_general_ci The Sin of Party-Building in Russia 

Alexander N. Domrin

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.

 
     Àëåêñàíäð Äîìðèí.  Ãðåõ ïàðòñòðîèòåëüñòâà â Ðîññèè. Îïóáëèêîâàíî â: Russia Watch:  Analysis and Commentary (John F. Kennedy School  of Government, Harvard University), No.9,  January 2003; Johnson's Russia List, No.7314, September 6, 2003.

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