ABSTRACT
Parties are only one amongst a range of political actors in post-communist systems, and they have by no means always been the most important ones. They were largely absent in the early stages of change and political transition in eastern Europe, and their role has been still further limited in the countries less advanced in the process of democratization. There was still only a ‘fledgling multi-party system’ fragmented into thirty-eight parties in Ukraine after the 1994 elections.1
Many deputies remained unaffiliated to any party. Neither did the ongoing struggle of the Belarussian parliament with the strongly authoritarian tendencies of President Lukashenka provide a helpful framework for party development, and most of the new deputies elected at the end of 1995 in that country were registered as independents. These areas of the former Soviet Union stood at the lowpoint of the scale for party development in eastern Europe.
