Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

126 Aleksandr Kyneveverywhere the political and economic groups close to the administrationspread their participation into different party lists. At the same time administrativepressure, which had previously been noted in elections to singlememberdistricts and elections for governors, etc., began increasingly to beapplied in elections from party lists. While in the 14 March 2004 elections inSverdlovsk Oblast and the Ust'-Ordynskii Buryatskii AO had been markedby mass barring of the regional opposition from the elections, at the end of2004 and beginning of 2005 they had been joined by Bryansk, Voronezh andMagadan Oblasts and the Yamalo-Nenets AO. In Tula and Amur Oblaststhe blocs that had been kept away from the elections were able to reinstatetheir registration through the Supreme Court.The campaigns of this period were technically very complicated (forexample, in the Koryak and Yamalo-Nenetskii autonomous okrugs ‘open’lists were used), and quite possibly this is largely due to the fact that themain regional political forces were able to concentrate all their main staffing,organizational and technical resources on them, without being distracted byparticipation in federal campaigns. The increased experience of conductingsuch elections also played their part, as did the President of Russia’s initiativeof 13 September 2004 to abolish the direct election of governors, andchange the election of deputies to the State Duma to a fully proportionalelectoral system; this greatly increased the interest of both the public and thepolitico-economic elites in elections to regional legislative assemblies.At the same time, the announcement by the Russian President of theabolition of direct elections for governors undoubtedly led to an increase inthe attempts mentioned above to strengthen administrative control by thegovernor over elections to legislative assemblies. The legal process of formulatingthe president’s initiative took place during the autumn of 2004 andthe final direct elections for governor took place on 6 February 2005 in theNenets AO. In other words, from September 2004 to February 2005 governorswere still elected by the populace, but it was already known that thiswas the last time. Thus the governors began gradually to concentrate theirefforts more and more on setting up control over the legislative assemblies,which, under the new circumstances, would have to approve the candidatesfor governor proposed by the President.Overall, the degree of genuine competition in the elections at the end of2004 and beginning of 2005 was much higher than in the votes of 7December 2003 and 14 March 2004 (Table 6.2). On voting day there wereeleven lists on the voting paper in Tula and Sakhalin Oblasts, nine in Amur,Arkhangel'sk, Voronezh and Irkutsk Oblasts, eight in Bryansk and KurganOblasts and Khakassiya, seven in the Vladimir and Ryazan' Oblasts and theNenetskii AO, six in the Kaluga Oblast, five in Chita Oblast and Marii-El,and there were just four in the Yamalo-Nenetskii AO and the sparselyinhabitedKoryak and Taymyr AOs. Consequently at least four parties surmountedthe threshold in all these regions, except for the Yamalo-NenetskiiAO. Only one party, United Russia, managed to register its lists in all nineteen