At the turn of the 1980s, Russia saw prospects for evolution of its public and political development from an authoritarian to a democratic society along market economy lines. Historical experience shows such fundamental changes require a political setup where a multi-party system has a special place and significance. It is quite natural that the establishment of a multi-party system, an entirely new vector for Russia, inevitably encountered both objective and subjective difficulties. Two decades of this controversial process give an opportunity to judge its first results, as well as various circumstances that have facilitated or hindered the advance of Russian political history to new frontiers.

POLITICAL PLURALISM OF LATER PERESTROIKA

The evolution from a one- to a multi-party system which reflects different opinions in broad public circles began during the last phase of the existence of the Soviet Union. It turned out then that the political vanguard in the person of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) was unable to handle the problems that overwhelmed the country in the 1980s. The crises in all spheres of life of the Soviet society, which suddenly shed its veneer of prosperity, were eroding the population’s belief in the “leading role” of the CPSU, forcing the party to continuously re-adjust itself to new situations. The replacement of three secretary generals (from November 1982 to March 1985) surprisingly coincided with three basic trends in the then Communist leadership: the trend for reform as seen by security agencies, personified by Yuri Andropov, the trend for conservatism (Konstantin Chernenko), and the trend for democratic reforms (Mikhail Gorbachev). The years 1985-1990 showed inconsistencies in the policies of the “architect of perestroika,” his veering from one extreme to another, and his lack of a close-knit team of like-minded people, which intensified centrifugal trends within the CPSU.

The appearance of Boris Yeltsin in the political arena only seemed like the birth of a lone hero. In actual fact, his personal courage in confronting conservatives from the Politburo reflected the resentment many Communists of lower and medium levels felt towards everything labeled as “stagnation phenomena,” which lingered even after the reformists came to power. On the other hand, the existence of the Conservative group led by Yegor Ligachev and Ivan Polozkov was not merely a reflection of personal ambitions of the provincial officialdom, opposed to Gorbachev.

Along with the distinct erosion of the CPSU ranks, there emerged another layer of fledgling political activity. Non-CSPU members – in the first place creative intellectuals and researchers – were becoming increasingly active in large industrial centers of Russia, tending to group at informal public-discussion clubs. It is these activists who raised for the first time the issue of setting up Western-type political associations, other than the CSPU: social-democratic, liberal-conservative, national and religious ones.

The years 1989-1991 became a period of turbulent political activity. The new system of election to the USSR Supreme Soviet and to the legislature of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR) within the Soviet Union made it possible to nominate non-Communist candidates and even outspoken critics of the CPSU’s course. The Inter-Regional Deputies’ Group of the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies and the Democratic Russia organization, which emerged in the course of elections to the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and which included many members of unofficial associations, could have become a prototype of a powerful political force that would rival the CSPU in Russia and even in the whole of the Soviet Union in the struggle for power.

The activity of democracy-minded deputies at the above legislative bodies contributed to the legitimization of the multi-party system. In March 1990, the 3rd Congress of USSR People’s Deputies amended Article 6 of the USSR Constitution, abolishing the CPSU’s political monopoly on power, and Article 51 which now declared the Soviet citizens’ right to set up political parties. In October 1990, the newly adopted law On Public Associations set the guidelines for legal regulation of political activities. It allowed political parties to participate in the work of legislative and executive bodies. Beginning from January 1, 1991, the above law became effective, which gave an impulse towards formalizing the multi-party system.

In the last year of the Soviet Union’s existence, those who called themselves democrats failed to unite and establish one political party. The death in December 1989 of Andrei Sakharov, the moral leader of new forces, and Boris Yeltsin’s de-facto refusal to head Democratic Russia reduced the latter to an odd mix of small groups led by increasingly ambitious politicians. Yeltsin believed that he had come to power in Russia (initially as chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet and later, following the June 12, 1991 elections as Russian president) as a sort of national leader, rather than as a representative of the broad circles of the democratic public opposed to the CPSU. Characteristically, Yeltsin, when announcing his withdrawal from the Communist Party at the 19th CPSU conference (in July 1990), explained the move not so much by his disagreement with its policy, as by his new supra-party functions as chairman of the RSFSR Supreme Soviet. One of his first executive orders in the capacity of the RSFSR president (July 1, 1991) banned all political activities at organizations and enterprises and thus nipped in the bud the consolidation of potential members of Democratic Russia. On the other hand, CPSU grassroots organizations that operated at places of residence remained intact and later served as groundwork for the new Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Yeltsin’s move to suspend the CPSU’s activity following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991 and subsequent legal proceedings against it obviously did not contribute to the strengthening of the multi-party system in Russia. It created a precedent for similar moves against any political opponents of the powers-that-be. Those who were ready to join in the development of the political system on the wave of the amazing political activity of the population in 1989-1991, apparently changed their mind and had to consider their safety instead. On the other hand, the Russian president and his motley milieu promptly turned into a top state elite in the new conditions. This transformation did not require a political victory at elections or efforts from parties led by pro-Yeltsin officials. The government of Yegor Gaidar, formed in the autumn of 1991, mostly comprised not party leaders but bureaucrats close to Yeltsin. As a result, Russia began the year 1992 – the first year of its existence as an independent state – with the legislative and executive bodies formed in the last years of the former public-political and socio-economic system.

CHAOTIC MULTI-PARTY SYSTEM OF THE 1990s

The economic and political upheavals in Russia in 1992-1993 set a poor groundwork for parties’ activities. On the one hand, many deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation used their official capacity to enlist support in their respective constituencies. They set up parties, whose names included such words as “democracy,” “socialism” and “people” in various combinations, and the ever-present word “Russia.” But it soon became clear that those parties were like houses of cards, unable to withstand even a moderate wind of political struggle. In essence, the so-called “parties” were run by aides of parliament deputies; the aides hoped to secure a good position in the legislature in the foreseeable future, with the strategic aim of making a career in the executive branch of power.

The permanent conflicts between Boris Yeltsin and his associates, on the one hand, and the increasingly fragmented Supreme Soviet, on the other, slowed down and weakened the formation of a normal, by European standards, system of political parties in Russia. Supreme Soviet deputies, in contrast to their original ideological and political positions, steadily adopted tough opposition tactics in the struggle against the powers-that-be. The Russian president increasingly felt the hostile attitude of a majority of the parties represented in the Supreme Soviet. This strengthened his dislike of parties as such and of their participation in government bodies in the federal center and the provinces. After winning nationwide support in a referendum in April 1993, Yeltsin came to believe once and for all that the parliament should be treated as a rubber stamp for decisions made by executive bodies. Another reason for this opinion of the president and his team was that the democracy-minded camp, which had thrown its weight behind Yeltsin a few years before, was in a sorry state: the internal power struggle in it undermined the reputation of democrats in society. The economic chaos of the early 1990s delivered a still harder blow at this reputation: a majority of Yeltsin’s former electorate associated the chaos with the notion “democrat” which sounded amorphous to most Russian citizens.

The “hot autumn” of 1993 became a landmark in the establishment of a multi-party system in Russia. The authorities, within a span of several months, organized elections to a new kind of parliament, the State Duma; they also hastily drew a new Constitution and adopted it through a plebiscite, which coincided in time with the parliamentary election. The new Fundamental Law obviously restricted the powers of the legislative branch, and immensely strengthened the executive branch, in particular, the presidential powers. Feeling inferior, the State Duma, already in the first term of office (1993-1995), passed a law on public associations in a bid to regulate the political process, as participants in the political process were only vaguely outlined in the 1993 Constitution.

The law, which became effective in May 1995, introduced the legal notion “political public association;” it set parameters for registering these associations and named conditions for their participation in politics in the event of threats to the state’s integrity or in cases of inciting social, racial, ethnic or religious strife. Certain restrictions were imposed on legitimate participants in the political process. They were not allowed to draw funds from abroad, although the possibility of membership in international political associations was not denied to them. It should be noted that the above law never regulated the problem of funding associations inside Russia. Later, this created many problems for the activities of many political parties. In addition, the law did not spell out the difference between “political public associations” and “political parties.’’ This circumstance played a role in the substitution of the development of a multi-party system with the courting of the electorate, which is necessarily limited by election cycles. Personal blocs were set up to secure their leaders’ winning coveted seats in parliament. The blocs, whose number exceeded that of parties, tended to emphasize the personal charisma of leaders on the party lists – who often were not career politicians – rather than the ideological essence of the movement they represented.

The 1993, 1995, and 1999 elections to the State Duma showed definite, quite tangible tendencies of voters’ electoral behavior. Part of them, 20 to 25 percent, remained loyal to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF). They regarded it as not only the defender of economic and social rights of the low-income groups of the population, obviously infringed upon by the authorities, but also as the successor to the CPSU, on which they pinned hopes for at least partial reanimation of the Soviet system. After impressive electoral success of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) at the 1993 election (when it garnered 22.9 percent of votes), the support for Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s party fell dramatically to 11.2 percent in 1995 and a mere 6 percent in 1999. Initially the only party that appealed to nationalist sentiments among part of the electorate, later it had to give way to others, as other political exponents of nationalist positions entered the political arena. In all, these parties gathered about 20 percent of votes. Taking into account small anti-Yeltsin parties, the protesting, pro-Communist and nationalist electorate made up at least half of all voters in Russia at elections in the 1990s.

In these conditions, the powers-that-be, understanding that parties play a special role not only at parliamentary, regional or local elections, but largely determine voters’ preferences at presidential elections, attempted to shape a Russian version of a “party of power.” But since Yeltsin originally placed himself above parties, the leadership of such a party had to go to a close associate of his. Neither Sergei Filatov, nor Alexander Yakovlev succeeded in forming a “party of power” in the period between the 1993 and 1995 elections. Nor was State Duma chairman Ivan Rybkin able to set up a leftist party in support of the presidential policy, especially as he relied on an insignificant part of the provincial elite that was close to the authorities. Prime Minister Victor Chernomyrdin’s taking up the role of leader of the “party of power” looked more promising in terms of electoral prospects. However, his Our Home Is Russia party, which came up with an unimpressive 10 percent of votes in 1995, was unable to even clear the 5-percent barrier in 1999 to secure seats at the State Duma.

The situation was even worse in the second half of the 1990s for those who might be termed as a camp of “critical solidarity” with the authorities. Such figures as Yegor Gaidar, Grigory Yavlinsky, Irina Khakamada, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Shakhrai, sponsored by Russian oligarchs, while remaining loyal to market economy principles and democratic development, failed to find a mutually acceptable conceptual basis for forming a united party. It happened not only because of their orientation towards different electoral trends, mostly in large industrial centers, but also because of their excessive personal ambitions and their striving to sideline their colleagues in ideologically close political forces from leadership in the future party.

The search for a new version of a “party of power” was caused by inevitable preparations for a presidential changeover. Initially, Yevgeny Primakov was proposed for the post as the most acceptable statesman not only for the Moscow and St. Petersburg elites, but also for part of the provincial establishment. The Fatherland – All Russia bloc was fashioned for the future president. But Yeltsin’s closest milieu and he himself believed that the former prime minister would not be loyal in his new capacity to the ailing president and his family. On the advice of Yeltsin’s close associates, Vladimir Putin was appointed prime minister, the last in Yeltsin’s era. In the first months of 2000, he became acting president. The newly formed Yedinstvo bloc was to provide electoral support to him by lauding the success of Putin’s anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya and measures to overcome the consequences of the August 1998 financial default. As for the disunited pro-market democrats, they ran for the 1999 elections separately. The results of the December 19, 1999 elections showed a new electoral trend. Voters actively (23.5 percent) supported the newcomer – Yedinstvo, which was largely due to Putin’s effectively taking the helm. Another candidate for being a “party of power” – Fatherland – All Russia, led by the Primakov-Luzhkov tandem, looked less impressive with 13.3 percent of votes. The KPRF held its ground with some 25 percent. The results of Yabloko (some 6 percent) and the Union of Right Forces (8.5 percent), which enjoyed the support of the bulk of oligarchs at the time, were less than modest.

A large part of Russia’s political elite regarded the chaotic multiparty system of the 1990s as a consequence of unresolved problems of various kinds. On the surface, this manifested itself in barely concealed displeasure with the country’s top executive post being held by a person who was unable – physically, intellectually, or organizationally – to form a stable structure of government. Therefore, the new Russian president and his closest associates objectively had to resolve the issue of adequacy of the whole legislative-executive system and determine the role and place of Russian parties in it.

PARTIES IN THE PYRAMID OF POWER IN THE EARLY 21ST CENTURY

It might seem at first glance that Putin’s eight years in office changed dramatically the Russian system of political parties. In actual fact, however, he only gave an impetus to the trends that had begun to shape during the time of his predecessor. The instability of the domestic political and socio-economic situation of the 1990s, coupled with a tentative and fluctuating foreign policy, had certain influence upon the sluggish development of political parties in Russia. The stabilization of economic development in “Putin’s era” which improved the socio-economic position of the wealthy group of the population, which made life easier for the middle class, and which preserved “the threshold of survivability” for the low-income strata – this and many other factors enabled the authorities to reform the political system without major obstacles from various opposition groups.

The power pyramid, which shaped in Yeltsin’s time, had the president on the top and was framed with the presidential administration, a generator of new ideas. The latter were implemented at the government level and endorsed – though not without occasional setbacks – at the Duma (i.e. at the purely party level). The whole power vertical was brought to its optimal shape during “Putin’s era.” Careful selection of personnel for executive posts, based on clannishness (half-forgotten since Leonid Brezhnev’s era), personal friendly ties, and professional corporativity, fastened by oligarchic capital (a practice surviving since Yeltsin’s time), helped to form a modernized power vertical.

The party component, foremost the State Duma, could not become an obstacle during Putin’s first term in office, while during the second term it gradually turned into a support – though not the major one – of the executive branch. Under Yeltsin, the political setup comprised parties that supported the government, critically or otherwise, but still they consolidated around it, while the opposition was an indispensable element. Putin’s eight years ended up with unconditional hegemony of absolute supporters of the regime, with a slight admixture of loyal opposition. The KPRF held the opposition role fast, but, valuing the benevolence of the authorities, it did not wish to make any resolute moves to take out the criticism of the government beyond parliament. The LDPR, thanks to its leader’s efforts, took the position of “critical solidarity,” held by democrats in the 1990s. The pro-presidential majority was represented by United Russia, which absorbed the now defunct Yedinstvo and Fatherland – All Russia.

As for critics of the authorities, such as the Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Yabloko, the elections in 1999, 2003, and 2007 showed a steady decrease in their influence on the Russian electorate. The SPS, which earlier leaned onto the middle class and a few Russian oligarchs, gradually lost the trust of this group of voters – especially business people in the center and the provinces – who preferred to deal with prot?g?s of the “party of power.”

Yabloko’s constant veering between the interests of the “intelligentsia in worn-out shoes” [the term was coined by Dmitry Rogozin who referred to the part of society that was hit particularly hard by the reforms – Ed.] and the wealthy business community undermined the party’s influence on groups of voters who were potential opponents to the authorities. Human rights campaigning, Yabloko’s hobby-horse, gradually lost its significance in the eyes of voters after the end of hostilities in Chechnya. Both parties – due to a persistent conflict between their leaderships – never succeeded in resolving the problem of consolidation at parliamentary or presidential elections. In addition, the authorities skillfully chipped off the SPS and Yabloko those functionaries who were ready to cooperate with the ruling regime in line with the classical principle coined by Russian 19th-century playwright Alexander Ostrovsky in one of his plays: “Truth is good, but happiness is better.” These efforts have been crowned by the formation (already under the new president) of a semi-tame party, the Right Cause, where conformists from the defunct SPS play first fiddle.

The 2003-2007 elections to the State Duma, despite all, possibly justified, doubts regarding the vote-count accuracy, showed that in the conditions of stabilization of the socio-economic situation in Russia and its foreign policy voters tend to back the authorities or those who have government support. Putin’s broadly publicized solidarity with United Russia, which not only presented itself as a party of efficient managers but which was in fact such a party during the stabilization period, and the full identification of United Russia and local authorities enabled the party to secure a relative and later an absolute majority of mandates in the State Duma. Thus, the State Duma acquired the quality of a driving belt of the executive branch and effectively removed the conflict between the two branches of power, which had been permanently on the agenda in Yeltsin’s time.

The presidential administration also successfully implemented a project for creating another pro-Kremlin party, Just Russia, led by the speaker of the Federation Council (the upper house of the Russian parliament) Sergei Mironov, who is very loyal to the president. Just Russia is an amazing mix of former nationalists from the Rodina party, ex-Communists from the Party of Pensioners, and members of Mironov’s former Party of Life, which had a rather vague ideology. The hybrid posed as a Russian version of social democracy and gained support in the Socialist International and other European reformist organizations.

Candidates and even whole parties that the Russian authorities viewed as suspicious were barred from elections. During election campaigns, the mass media, controlled by the government, regulated the presentation of promotional materials of political parties that were critical of the incumbent regime. Not all parties enjoyed equal conditions when organizing pre-election rallies or marches. Law-enforcement bodies nipped in the bud the actions of the opposition which, in their very partial view, violated Russian laws. Rulings by courts of any level were overwhelmingly against the political opposition.

Prohibitive or, at best, restrictive practices with regard to parties that had not vowed their allegiance to the authorities, were based on the law on political parties, passed by the State Duma in 2002 and later repeatedly amended. In defiance of the universally accepted democratic norms, the law set a minimum number of party members (it amounts to 45,000 at present) and obliged parties to have branches in more than a half of the administrative entities of the Russian Federation.

Biased checks into compliance with these criteria let the authorities influence the legitimacy of parties that could, at least theoretically, rival pro-Kremlin parties. Another difference from the European legislation on political parties was the abolition, under a pretext of combating separatism, of the institution of regional parties, which could rival federal parties at local government bodies. In contrast with the Western European political practice, the Russian authorities did not allow parties to be set up along confessional or professional lines. Political activity was banned at enterprises and colleges. On the whole, the law on political parties obviously limited opportunities for Russian citizens to set up political parties that would express public sentiments.

The partly artificial and partly natural decrease in the number of political parties in Russia in the first decade of the 21st century has necessitated limited mutual integration between party leaders and top state officials. The 2008 presidential election has brought about two equally powerful figures in the Russian political hierarchy, namely Putin and Dmitry Medvedev. This factor has somewhat loosened the rigid structure of a “presidential republic,” set up back in Yeltsin’s times. While the president (Medvedev in this case) has kept his reputation of neutrality, despite formal invitations from United Russia, Putin has developed his own know-how – quasi-party membership: he has agreed to become United Russia chairman without becoming its formal member. This situation, unprecedented in European political practice, is explained by a desire to have political support for a possible comeback to the top state post and by a fear of being identified with the party, whose functionaries, primarily at the regional and local levels, may become involved in high-profile corruption scandals.

The above suggests the conclusion that the Russian authorities need these pseudo-parties to keep up a semblance of democratic respectability. The authorities do not wish to fully distance themselves from the party system in the hope that loyal parties would be a sort of “safety cushion” in the event of a dramatic worsening of the social and economic situation. Thus the parties would channel the spontaneous discontent of the population into moderate parliamentary activity. The authorities believe that this strategy can work in the center, where political activity developed at the turn of the 1990s. Of no less importance are political party “safeguards” in regions, where local leaders of the “party of power” have to answer to the population. Their role is akin to that of a lightning rod – they must deflect spontaneous public protests. To create a semblance of parties’ participation in forming local government bodies, winners of local elections are now allowed to propose candidates for governors.

Reviewing possible scenarios of responses by the “party of power” to spontaneous discontent of the population during acute stages of the economic crisis, one cannot rule out a possible split of United Russia and Just Russia into smaller parties, which the authorities may have failed to foresee. The oligarchic triumvirate – state officials, business people (both from the private and public sectors) and security agencies are unlikely to fully coordinate their positions in a critical situation. At dramatic turns of the crisis, individual members of this triumvirate may leave it and propose to the population their own vision of ways to overcome the crisis, posing as new leaders within the narrow spectrum of parties. But this development would be just one step away from the collapse of the entire power vertical, built by the authorities with so much effort. Therefore the political elite close to the Kremlin would try – if there is enough time for that, of course – to find a compromise solution to reform this power vertical and prevent its dismantling.