RUSSIAN POLITICS IN TRANSITION - POLITICAL-PARTIES AND ORGANIZATIONS IN RUSSIA AND THE MURMANSK REGION

In this article the development of new political organizations in Russ ia is discussed. The authors acknowledge the fact that the new parties and organizations are still weak and not well organized, but they nev ertheless play a significant role in the preservation of democracy in Russia. Several stages in the party creation process can be discerned. Before the 1991 attempted coup d'etat the Communist Party of the Sovi et Union still played a dominant role, while a number of smaller polit ical organizations emerged. After the dissolution of the CPSU, the cen tre groupings dominated the political scene. Gradually, the level of p olitical polarization increased, as evidenced by the 1993 elections wh ich spelled victory for the post-communists and ultra-nationalists. Us ing Sartori's definitions, the authors analyse the parties and organiz ations with the help of a left-right continuum, which portrays some di fferences in Russian politics without covering all cleavages. The impo rtant regional differences in party formation are illustrated with emp irical data from the Murmansk region. During the Gorbachev period a nu mber of informal organizations emerged which gradually developed into parties critical of the CPSU. Initially, social democratic organizatio ns were strong on the Kola Peninsula, but they declined in importance due to internal disagreement. In the 1993 elections, the largest parti es in this region were the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democratic Party and the market-oriented Russia's Choice. In Russia as a whole, the pos t-election period manifested itself in increasing political polarizati on and successive retreat from the market-reform policies. Clearly, th e road to a well-functioning system of parties in Russia is still a lo ng one.