The Sin of Party-Building in Russia

Fifteen years after creation of the first non Communist proto parties (Democratic Union, «Pamyat’», etc.) and twelve years after formation of the Democratic Platform in the CPSU which triggered the collapse of the Communist hegemony in the USSR, the political parties as a new social and political phenomenon in Russia are passing through an all-embracing crisis.
The 1990s witnessed an epidemic of party-building in Russia.  Several hundred parties have appeared and vanished without trace on the Russian political arena so far.  The fact of existence (by 25 July 2001) of 199 officially registered political parties and movements could be explained by several factors but one - the public necessity.  In fact, many (if not most) of those parties can be called «sofa parties» (when all its actual members can sit on one sofa) and exist on paper only.  Vitaly Tretyakov, former editor-in-chief of Nezavisimaya gazeta (NG), was absolutely correct when in his speech at the «Ten Years of Modern Russian Parliamentarism: Results and Perspectives» roundtable (held in Moscow on 16 May 2000), he publicly questioned how many peasants Yuri Chernichenko, the founder of the Peasants Party of Russia, had seen since registration of his party in 1991.  That would be appropriate to ask a similar question of many other heads of Russian «parties» and «movements».
Votes and signatures of «dead souls» are easily bought not during electoral campaigns only.  It’s a common mistake when Western observers call Galina Starovoitova, a long-time activist in the Democratic Choice of Russia movement, in a «presidential candidate» in 1996.  She was never registered by the Central Election Commission as a presidential candidate, because a random examination of signatures presented by Starovoitova for her registration showed that half of them was made by the same hand.  (Foreign sympathisers of Starovoitova never admitted the obvious and prefer to say that Starovoitova was «kept off the Presidential ballot in 1996 for technical reasons».  See Harley Balzer’s piece in Johnson’s Russia List, # 2489, 24 November 1998).
It also became a tendency when criminals and corrupt businessmen fund fly-by-night parties that carry them into parliament and buy them the immunity from prosecution that goes with a State Duma seat (like it happened with Sergei Mavrodi, the founder of notorious MMM pyramid scheme and chairman of the People’s Capital Party who was elected to the State Duma in October 1994 when being in detention; now at large).  Boris Berezovsky’s recent romance with the Liberal Party is another example when a robber baron hiding in England uses a political party as a proxy tool and a weapon against the Russian government.  A «principal position» of the leaders of the Liberal Party who fired Berezovsky as soon at he stopped financing it hardly improved the public attitude to «parties» in general and to the Liberal Party in particular.
Indeed, numerous opinion polls show that political parties steadily rate the least trusted institution in the country.  In 1997, six years after adoption of the first Law on Political Parties, only one percent of respondents in a nation-wide survey declared complete trust to them, with 4 percent trusting parties «to a certain extent», and 76 percent demonstrating complete distrust to political parties and movements.
Four years later, an average citizen expressed distrust of seven out of 10 key institutions of Russian society: with political parties as the least trusted (7%) and courts and army as the most trusted (40% and 62% respectively) institutions in the country.
An analytical report «Attitude of Population to Federal Laws and Bodies of State Power» (prepared in 2000 at the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law) indicates that since 1989, people’s trust in the federal legislature has shrunk from 88 percent (to the USSR Supreme Soviet which originally didn’t have any parliamentary factions) to 4.3 percent (to the State Duma with its factions representing various parties across the whole political spectrum in the country).
A remarkable ROMIR’s survey «Value Change and Survival of Democracy in Russia (1995-2000)» testifies that in 2000, only 0.7% of respondents were «members» of political parties and organizations and 0.3% were «activists».  Not only those figures are miserable by themselves, but they are even lower than respective figures in 1995: 2% and 1%.  Official statistics substantiate ROMIR’s findings: nowadays, less than 1 million people, i.e. less than one percent of the Russian population belong to political parties.
The most recent and much publicized study prepared by the Information for Democracy Foundation (INDEM) shows that political parties are considered by people not only the least trusted but the most corrupt institution in the country too.  (On 23 November 2002, this conclusion was repeated by Vladimir Rimsky, head of INDEM’s Sociology Department, in «Vremena», Vladimir Pozner’s weekly TV program on Channel 1).  It’s hard to argue against this perception.
Adoption of a new Law on Political Parties (signed by President Putin on 11 July 2001) is a significant legislative measure aimed, among other things, at reducing the quantity of «parties» in the country (by August 2002 the number of newly registered parties didn’t exceed 23) but insufficient in terms of general sanitation of the party scene in Russia.
Party-building and party politics is the realm of Russian elites.  As to the people, they (we) do not trust political parties and don’t believe that their (our) involvement in «party activities» can change anything.
It’s quite understandable that Western governments will continue their financial support to their favourite parties in Russia (SPS, Yabloko, etc.).  According to GAO, in 1992-97 only two American programs in Russia - of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and International Republican Institute (IRI) - received .4 million, as a series of US AID grants, to «help reformist political parties strengthen their organizational structures and their role in elections».  (See GAO’s report Promoting Democracy. Progress Report on U.S. Democratic Development Assistance to Russia (Washington, U.S. General Accounting Office, February 1996), p.37)).  In reality such support will have little or nothing to do with «strengthening democracy in Russia» for political parties can hardly be characterized as one of democratic elements in Russian society today.