Russia, Post-Soviet

The collapse of the communist regime of the Soviet Union in 1991 created an unusual political situation, in which it was often difficult to apply traditional terms of “left” and “right.” “Leftists” often sought to inhibit or prevent change, since the left had been the establishment in the previous system. Traditional leftist and rightist stances were sometimes fused, as in various “left-patriotic” or “national Bolshevik” organizations.

At the end of the Soviet era, people were unaccustomed to discussing alternative policies or institutions, even among acquaintances, and had little understanding of each other's preferences or even of what innovations they themselves would eventually advocate, tolerate, or seek to stifle. The earliest political organizations were therefore large, amorphous, and subject to internecine fighting. Political platforms were incoherent if they existed at all. Many parties became personalistic vehicles for specific leaders. Mergers, splits, and recombinations were numerous. An early “rightist” example was [Page 850]Pamiat' (Memory), a “historical-patriotic association” that emerged in 1987 and was tied together by a concern over Jews, Masons, and CIA agents and a nostalgia for Josef Stalin (a “strong boss”), old monuments, and the tzarist-era spelling of words.

The state introduced certain rules to stabilize the party system and weed out the less viable contenders, with mixed results. Half the seats of the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, are elected from single-delegate districts and half from party lists allocated by proportional representation. (Each voter casts two ballots, one for an individual candidate and another for a party.) Since 1993, no party can receive any of the party-list seats unless it wins 5 percent of the party-list vote (rising to 7 percent in 2007).

In the parliamentary elections of 1995, four parties passed the 5 percent threshold, whereas the other 39 contending parties, together representing 49 percent of the votes cast, failed to get in. That contributed to a reduction in the effective number of parties, yet the process of party formation and reformation continued. Under a 2001 law, parties must have at least 10,000 members, with no fewer than 100 members in each of 50 of Russia's 89 constituent jurisdictions. This law spurred another round of mergers, and within two years the number of parties had been reduced from nearly 200 to about 50.

Depending on one's definition, the “right” may include: 1) parties oriented toward nostalgic or nationalistic sentiments, or 2) parties seeking to “impose” a liberal, market-oriented economic system.

In broad terms, the major concerns of the nostalgic/nationalistic right in Russia have included law and order; the maintenance of an adequate military defense; the loss of “empire” and international status associated with the collapse of the Soviet Union; the loss of tradition (including, in some cases, Cossack tradition) associated with the preSoviet Russian empire; and the fate of the 24.3 million Russians left at the time of the Soviet collapse in the “near abroad,” that is, in the 14 nonRussian successor states of the Soviet Union. Many rightists oppose the presence of “foreigners” in Russia, often including Jews and the minority nationalities that comprise 20 percent of the country's population, who are often identified with crime in the Russian popular mind. These rightists tend to view the outside world, especially the United States, as taking advantage of Russia's weakened condition, and they are sensitive to the existence of U.S. air bases in former Soviet Central Asia and the expansion of the European Union and NATO into former Warsaw Pact countries and even the former Baltic republics of the Soviet Union. The latter have left the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad surrounded by EU/NATO territory.

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