Russian Multi-Party System in the Newest Domestic Historiography

Abstract

The study of the Russian multi-party system was laid by the 1990 conference held in 1990 at the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the most important points of it can be considered the 2003 conference at the Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences in November and the international round table «Russian multi-party system and Russian crises of the XX–XXI centuries» (Moscow, March 27, 2015). At first, the main systemic principles of a multi-party system were called integrity, structurality, hierarchy; conditionality of the development of the system by its relations with the environment, and the folding of the system of political parties was dated from the end of 1905 – the beginning of 1906. It was believed that parties expressed the interests of certain social group classes and were associated with the masses. Subsequently, the researchers came to the conclusion that there were no purely class parties either in terms of their social composition or social groups and strata, whose interests were declared in programs and slogans; and a characteristic feature of the Russian multi-party system was that its creator and main character was the intelligentsia. Subsequently, a number of authors insisted on the purely intellectual essence of domestic parties, calling the Russian multi-party system a myth; most authors, noting the leading role of the intelligentsia in the organization and functioning of parties, were associated with certain masses. In general, the Russian multi-party system was significantly different from the multi-party system of developed countries.