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Political Tendencies in Russia’s Regions: Evidence from the 1993 Parliamentary Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Darrell Slider ,
Vladimir Gimpel'son  and
Sergei Chugrov
Darrell Slider
Affiliation:
Department of Government and International Affairs, University of South Florida
Vladimir Gimpel'son
Affiliation:
IMEiMO
Sergei Chugrov
Affiliation:
IMEiMO
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Extract

Most analyses of the consequences of the December 1993 elections have focused on the State Duma that was elected and its likely role in the Russian political process at the national level. The purpose of this study is to go beyond the more obvious impact of the elections to examine underlying patterns and tendencies that could be significant for Russia's future as a federal, multiethnic state. Data on voting for the parliament by party list permit for the first time a systematic, multidimensional comparison of political tendencies in Russia's regions.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 711 - 732
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1994

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References

1. Arend, Lijphart, Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994Google Scholar). On the meaning and importance of the “effective threshold” see especially 25-30 and 105-13.

2. Rossiiskie vesti, 25 December 1993.

3. The list of members of the Federation Council appeared in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 28 December 1993. For an analysis of the composition of this body, see Mikhail Petrachev in Nezavisimaia gazeta, 7 April 1994. The results presented here include “senators” elected in March in Tatarstan (the president of the republic and the chairman of the Supreme Soviet) and in May in Cheliabinsk oblast'. See Segodnia, 17 March 1994 and 17 May 1994.

4. See, for example, the interview with Sheinis in Rossiia, 19-25 May 1993.

5. No more than 15% of the signatures could be from any one region. The election law, issued by edict by Yeltsin on 1 October 1993, was published in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 8 October 1993.

6. For more on regional issues, see Darrell Slider, “Federalism, Discord and Accommodation: Intergovernmental Relations in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Theodore Friedgut and Jeffrey Hahn, eds., Local Power and Post-Soviet Politics (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1994).

7. See, for example, the analysis by Dmitri Volkov in Segodnia, 12 October 1993.

8. The party lists for all parties appeared in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 12 November 1993.

9. Segodnia, 31 March 1994 and 1 April 1994.

10. Rossiiskaia gazeta, 3 December 1993.

11. See Segodnia, 26 February 1994.

12. The LDPR program was published in Rossiiskaia gazeta, 3 December 1993.

13. Segodnia, 5 April 1994.

14. For an account of the 1989 elections to the Soviet parliament, see V.A. Kolosov, N.V. Petrov and L.V. Smirniagin, eds., Vesna 89: Geografiia i anatomiia parlamentskikh vyborov (Moscow: Progress, 1990), 69, 74-75. This was the first detailed analysis of the north-south divide in Soviet elections.

15. See the analysis by Aleksandr Sobianin et al., Mirovaia ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniia, no. 9 (September 1993): 20-32.

16. The regional patterns in the results have been reported by several Russian observers. See especially Vladimir Kolesov in Segodnia, 21 December 1993Google Scholar; and Aleksandr Sobianin and Vladislav Sukhovol'skii in Segodnia, 10 March 1994Google Scholar.

17. Sobianin and Sukhovol'skii, ibid.

18. See Toomas, Alatalu, “Tuva—A State Reawakens,” Soviet Studies 44, no. 5 (1992): 881–95Google Scholar.

19. The political situation in Mordovia was reported by Vsevolod Solov'ev in Segodnia, 29 December 1993Google Scholar.

20. See the interview with Sobianin in Rossiia, 4-10 May 1994. The personal popularity of Aushev is beyond dispute. In the elections to the Federation Council, Aushev was elected with 96% of the vote. In the March 1993 presidential elections in Ingushetia, Aushev had won 99.99% of the vote. See FBIS Daily Report: Central Eurasia, no. 39 (2 March 1993): 45.

21. On the history of the use of factor analysis in electoral analysis, see Harold F. Gosnell, “The Marriage of Math and Young Political Science: Some Early Uses of Quantitative Methods,” in Public Opinions: Newsletter of the APSA Organized Section on Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior 1, no. 1 (February/March 1994): 5-8. For applications to regional voting data, see P. J., Taylor and R. J., Johnston, Geography of Elections (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1979), 88–92, 177-84 Google Scholar.

22. On this distinction, see the work of S. Rokkan, summarized in Taylor and Johnston, op.cit., 111-13.

23. See Sobianin and Sukhovol'skii, Segodnia, 10 March 1994.

24. A statistical analysis of this variable found a coefficient of correlation of r = .57, with p less than .001.

25. By comparison, the machine-building sector comprises less than 27% of the total wage fund while employing about 39% of the workforce. A. Matytsin and A. Stavnitskii, “Ekonomicheskaia reforma i zarabotnaia plata” (Moscow, 1992), cited in V. Gimpel'son, “Labor Market and Employment in Russia: Beginning of Changes,” in Economic Development in Cooperative-Partner Countries from a Sectoral Perspective (NATO Economic Colloquium, 30 June-2July 1993, Brussels).

26. The correlation coefficient between level of urbanization and statism/reformism was r = .61, with p less than .001. Urbanization was measured not simply by the measuring the share of the population in the provincial capital but also including residents of smaller cities.

27. Rossiiskie vesti, 25 December 1993.

28. Vladimir Shokarev in Izvestiia, 30 December 1993Google Scholar. A more detailed analysis of the VTsIOM by Shokarev and Aleksei Levinson is contained in VTsIOM's information bulletin, Monitoring obshchestvennogo mneniia, no. 2 (March-April 1994): 30-33.

29. The list of electoral districts appeared in Rossiiskaia gazcta, 13 October 1993.

30. This group included Zhirinovsky himself, who won with 35% of the vote in a district in Moscow oblast'.