In Russia, behind the facade of Yeltsin and Putin presidencies has been a Parliament which has contained a welter of different political parties and an even larger number of parties which have not managed to have candidates elected. There are some 23 political parties that are currently registered and 49 new parties have had the founding conferences so far this year. Another 50 different parties are in the process of being formed. Even for a country as large and diverse as Russia, over 100 political parties seem excessive.
It is too glib an explanation to say that this simply represents the immaturity of democratic politics. It is true that Russia’s experience of democracy has been brief, a few months between the 1917 abdication of the czar and the Bolshevik revolution and the decade since the fall of communism. There is, however, something deeper at work here. Russia was always an absolutist and autocratic country in which the czars never bothered to seek consensus, even among their nobles. Later, the hereditary czars were replaced by Bolshevik czars, who also maintained the autocratic style of their predecessors. Both regimes were underpinned by secret services, the Ochrana and the KGB.
The result was that ordinary citizens lived a life of fear and mutual suspicion. This existence has so imprinted itself upon the Russian psyche that it is reflected in the diversity of parties, now that political pluralism has arrived. There is a tendency for political parties to be formed around local personalities, who use their regional power base as a launch base for national politics, generally with lesser rather than greater success.
It was in an attempt to bring some order to this confusion that last year a highly controversial law was made, imposing strict conditions upon political parties.
It is this registration process that has led to the rejection of a new party, Liberal Russia, founded and funded by Boris Berezovski. Berezovski, one of the power brokers in the Yeltsin Kremlin, amassed a great fortune and a great many political enemies during Yeltsin’s presidency. It is for this reason and the consequent likelihood of criminal prosecution, that Berezovski has exiled himself. No doubt he had been hoping that his new political party might have paved the way for his safe return. But the party registration functionaries have thrown out Liberal Russia’s application on grounds that appear as pedantic as they are absurd.
With such a plethora of political parties, the Kremlin’s reasoning behind last year’s law is plausible. However, it demonstrates a misunderstanding of democratic processes. It would be far better if Russians themselves recognized the need for fewer, more powerful, parties that embraced a range of views, sometimes not all in agreement.
While political opinion is fractured into so many different pieces, the mainstream groupings, such as the reformed communists, are likely to become increasingly dominant. Still, the law on political parties, however well-intentioned, is merely confusing an already confusing situation The remedy lies in as rapid an evolution of political parties as possible, not in regulatory interference.
