According to the Communist MP’s information, United Russia intends to make amendments to the electoral legislation increasing the minimum quantity requirement up to 100,000 members from today’s 50,000. Though the “bears” themselves deny these plans to exist, the realization of such plans is probable and would look rather natural within the “few-party system” built by the Kremlin.       

During the period of Vladimir Putin’s term of office the quantity limit requirements toughened consistently, which resulted in that today the process of making new parties is absolutely controllable. At Yeltsin it took just a few tens of people to create a party within the frames of the law on the public movements. The general number of parties, including the regional ones, was nearly hundreds then. The Duma Elections of 1995 were featured with 43 parties and blocs present in the ballot paper, and that fact did not make the choice by citizens to be too hard.  

In 2001 the Duma passed the federal law “On Political Parties” setting the minimum membership limit of 10,000 people. Initially, the less figure was planned but Alexander Veshnyakov, that-time chair of the Central Elective Commission, whose agency was in charge of working out the law, insisted on the number mentioned. His opponents said then that too strict barrier might lead to elimination of any political competition and that the number of members does not relate to real influence of the party’s ideas that are supported or not by electors. It was also said that most European countries have no restrictions for membership quantity or the restrictions are minor. There was apprehension that with too strict quantity limits the authority might regulate the number of “right” parties and remove the “undesirable” ones. Well, those saying all that must be clairvoyant.        

The figure of 10,000 was put in the law and all independent parties had to gain bigger size so that to survive in the political arena. In 2005 the question of quantity limit for parties was considered in the Constitutional Court and it was decided that “the Constitution does not define either quantity of parties or quantity of members in them”. However, the Court appealed to the lawmakers to be guided with the principle of “reasonable sufficiency” and “proportionality”, saying that the quantity standards might “become unconstitutional in case their outcomes turn out to be impossibility of real exercising the citizens’ constitutional rights for uniting in the political parties”.     

The requirements to the parties have increased since 2006 again. The changes made by United Russia under the slogan of “Country does not need minor parties” the party membership minimum was boosted to 50,000 people. And no less than half of the regional branches had to have at least 500 members while the rest of regional branches were to have at least 250 people.

All the parties were to meet those requirements during the year 2006. Those failing were to be liquidated. With the effort made by the Rosregistartion agency – putting lawsuits to the Supreme Court - only 15 parties out of 32 had remained in Russia by autumn 2007. Interestingly, the Republic Party failing to pass through the Rosregistartion “sieve”, the Democratic Party, Party of Peace and Unity, Party of Social Justice and Party Of Revival of Russia managed to pass, though it’s very hard to find activists of those parties, as they are no numerous. Nonetheless, all of them are listed in the Rosregistartion roll being recognized to have the required number from 52,000 to 71,000 members. Naturally, United Russia is the champion in the list, having 1.8 million members. It is followed by Just Russia (437,000), Agrarian Party (163,000), CPRF (158,000), LDPR (156,000), Narodny Soyuz (97,000), Patriots of Russia (84,000), Grazhdanskaya Sila (64,000), Yabloko (59,000), ecological party of the Green (58,000) and SPS (57,000).            

In 2007 the increased with the factor of five membership minimum was tried to be appealed in the Constitutional court one more time by the leader of liquidated RKRP Viktor Tyulkin, ex-Mp.  The outcome was same: the court confirmed its previous decision. However, there are problems regarding the “reasonable sufficiency”: with a minimum of 50,000 members it is practically impossible to create any party undesirable by the Kremlin and it is easy to eliminate any “unfavorable” party.    

In case the “bears” really are preparing another “enlargement”, there might be only 5 parties to remain in the country. And then it would be just a mockery any saying about “real exercising of one’s constitutional right for uniting in political parties by citizens”.