LDPR - Liberal Democratic Party of Russia" is an officially registered opposition political party in the Russian Federation. It is the direct successor of the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union, created December 13, 1989. Thus, the LDPR has been in the political arena for 28 years. The period is not short, therefore, on the eve of the presidential campaign, in which party leader V. Zhirinovsky has already expressed a desire to participate, it is worth dwelling on some questions: who created the party and why, what are its successes and what distinguishes it from other parties, especially past ones into the last Duma? And why are parties financed by taxpayers needed in the country?

LDPR- the oldest Russian political party. It is one of three parties that participated in the elections of deputies to the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of all seven convocations, and one of two parties that, following the election results, always received representation in the lower house of Parliament.

In the political spectrum, the LDPR is in the position of “centrism”; the main ideological components of the party’s program are patriotism, Russian nationalism, popular pan-Slavic liberalism and democratic statism.

Having been created back in the USSR, the history of the party goes back a little less than 30 years. The LDPR unites about 200 thousand party members and millions of voters who vote for it in elections at all levels.

This is the official information available in the public domain.

We have also written about this party more than once (http://inance.ru/2016/12/ldpr/ and http://inance.ru/2015/09/finansi-partij/), however, some aspects of the LDPR’s activities are worth focus attention.

HOW DID THE LDPR COME AWAY?

The history of the modern Russian party system is not very long. Its actual starting point is the beginning of the split in the CPSU in 1988. Parties and movements multiplied and were liquidated, merged and revived. During the period described, party formation often became chaotic. In fact, every politician preferred to create his own pocket party and, using it as a resource, only then negotiate with colleagues who were close to him in views, opportunistically useful or simply negotiable.

During that period, in addition to the ideocratic liberal and communist (traditionalist) parties, exclusively “project” parties arose. Including very successful ones. An example of the success of the project party is the LDPR, which was created in December 1989 and had the original name the Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union (LDPSS).

Notes in the margins

Anatoly Kulik identifies four broad types of parties:

Program parts- these are parties with a clear platform, adopted with a certain respect for internal party democracy, which is followed by its leadership and which is constantly presented to society. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Yabloko are the best examples of programmatic parties.

Project parties- parties usually created shortly before elections as part of a hidden strategy of competing groups of the “elite”. The classic project party was the left-patriotic Rodina in the 2003 elections, designed to take away votes from the communists.

Regime parties- parties sponsored by the authorities, representing the system itself. They are sponsored by the ruling group to enhance their power, created to manipulate and shape the political space and, in some cases, to act as the so-called “party in power.” In 1995, “Our Home is Russia” (NDR) was an early and underdeveloped prototype, but “Unity” turned out to be more successful in the 1999 elections, as did its successor “United Russia” in 2003 and 2007.

Spoiler games-parties that have little chance of achieving success on their own and that are designed to cause confusion in a certain political niche and take away votes from opposition groups. (Political Science No. 4 / 2010 - “Political parties, democracy and the quality of government in modern societies”).

LDPR - KGB project

Both the First Deputy Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Army General F. Bobkov, and M. Gorbachev’s closest associate, A. Yakovlev, openly wrote about the creation of the LDPR as a project. The party was created to “select” the liberal electorate, which did not work out, and, to a greater extent, the protest electorate, which, on the whole, was successful. Moreover, one can hardly talk about the ideology of the LDPR and its leader. Indirect proof of this already at that time was the ideological “evolution” of V. Zhirinovsky himself. It is widely known that initially V. Zhirinovsky was a member of the radical Democratic Union, whose political position is not only close to the LDPR platform, but also diametrically opposed to it. Such a sharp “evolution” fits well with the hypothesis about the “project” style of political activity of the liberal democrats. The project party demonstrated its strength in 1993, gaining 22.92% of the votes and taking first place in the federal district.

Thus, the party elite of the 80s, many of whom were “agents of influence” of the West, were preparing a controlled collapse of the USSR, creating a controlled “opposition”.

Alexander Yakovlev (1923 - 2005), the ideologist and architect of the so-called “Perestroika” and liberal post-Soviet reforms, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the USA, member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee in 1987 - 1990, writes about how the LDPR was created in the book “Twilight : Reflections on the fate of Russia" (Alexander Yakovlev. - 2nd edition, additional and revised. - M.: Materik, 2005. - 672 pp. - ISBN 5-85646-147-9).

We wrote about this in the article “Mr. X of Russian Politics: Zhirinovsky, LDPR and the Kremlin” (http://inance.ru/2016/12/ldpr/). This is confirmed by the memoirs of the Chairman of the KGB N. Kryuchkov (https://jasonbourn.livejournal.com/651994.html).

The general conclusion is obvious. Today, most parties (from United Russia to the Liberal Democratic Party) are party formations that are more easily described through leaderism, which in Western political science is described as clientelistic relations.

Notes in the margins

Clientelism - (Latin cliens - ward) - a model of political structuring of society, based on a special type of relationship between the leader (patron) and his followers (clients) - supporters devoted to him or dependent on him. It manifests itself in the form of personal clienteles (Latin - clientela) - personal “teams” of individual leaders, as well as clientelized institutions, political and financial groups (from large enterprises, financial and economic structures to government bodies), relying on patron-client ties. The main characteristics of such groups are the closed and hierarchical structure, as well as the informal nature of interaction in the struggle for the right to control resources.

In Russian speaking, today each party is a bag of money, around which a group is formed with a leader at the head, sometimes even without a leader. The main thing is to promote the interests of “who dances the girl,” which for some reason is not written about in politically correct definitions.

POCKET OPPOSITION

In the regular elections to the State Duma held on September 18, 2016, the LDPR almost took second place, gaining 13.14% of the votes and losing to the communists only two-tenths of a percent. The party is especially proud of the fact that it almost did not lose voters in absolute numbers: just under seven million people voted for it in these elections, in the previous parliamentary elections in 2011 - just over seven and a half million (while United Russia lost four million voters, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - five and a half).

According to political scientists, the voter has become disillusioned with all parties and is not ready to support new party projects, such as, for example, the Rodina and Party of Growth parties. People now do not distinguish between parliamentary parties, and non-parliamentary ones either. For people it is already the same as “United Russia”, as the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, as “A Just Russia” or the Liberal Democratic Party.

There are no surprises, all this was predicted at the start - the same four parliamentary parties.

The low turnout in Moscow and St. Petersburg is an indicator that people do not believe that the State Duma can decide anything: recently it has been working in the “What do you want?” mode, engaged not in lawmaking, but in approving legislation that was passed down from above. An analysis of the positions of the majority of active participants in these parties reveals that the positions of the current government and the positions of the parliamentary opposition on key political issues almost completely coincide.

Moreover, party activists do not go beyond discussions in their actions, while on key issues the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia support United Russia when voting, which is not surprising, since the main funding for the maintenance of these parties comes from the federal budget (read our article “Who finances Russian parties?” - http://inance.ru/2015/09/finansi-partij/).

WHY IS THE LDPR NOT AN OPPOSITION PARTY?

We can name eight signs that the parliamentary opposition in Russia is not an opposition in the literal sense of the word. This equally applies to the Liberal Democratic Party.

1. The nature of power

The nature of power is the same for both representatives of the current government and the opposition. This is the power of the “elites”. There are those who know what to do, and there are people who must follow the instructions of the new leaders. We will probably say the obvious thing, but we have pretty much forgotten this obvious thing in recent years. Political parties are not needed at all in order to fight for power: political parties are needed so that the government takes into account the interests of all significant groups.

2. Democracy

Everyone swears by democracy, but no one is going to build it. If, of course, we understand democracy as real democracy, and not as was customary in Ancient Greece: democracy is for free citizens (demos) of the city, and for slaves - slavery.

3. Elections

Some government officials in Russia believe that there should be fewer elections in Russia; representatives of the systemic opposition believe that there should be more elections. But the opposition and the authorities are united in the fact that the elections should be preserved in their current form. The opposition does not offer anything innovative other than “learning to win in unfair elections.”

4.Parties

The existing party system is a form of the most effective alienation of political resources from the citizen. On this issue, in relation to the people, the ruling and opposition groups are united.

5. People

The people in Russia are not the subject of politics. This is what the intra-elite consensus is based on. Appeals to the people, both from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party, A Just Russia, and from the liberal parties, are exclusively propaganda in nature. Without exception, all existing parties need the electorate, not the people, in elections.
It should be noted that the population of our country has not yet matured enough to be called a people, since the people differ from the population in that they are capable of generating conceptual power, that is, they are managerially competent in their majority, which we do not yet have even close to.

6. Constitution of the Russian Federation

7. Institute of the President

The institution of the President is the ultimate dream for any oppositionist, as if a presidential candidate, and dreams of “absolute power.” And even representatives of those political structures that talk about a parliamentary republic in Russia do not strictly deny the institution of the President.

8. Lack of exciting dreams for the future of Russia

This is the main complaint of the current “elites”. They can ardently curse America, Ukraine, Islam, the Putin regime, etc., but when asked: “What do you want?” usually only a ringing emptiness is heard - or platitudes like building the same “national state”, only “good”...

They themselves openly declare that “authorities do not have a single image of the future” (https://www.rbc.ru/economics/24/04/2017/58fdd1689a79479227ba0cd1).

It turns out that the people are the only opposition in Russia. Moreover, the people will understand what the Goncourt brothers (19th century French writers and historians) noted more than a century ago:

“Ultimately, there are as many dissatisfied scoundrels as there are satisfied scoundrels. The opposition is no better than the government.”

And the people will look for new effective forms of exercising their own power and protecting their own interests, not trusting this to those who only imitate caring for the people. And what today can the “horizontal of the people” oppose to the “vertical of power”? Only their conceptual power and their own will, aimed at its implementation in the practice of life against all imitations in Russia: both the imitation of power and the imitation of the opposition.

We invite you to watch the video “The danger of fictitious opposition. Or why the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party will never come to power?

AFTERWORD

The political system in Russia is in a deep crisis, which we observed during the regional elections in 2015 and the State Duma elections in 2016. The false multi-party system has already ceased to meet the requirements of the time and voters, so the country will definitely begin to dismantle the current political system, which may gradually be replaced by another system, in which elements of control “from below” may even appear.

We are in the article “What is the opposition in Russia obliged to do?” (http://inance.ru/2017/08/oppoziciya/) asked a number of leading questions, reflection on which allows us to see the usefulness of certain parties. Let's paraphrase them here:

• On which industry do all sectors of the national economy depend?
• What are the most important needs of society?
• Do any of the social groups express the interests of the working majority?
• What interests do other social groups reflect?
• What opposition will be useful in orienting society, its statehood and the state to ensure these needs and interests?

Our answers to these questions, see the mentioned article - http://inance.ru/2017/08/oppoziciya/. We strongly recommend that you read this article in its entirety.

To once again be convinced of the low efficiency of the Russian political system, we invite you to read the interview with V.F. Zhirinovsky in honor of the 28th anniversary of the LDPR (https://www.kompravda.eu/radio/26770.4/3802470/). As always, there are a lot of words, but the main thing is not said: what has the LDPR achieved for the people of the country? And what is the meaning of its existence?

December 13, 1989 is not only the date of the creation of the party, it is also the anniversary of the Russian multi-party system, since the LDPR became the first officially registered alternative to the CPSU.

Today it seems symbolic that the founding congress of the party took place on April 1. The title also sets one in a frivolous mood: why, and it never had the slightest connection to liberalism.

After the 1993 Duma elections, in which the LDPR achieved a sensational result, one Moscow State University professor asked students who they had just supported, and was horrified to hear that many voted “for Zhirinovsky”: how could you?!

“And for fun!” - the youth answered.

If nothing depends on citizens anyway, and they don’t really want to think about it and take responsibility, why not make elections fun?

According to observers, there are two secrets to the success of the LDPR: simple recipes in the spirit of “everyone is fooling you, but we believe that the best way to solve any issue is to take it and solve it,” and a leader, without whom the party would most likely would not have taken place.

In the 1990s, the LDPR seriously laid claim to a share of the political spectrum, filling the authoritarian-imperial niche. Now others are successfully working in this field.

Therefore, two functions remain: to create a favorable background for the Kremlin and United Russia, for whom it is easy to look moderate in comparison with Zhirinovsky and his party, and to entertain the public, introducing a bit of variety into the dull and completely predictable political life.

Perhaps, Russian President Vladimir Putin defined Zhirinovsky’s role best of all, briefly and clearly:

“It lights up beautifully!”

The speech of the LDPR leader at a meeting of the deputy corps with the president in Crimea (http://www.bbc.com/russian/international/2014/08/140814_putin_yalta_speech_analysis), which caused this reaction, as noted by the Russian media, was accompanied by loud laughter from the audience. When everything has already been decided for the deputies and voters, all that remains is to have fun.

Here are some statements by Vladimir Zhirinovsky found on RuNet:

• “We must force the government to stop this bird migration! No more flights to the north! Let them stay in the south!”
• “Let our people smoke! Smoking and drinking every day for everyone is the only salvation so that there are fewer suicides. If they stop smoking, everyone will hang themselves,”
• “There should be three roads for young people: universities, barracks, stadiums and, as a last resort, monasteries. And everyone needs to be driven there,”
• “Meat is a very harmful product. People in the LDPR do not smoke or drink alcohol. Now we will also impose vegetarian food on LDPR members,”
• “Let’s do our own thing, including contraceptives. Ours are ugly, but more durable and reliable.”

The Sunday victory of the LDPR candidates in the gubernatorial elections of the Khabarovsk Territory and the Vladimir Region was already transformed into a new political reality on Monday, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reports.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky agreed with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation to form power on a coalition basis in those regions where representatives of United Russia lost to the Duma opposition. Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov confirmed that cooperation had already been established during the election campaigns. So far, little specifics have been said, and therefore it is not clear whether work on putting together coalitions has already begun...

Zyuganov, together with Zhirinovsky, also addressed the authorities on Monday with strict demands on the need for urgent changes to the electoral legislation. Thus, the Duma oppositionists seem to have decided that they now have the right to raise their voices when talking with the Kremlin. For example, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation insists that the president of parliamentary parties must immediately accept and listen to their proposals on all current political issues.

However, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov clarified that he has no information about the possible timing of such a meeting. The election results themselves, Peskov admitted, have “an element of surprise” for the Kremlin. However, he emphasized, although a thorough analysis of them is still ahead, it can already be stated: “The elections really took place honestly, openly, fairly and competitively. This is what is welcomed in the Kremlin.”

Zhirinovsky fully supported Zyuganov at an emergency meeting with President Vladimir Putin: “Indeed, I propose holding a round table in the Kremlin, maybe or in the State Duma with the participation of the president, government representatives, parliamentary parties. And designate it as a “round table of political agreement or the development of a new formulas of power...

By the way, Zhirinovsky proposed testing the upcoming coalition of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party in Primorye in the near future. According to him, there is no need to wait for new elections in the region for another three months, they need to be held earlier, and a politician agreed upon by all Duma parties should be nominated as a candidate. In general, the round table on adjusting the electoral legislation organized by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation deputies on the first post-election day turned out to be very opportune.

It was at this event that the leaders of both political structures, who had just shown relative success in the regional elections and declared a joint desire to build a new government in a number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation on a coalition basis. Let us recall that in the Khabarovsk Territory and the Vladimir Region, LDPR candidates Sergei Furgal and Vladimir Sipyagin confidently defeated the incumbent governors Vyacheslav Shport and Svetlana Orlova in the second round.

The Communists, as is known, in turn, previously almost won in the Primorsky Territory and are ready to do the same in Khakassia. By the way, it was on Monday that Zyuganov announced that party candidates Andrei Ishchenko and Valentin Konovalov were preparing to participate in further upcoming campaigns. That is, the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation acted somewhat at odds with the head of the Liberal Democratic Party, who demands a coalition in the elections...

For example, Zyuganov said that since the LDPR and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation collaborated during the elections, they will now need to form new regional authorities together. In Zhirinovsky’s interpretation, future coalitions should resemble the one that, according to him, already exists in the Smolensk region. There, Governor Alexey Ostrovsky, nominated from the LDPR, appointed a United Russia member, a communist, and a Socialist Revolutionary Party as his deputies. So in the six constituent entities of the Russian Federation, where representatives of both parties will soon rule, Zhirinovsky believes, these are precisely the configurations that should arise.

Let us note that United Russia General Council Secretary Andrei Turchak has already announced that the party in power is ready to interact with “foreign” regional heads if this benefits their residents.

The first deputy chairman of the A Just Russia faction, Mikhail Emelyanov, when asked by NG whether this party would remain in such situations in a secondary role, explained that all these coalitions, just like the statements about them, are nothing more than a phenomenon situational. Although, Emelyanov confirmed, the Socialist Revolutionaries continue to advocate that it is necessary to create a modern unified political structure of the left.

Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Sergei Obukhov explained to NG: “It is difficult for me to say in what form the coalition governments will be - this is the subject of negotiations. There are different formats, for example, in the Smolensk region.” For now, it is only clear that we are talking about the ratio of politicians and experts who will occupy certain positions. “At the Secretariat of the Central Committee, Zyuganov gave instructions to prepare a list of managers from the personnel reserve of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation who can enter these governments,” Obukhov said.

Political scientist Andrei Kolyadin told NG that the previous trend, when the authorities sought to ensure the victory of United Russia everywhere, no longer contributed to the purity of the elections...

The expert joked that Zyuganov’s demand for a meeting in the Kremlin is easy to implement - for this he himself needs to become president. But seriously, then, according to him, “Zyuganov has a keen sense of the situation, understands the current moment, and therefore demonstrates strength to mobilize supporters.” At the same time, Kolyadin recalled, communists often demonstrate strength, but at the right moment they make contacts with the Kremlin.

Sociologists presented another measured the ratings of political parties - and stated that the LDPR was on par with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. The results of the Levada Center survey indicate that 10% of respondents are ready to support these parties; and among those who have already decided on a party and are definitely planning to take part in the elections, there are 15% of supporters.

Previous polls consistently showed the advantage of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation. In May, for example, 14% were going to vote for the communists, and 9% for the LDPR. Their gap from A Just Russia remains - 3% and 5% of those who have decided could support it. The rating of United Russia members has fluctuated around 40% since the beginning of the year - and among those who have decided, it is gradually moving down, from 65% in January to 53% in May and 57% in July.

Similar results were obtained and specialists from the Public Opinion Foundation: according to their latest measurements, the LDPR began to bypass the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in April. Not significantly, 11-12% versus 10%, but still. Spravorossy, however, according to the FOM, is a little more successful, their rating is around 7%. VTsIOM measures the current rating of the LDPR at 10.7% versus 10.1% for the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and 6.4% for the Socialist Republic.

All three sociological services record an increase in LDPR ratings since the beginning of the year. It seems that this particular party will fight with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for second place, despite all the ambitions of Sergei Mironov, who swore that his party would become second.

The LDPR took off on the one hand, unexpectedly - because the entire history of this party, not counting the rapid surge in the early 1990s, assigned it the role of a trailblazer. On the long-frozen political landscape of Russia, each party occupied a very definite place, the size of the conditional “cells” was almost fixed. The traditional indicator for the comrades of the veteran of domestic politics, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, has always been 6-9% of the vote, which made it possible to form a relatively small faction - small, but significant, since the “Zhirinovites” used to become the key faction, providing United Russia with the missing votes to achieve a majority.

One of the recent studies Levada Center showed that among those voting for the LDPR, most of those who explain their choice by sympathy for the leader. Supporters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Socialist Republic more often than others say that they share the program and slogans of these parties, “United Russia” - indicate that “this is the strongest party, it is supported by the majority” (their percentage of those who share the program is much lower than the other three) . Communists and fans of Zhirinovsky cannot call their parties the strongest, but they are many times more likely to believe that they will be able to protect the interests of ordinary people.

But just one figure Zhirinovsky is not enough - he, after all, was exactly the same five, ten, and fifteen years ago. The political events of the last few years in Russia coincided with the concept of the LDPR much more accurately than with the positions of United Russia. Crimea, Donbass, Syria, the USA - all these are topics that Russians are at least accustomed to hearing from Zhirinovsky, so they all resonated with the LDPR. That is, through his actions, somewhat paradoxically, he worked for the LDPR more than for United Russia. Foreign policy for Russian voters in the 21st century has become a priority over domestic policy.

The LDPR did not have to change, while her competitors were forced to rush in pursuit of the electorate, and did so, perhaps, too quickly. For a supporter of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov, hugging on stage with Sergei Mironov, is too much, changing shoes too quickly in the air. But for a Zhirinovite it’s quite normal. SR, on the other hand, took a completely sharp turn, instantly splitting hairs with the non-parliamentary opposition and mercilessly clearing out the ranks of those insufficiently loyal to the Kremlin. The potential voter was left bewildered.

That the party has been a long time was not in the first roles, it seems to serve her well, because for this reason voting for the LDPR is not perceived as a rebellion either by voters or the Kremlin. The party has never caused problems for the supreme power, it has been a faithful satellite of United Russia, and supporting it is at the same time seemingly oppositional for those who, for example, are dissatisfied with rising prices and the decline of the economy, and at the same time completely safe and of no use obliges. You won’t have to do anything contrary to the general line (or anything at all). The LDPR is not expected to solve any problems, but only to make loud statements.

And the motley, contradictory program - in which, for example, it simultaneously proclaims “we are against the disunity of Russian society under any pretext, including the issue of acceptance or rejection of so-called Western values” and “we will not tolerate behavior that contradicts the way of life that has developed over centuries” - as it turned out, right now it could not have become better coincide with the way of thinking of the average Russian, who is completely confused about whether he supports Bashar al-Assad or not, whether he is friends with the Turks or fights, restores Novorossiya or stands for the integrity of Ukraine.

All this was not so noticeable, while elections remained somewhere on the horizon. But when Russians finally began to be teased and faced with the need to choose, it was the LDPR that voters began to increasingly look at.

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