DEMOCRATIC UNION

The Democratic Union (DS) is a radical liberal party, the first political organization to emerge as an alternative to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), formed out of the dissident movement shortly after the beginning of perestroika. It was established in May 1988 on the basis of the seminar "Democracy and Humanism," which began in the summer of 1987. The Democratic Union's nonconformism distinguishes it from democratic parties that appeared later. Political tendencies that initially coexisted in the DS alongside the liberal—such as social democratic or Eurocommunist tendencies—gradually broke off. Under the strain of numerous ideological and personal disagreements, the DS went through numerous splits. Where internal conflict arose between radical and more moderate elements, the radical always gained the upper hand.

The Democratic Union's political activity consisted mainly of conducting unsanctioned meetings and making sensational announcements. In the words of DS leader Valeria Novgorodskaya (chair of the central coordinating council from 1996), DS activists were "genuine Bolsheviks, albeit with an anticommunist leaning." In December 1992, on the initiative of Novgorodskaya andN. Zlotkin, the party "Democratic Union of Russia" (DSR) was established, declaring itself a constituent of the DS. In the spring of 1993, the DSR supported Boris Yeltsin in the conflict with the Congress of People's Deputies, regarding him as a "fighter against Soviet power," and broke sharply with the DS, which continued to view the president and government as heirs of the Communist regime. Novgorodskaya's group was excluded from the Moscow DS organization, and from that point on, the DS and DSR existed separately. After troops were brought into Chechnya in 1994, the DSR moved into extreme opposition to the government, idealizing the Chechen side in the meantime. In 1996, the DSR first called for a repeal of the presidential elections, in order to avoid a situation in which "the formal observation of democratic procedures leads to the liquidation of democracy," then it supported the candidacy of Grigory Yavlinsky after Yeltsin's second term. During the Yugoslav crisis, the DS unequivocally sided with the U.S. and NATO and announced that it would send a detachment of volunteers to the Balkans as aid to NATO, headed by Novgorodskaya.

Officially the DSR never registered as a party, first because of identification with "opposition from outside the system," then because of low numbers and lack of organizational structures in the provinces. In 1993 Novgorodskaya entered the ballot in a single-mandate district as a candidate from the bloc Russia's Choice; in 1995 on the list of the Party of Economic Freedom, which a significant portion of the DSR entered in order to receive official status. In the 1999 elections, the DS joined with "A Just Cause," but with the registration of the latter, left for the Union of Right Forces (SPS). In the 2000 presidential elections, the DS supported Konstantin Titov. Since then, the DS's only appearances in the news have been thanks to Novgorodskaya's activity and high profile.

See also: perestroika; political party system

bibliography

McFaul, Michael. (2001). Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

McFaul, Michael, and Markov, Sergei. (1993). The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Parties, Personalities, and Programs. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

Reddaway, Peter, and Glinski, Dmitri. (2001). The Tragedy of Russia's Reforms: Market Bolshevism against Democracry. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace Press.

Nikolai Petrov