ABSTRACT
Yabloko’s electoral decline has often been attributed to the party’s failure to form effective electoral coalitions and its unwillingness to work with government. Yabloko was, by 2004, organisationally stronger than at any time since its formation in 1993. Indeed, Yabloko’s response to electoral defeat and its ability to contest the parliamentary election in 2007 provides with a test case for the durability of established political parties in Russia. The images of Yabloko as the party of perennial opposition and of Yavlinskii as a politician unprepared to accept the risks associated with government responsibility, have undoubtedly harmed the party. Post-election analyses from 2003 suggested that Yabloko would, to paraphrase Trotsky, ‘be confined to the dustbin of post-Soviet political history’. Regardless of the strategies adopted by Yabloko either as an individual party or as part of a new unified party, Russia’s liberals face an uncertain future.
