ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how the role of the deputies elected to Russian local government changed in the first year or so after the implementation of the reforms. It aims to determine what evidence there is that the indicators of democratic pluralism are becoming characteristic of Russian local politics. The chapter examines the election of the deputies in March 1990. It describes how the new soviet works, including first-hand observations of a session of the city soviet held in June 1991. The chapter explores the relationship between the deputies and those who elected them. It argues that democratic pluralism presupposed the possibility of public participation, singly or in groups, in the political life of the community. The system of local government that existed in the former Soviet Union before 1988 provided scant opportunity for popular control over those who governed, surely an essential feature of representative democracy.
