Russian Political Party SPS Liquidated
Reporting from Argumenti Nedeli and Novaya Gazeta
Argumenti Nedeli is a sister publication to Argumenti i Fakti, Russia's most circulated paper. Both "Argumenti" papers are distributed throughout Russia and to Russian speakers in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Novaya Gazeta is far less mainstream and is known as one of Russia's more liberal publications.
On the basis of SPS, a new party called "Right Cause" has been founded. Read more about the new party here.
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Six Political Parties Out of Fifteen
The Kremlin is weeding the political terrain
by Mikhail Tulsky
Argumenty Nedeli, No 41, October 2008
The federal parliamentary election over, the Kremlin is out to minimize the number of political parties.
The Duma election safely over, the Kremlin is out to reduce the number of political parties in the country. All other pressing political problems - domestic, that is - are already solved.
Argumenty Nedeli assumed six months ago or so that at least every second of the then existing 15 political parties was to become history before long. The Kremlin made up its mind. There will be six parties in Russia soon - four political parties represented in the Duma, Yabloko, and the medley crew of the Union of Right Forces, Civil Power, and Democratic Party activists. The Kremlin has already engineered replacement of leadership in all three structures earmarked for the merger so that they are run by more loyal figures now. Absolutely loyal Leonid Gozman replaced Nikita Belykh in the Union of Right Forces, Mikhail Barschevsky was ousted from Civil Power in favor of Boris Titov (leader of the Business Russia association), and journalist Georgy Bovt (associated with Vladislav Surkov of the Kremlin) is the new Democratic Party leader instead of Andrei Bogdanov.
All other political parties are offered a choice: self- disbandment or absorption by some larger structure. Gennadi Seleznev's Russian Revival Party was liquidated in July 2008. Sazhi Umalatova's Party of Peace and Unity and Sergei Baburin's People's Union will follow suit next year. The rest will be told in no uncertain terms to stop fooling around and merge with the "authorized" political structures.
Aleksei Podberezkin's Social Justice Party has already voted to merge with Fair Russia. Gennadi Semigin's Russian Patriots and the Green Party were instructed to ask Fair Russia for absorption too.
The latter had initially aspired to absorption by United Russia only to be told that it was not nearly as significant as it thought itself to be and should therefore be content with Fair Russia.
The Agrarian Party is the only more or less formidable political structure United Russia wanted for its own. It even has a leverage with the agrarians' leader Plotnikov. When Plotnikov ceased being a Duma deputy, it was expected of him to vacate the apartment on Ulof Palme Street in central Moscow and return to his native settlement of Gusevka not far from Uryupinsk. To say that Plotnikov loathed the idea is to say nothing at all. United Russia made him an offer then. Plotnikov became official aide to Oleg Morozov's, Duma Senior Deputy Chairman, and in this capacity retained the apartment in Moscow in return for Agrarian Party's merger with Fair Russia. It is up to the Agrarian Party convention now.
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Nano-Party
The "liberal project" by the Kremlin: on which terms SPS is liquidated
By Vladimir Ryzhkov
http://www.novayagazeta.ru/
October 13, 2008
On 15 November 2008, SPS, the party with 15-year history (counting it from "Demvybor Rossii", fittingly, "Democratic choice of Russia") will be dissolved under proposal of its own federal political council. And on 16 November a new party will be constructed on the basis of its fragments, the party that still has no name and is referred to as "project".
It is going to be an amalgamation of three party structures – SPS, DPR and Civil Force. This will be an important stage in the realization of "Surkov's plan" for further reduction of number of parties in the country. At a recent working meeting of the leadership of United Russia he said that"four parties would do", and so the "unnecessary" parties got doomed for dissolution.
Out of remaining in Russia 14 registered parties (and 2 years ago the number was 35) the destinies of 6 parties were decided after the statement by the main political technologist. Some will be affiliated to the pro-Kremlin United Russia and Just Russia, while others will be amalgamated with one another. No more than 9 registered parties will be remaining at the end of the year.
Out of them only 2 still keep relative independence of their political positions – that's CPRF and Yabloko. While Communists suit the Kremlin with their nationalist, anti-western and great-power rhetoric, and with their poor imitation of "protecting the workers' interests", the Yabloko seems to be decided to die a "natural" death through giving according recommendations to its potential sponsors. So by the next elections there might have been no Yabloko, just another "project".
Right before our eyes it is being finished forming the well known to Putin political system made in accordance with the pattern of "people's democracy" of the former German Democratic Republic and some other socialist countries, featured with the main party – United Russia where the bureaucracy and 2 million of "ordinary" Russians have been brought in – and a few side-dish parties imitating a multi-party system, cheating one's own population as well as the mass of "useful idiots" in the West.
In case of SPS, remarkable is the cynical character of what is happening. The prospective "liberal" party is named very exactly to be a "project" and no one makes any secret out of the fact that this is the Kremlin's project. The future co-chair of the "project" Georgy Bovt reassured everyone at a press conference of 2 October that "the authority posed no restrictions to the future members of the new right party".
But who would believe in the absence of political restrictions? Over the course of talks in the Presidential Administration one of the SPS leaders was given to feel the limits of the future "freedom", when he was required to repudiate criticism of the Kremlin's actions in the South Ossetia and Abkhazia. At the liquidational political council of 2 October, Leonid Gozman announced, under request by the regional leaders, the list of regions where the leadership will be kept by SPS, which is going to be one third of the general number, in accordance with the agreements made. It turned out that among those "SPS parts" of the "project" there are no regions with strong oppositional feeling like that in Moscow. Already at the stage of forming the "project" the purge is going on and getting rid of "disloyal elements" among the regional activists. Besides, arrangement of all the personnel decisions, including future ticket to the State Duma, is one of the terms of the "project". According to Valery Bakunin, who was present at the meeting of SPS political council, it has been already announced about recalling of all the lawsuits by SPS to the Strasburg Court on Human Rights. Another principal condition by the Kremlin is no criticism of decisions by Putin and Medvedev. It is only allowed to criticize some ministers and some minor shortcomings, but not the fundamentals of the Kremlin's policy.
Justification of liquidating the SPS was given in the spirit of "consumer society". The party is indebted and it will be helped about that. They party is also promised a co-chairmanship and one third of seats in the political council of the new project and one third of the regions. There is no other choice. It appears, however, that the basis of the new project will be made with regional branches of "Delovaya Rossiya", ably created by its leader Boris Titov in over 70 regions. The piquancy of the situation is that "Delovaya Rossiya" has a political agreement about strategic partnership with United Russia.
So all the Kremlin's "projects" get intermingled into a round dance of "constructive forces", composed of factions of United Russia.
Now the project needs to get named. Among the possible options there are "Constitutional democrats", "Party of Freedom", "Right Russia"… Anatoly Chubais has sent a statement that "making a new right party structure is the only way of keeping up the liberal idea".
Well, it only remains to wish new "industrial" successes to the state corporation "Gospartstroi" (fittingly, "State Party Construction").
