Abstract

The process of adoption of the law on political parties stretched for almost a decade in the Russian Federation. When Art. 6 of the Constitution of the USSR was annulled in early 1990, it seemed to many that this law would appear in the near future. However, after the final solution of the “CPSU problem”, work on it was suspended. Post-Soviet Russia plunged into the abyss of problems that actually paralyzed the legislative authority. The new State Duma, the successor to the previous parliament, made this act a priority. Nevertheless, the process of agreeing on a practically completed draft law (the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation did the main work of drafting it) was extended to the entire term of the First Duma. When the State Duma adopted a law on parties at the end of its legislature, it was declined by the Federation Council on formal grounds. Russian lawyers and political scientists, commenting on Federal Law “On Political Parties” in force since 2001, as a rule, do not delve into the backstory related to the travails of its formation and adoption. However, this issue may well constitute a separate topic for research. The objective of this study is to answer the question why in the mid-1990s such an important law on parties, much anticipated and favored by certain representatives of the political establishment, was ultimately not adopted. The subject of the article is the political and legal processes associated with the development, discussion and mechanisms of adoption of this normative act in 1994–1995. The research is based on the study of a wide range of sources and applies an interdisciplinary approach, i.e. methodology of historical, political, and legal analysis. The author concludes that the main reason for the failure to adopt the law was not so much its real deficiencies as the strategic interests of the 1990s Russian political elite.