Federalism and Local Politics in Russia

130 Aleksandr Kynevthe Federation had taken place between 1 November and 31 March, underthese amendments the next elections would be held on the second Sunday inMarch, and if the previous elections had been between 1 April and 31October, on the second Sunday in October. In this way elections in 2006should take place on 12 March and 8 October, and in 2007 on 11 March.Consequently the deputies to the representative body, or the official figure,who had been elected at the previous elections would find that, due to thetransfer of election dates to the ‘single voting days’, the period of theirmandate would change. According to expert opinion the introduction of the‘single voting days’ had the real aim of maximizing the domination of the‘party of power’ in the federal mass media, and principally the electronicmass media. United Russia’s official reason for introducing this novelty,allegedly an attempt to save budget finances, seems very doubtful since it isimpossible to see what savings there could be for a region in having its electionson the same day as the next region, or another day.At almost the same time the laws on political parties were also considerablytoughened and a new rule was introduced requiring a membershipthreshold of 50,000 instead of the previous threshold of 10,000. Therequirements for a minimum membership of regional branches of partieswere also increased at the same time: for parties that had branches in at leasthalf the subject of the Federation the requirements were increased from 100to 500, and from 50 to 250 for other branches. The law required that partiesthat were already registered should bring their membership into line with thenew requirements by 1 January 2006. If they were unable to do this theywere obliged to change themselves into some other legal form of publicassociation, otherwise they would be closed down. Newly created parties andregional branches had to conform immediately to the new requirements.Another major novelty was connected to the problem of calculating andverifying the size of the party. Previously the law had not required that a listof party members be supplied to the registering body. According to the opinionof experts the majority of parties registered did not actually have themembership required by law. The law adopted in December 2004 obligedparties to supply a regional membership list to the area registering bodywhen setting up a regional branch. This worsened the situation for oppositionparties since in a number of regions people might be worried aboutjoining them if their membership should become known to the authorities.This meant that the fate of most parties depended upon how thorough theverification was, i.e. it depended on the authorities’ attitude towards them.One can state that in reality the very traditional policy of carrot and stickwas used by the federal centre to tighten control over regional elections. Thestick was the above-mentioned new repressive regulations in federal law andthe increase in governors’ personal dependence on the federal leadershipbrought about by the loss of their previous status of being fully elected. Stepswere also undertaken towards politically discrediting and replacing the leadershipsof the parties that had achieved a high level of success in the