You almost have to feel sorry for Gennady Zyuganov. After all, the jolly Communist Party leader and former ideology chief for the Soviet party has done nearly everything right.


His party, the surviving orphan of the 19 million strong guardian of the Soviet Union, still claims half a million members. Bombed out of the Supreme Soviet, Zyuganov picked himself up again and finished third in last December's elections for the State Duma. He is now the linchpin of the opposition, consulted at every turn.


An impressively thorough opinion poll two weeks ago in Obshchaya Gazeta of 6,000 respondents across Russia found that only 1 percent of the population are "active supporters" of President Boris Yeltsin, while 13 percent call themselves "active opponents."


If the poll is accurate, Zyuganov should be knocking on the Borovitsky Gates. As it is he has hatched any number of strategies and all of them are doomed to failure.


The middle prong of the opposition's strategy has been the vote of no-confidence in the Duma, which finally came to pass Thursday. But in the event it has turned out to be a half-baked vote against a not sufficiently unpopular government. It is hard to portray solid apparatchiks like Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and his first deputy, Oleg Soskovets, as "boys in pink pants" working for the IMF. The government was always going to survive.


And even if the motion had passed, Yeltsin had a constitutional ace up his sleeve. The days are gone when the Supreme Soviet could haul the president over the coals. After a second vote against the government Yeltsin could simply dissolve the Duma and call new elections. The opposition is constitutionally boxed in. The only elections they really care about, the presidential ones, are scheduled for June 1996, six months after the parliamentary ones.


Hence the next ploy, to win a referendum on early presidential elections. Zyuganov said Wednesday that his party had collected more than a million signatures of support and would go on gathering them until Dec. 15.


Theoretically a million signatures can guarantee a referendum. But here again all the cards are stacked against Comrade Zyuganov. The government can question the legitimacy of the signatures and refuse funding for a referendum. In short it can obstruct the process fairly comprehensively.


So, on to the Communists' last ploy -- a commission to investigate Yeltsin's health. The first stage, a draft law setting up a commission to investigate the health of the nations' leaders, went through the Duma on Tuesday.


But, as the Russians say, "every schoolboy knows" that the chances of Yeltsin submitting himself to an opposition-inspired medical inspection are about as good as him swearing to take up jogging and drink only orange juice for the rest of his days. The best that Viktor Ilyukhin and Vladimir Isakov, the crafty devisers of this idea, can hope for is a grand debate on the floor of parliament in which they can call him a drunk.


Zyuganov and Co. are all dressed up with nowhere to go. They would probably agree with Grigory Yavlinsky who said recently that the Duma has all the powers of a "reading room in a library." It's a pleasant place with a smart address, a host of interesting people and a good cafeteria but it makes little impact on the day-to-day running of the country.


The last straw must have been when Zyuganov had a three-hour meeting with Chernomyrdin and the rumor-mill started working that a communist was to join the government. To fulminate and fume for three years against the Yeltsin regime and then be offered the post of first deputy to the Fisheries Ministry! Zyuganov recognized that idea for what it was: the latest piece of exquisite torture he has had to undergo.


But if he needs cheering up I advise Zyuganov to share a few words in the Duma dining room -- the food is quite good -- with those implacable liberals from the Democratic Russia movement, Gleb Yakunin and Lev Ponomaryov.


These two recently released a statement saying that Yeltsin was giving way to a "backlash of the nomenklatura and the extremist forces of counter-reform." In other words, that the hue of the government is gradually turning red again. Zyuganov can reflect on this and sleep a little more easily.


But I reckon it will still be a while before Yeltsin pulls that old party card out of the top drawer, dusts it off, picks up the phone and growls: "Gennady, can you remind me of that quote of Vladimir Ilyich in 'State and Revolution'? ... "