№ 3 - 2005
Kynev A.V.
Pending New Electoral Offer (The Elections of the End of 2004 to the Beginning of 2005 to the Regional Legislative Assemblies)

On the basis of the materials of the regional elections of the end of 2004 to the beginning of 2005, the author analyzes major changes in the electors’ attitude towards the key federal parties. Stating noticeable deterioration of all the main federal parties’ showing, he interprets such an upheaval as testifying to the existence in Russian society of a demand for new political forces. In his appraisal, Russian electors are today in need of parties prone to concrete actions and given to concrete problems, parties applying new methods and suggesting new vivid persons, parties of a social, patriotic, anti-nomenclature turn. As long as this demand has not been realized (which is, though, in the author’s opinion, impossible, in so far as the present tendency to the curtailment of democratic procedures remains unchanged), three alternatives are, in fact, left for the electors: either to support those who are known, but not yet utterly discredited (Russian Party of Pensioners, Agrarian Party of Russia, partly the “Rodina ” party and regional blocks), or to fail to go to the elections, or, finally, to vote “against all”. This in mind, he makes the conclusion that the legislative innovations of the recent time, conducive to the decrease of real electoral competition, have in store breach of connection between the power and society and therefore also mean, in prospect, loss of legitimacy by the power.