DEMOCRACY, POLITICAL-PARTIES AND PARTY FORMATION IN POSTCOMMUNIST RUSSIA

The paper uses a survey conducted in late 1992 to examine popular supp ort for and attitudes towards Russia's postcommunist political parties . The findings confirm that support for democratic reform is at best c onditional, and negative mentions of political parties vastly outnumbe r positive ones. Although popular knowledge about currently active pol itical parties is limited, five main parties attract majority support. A factor analysis of opinions of the main parties indicates three und erlying dimensions: a centre/reformist dimension (subdivided into thos e who are partially aligned with the communists and those who oppose t hem); a right/nationalist dimension; and a left/communist dimension. T he democratic reformist dimension attracts the largest popular support , followed by the communist dimension; the nationalist dimension attra cts a negligible following. None of the three dimensions has any secur e socio-economic basis within the electorate, however, and the differe nces that exist are mainly ideological. It is argued that the reformis t and communist dimensions, perhaps under different labels, will form the basis for the more stable party system that is likely to emerge in the future.