Elections and Parties

The Electoral SystemThe USSR was governed on the Leninist

principle of democratic centralism.The CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) was

the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world.

March 1989 elections to the Soviet Congress of People’s Deputies

• In March 1990, new elections were held for the Russian Congress of People’s Deputies which—when the USSR ceased to exist in 1991.

• When its hard-line communist deputies tried to block Yeltsin’s reforms, he suspended the legislature in September 1993 and called new elections.

• December 1993, the first election under the new constitution and the first contested by multiple parties.

Presidential ElectionShorter and cheaper than their U.S.

counterpartsOnce the votes are counted, a

candidate who wins more than 50% of the vote is declared elected.

1996 ELECTION

B o r i s Y e l t s i n Gennady Zyuganov

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Independent Communist party

G e n n a d y Z y u g a n o v

V l a d i m i r P u t i n

2000 ELECTION

IndependentCommunist Party

2004 2008

V l a d i m i r P u t i nD m i t r y

M e d v e d e vIndependent United Russia

Legislative Election• The most important legislative election are

those to the State Duma.• Adopted a mixed voting system for the

lower house, in which voters cast two votes.

• Voters cast a second vote, but this time for a party rather than an individual.

• In 2005, the law was changed at the urging of Vladimir Putin.

Local Election• Russians go to the polls to elect officials to

local government.• A series of gubernatorial elections heldin the last four months of 1996.• A major change came in early 2005, when

Putin was able to push a law through the Duma giving him the power to appoint top regional leaders, such as governors, who would then be confirmed locally.

Political Parties• During the Soviet era, the CPSU was an all-

pervasive part of the political system.• Politburo the heart of real power in the

USSR — the president, the prime minister, the foreign and defense ministers,

• Its senior member was the general secretary of the CPSU, the de facto leader of the USSR.

• once jokingly called “taxicab” parties• The prospects for a more orderly system

were improved in 2001.• no party can now compete unless it has at

least 50,000 members and branches in at least half of Russia’s 89 provinces.

Mainstream Russian parties now fall into four major groups.

Left-Wing Anti-Reformist Parties• The dominant party on the left of Russian

politics is the reformed Communist Party of the Russian Federation

• The communists won only 14 percent of State Duma seats in 1993, but then surprised many by winning nearly a quarter of the vote in 1995.

• Zyuganov used this as a launch pad for his bid for the presidency in 1996

• until Yeltsin was able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

• The party was attracting voters who felt worse off because of economic reforms, notably blue-collar workers and retirees.

• The Communist Party has since fallen on hard times, winning barely 12% of seats in the 2003 and 2007 State Duma elections, and winning just 14-17% of the vote in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.

Left-Wing Reformist Parties• At the 1993 State Duma elections, the main

party in this group was Russia’s Choice.• It won the biggest block of seats in the

Duma (96)

Centrist Parties • Starting out modestly with two major

parties—the Party of Russian Unity and Women of Russia—it grew during 1999 and designed to be a platform for Vladimir Putin

• In preparation for the 2003 elections, the two parties formed the United Russia Coalition and won 222 seats

Nationalist Parties• united mainly by their concerns about

Russia’s place in the world• One of the leaders of KRO was Alexander

Lebed• The most notorious of the nationalist

parties is the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR)

• Its leading figure is Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

• Zhirinovsky threatened to launch nuclear attacks on Japan and Germany, spoke of taking Alaska back from the United States, and promised to respond to Russian feminism by finding husbands for all unmarried women.

• His poor showing in the 1996 presidential election started a decline that was confirmed in the 1999 State Duma elections, when the party won just 17 seats.