liberal undertakings, which include the liberal measures on land, housing, health and education, in addition to a new Labor Code and the liberalization of state-controlled monopolies like Unified Energy Systems and railways.

"The secret police who have grown in power with Putin as president have come to rule the country and brought the state goodwill and unselfishness," the appeal said. "[But they] are suffocating from rotten personnel from the Yeltsin era who are poisoning state institutions.

"They [the secret police] will become invaluable allies of the patriots in a 'personnel revolution' to cure the sick state."

The appeal was also signed by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Zhores Alfyorov, several Soviet writers and poets, former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov and Alexander Prokhanov, editor of Zavtra.

Prokhanov said Monday that the appeal was drafted because Russia has found itself in a catastrophic situation similar to that in 1991, which the letter refers to as "tragic."

Prokhanov was among 43 hard-liners who signed a similar appeal shortly after the August 1991 events.

"In our 1991 appeal we turned out to be tragically right," Prokhanov said.

The new version should reach patriotic law enforcement officials and presidential representatives in the seven federal districts, coming from the military and KGB, where Putin comes from as well, Prokhanov said.

Yury Korgunyuk, political analyst with the INDEM think tank, said he believed the letter was an attempt by the Communists to re-emerge as a major political force after being obedient to Putin for months in return for key Duma posts, including speaker's chair.

"The Kremlin used the Communists last year when two-thirds of the votes were required to pass a series of constitutional changes required to strengthen the grip of the regions," he said. "But the Kremlin does not need them any more and is relying on other factions instead."

"The fact that it [the appeal] came around in time for the anniversary makes it even more meaningless," Korgunyuk said.