ABSTRACT
Political parties play a fundamental role in modern representative democracy. Party development in Russia has evolved through four main phases. The first was the insurgency stage of movements and neformaly (informal) organisations accompanying the dissolution of the power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union during perestroika. The second stage was the period of constitutional crisis between August 1991 and October 1993, when the presidency and parliament struggled for supremacy. In the absence of elections and the fight for political power between rival elite factions, one have characterised this period as a peculiar sort of ‘phoney democracy’. The third stage was inaugurated by the dissolution of the Russian legislature and the events of 3–4 October 1993. This period lasted up to Yeltsin’s resignation in December 1999 and is characterised by a contradictory dual adaptation.
