Parties and Politics in Post-communist Russia

Abstract

A survey carried out in 12 urban areas in December, 1992, suggests that parties are widely believed to be playing a role of little significance in Russian politics, and that there is little interest in their activities. Of those that did express a view, communist supporters were likely to be older, poorer, less well educated, and more working class than the supporters of other parties; Yeltsin supporters, by contrast, were richer, better educated, and younger, with supporters of the remaining parties less clearly differentiated. Communists, equally, were more hostile to the market and to political democracy, and more likely than others to deplore the loss of Russia's great power status, with Yeltsin supporters again least likely to do so. The outcome is a “party system without parties,” with an electorate divided socially and attitudinally but those differences not reflected in a stable pattern of attachments to the political parties that have so far been established.