Abstract

The 1999 elections played an important role in the formation of Russia’s modern party political system. There is an opinion among scholars that two factions of Russian elite clashed in the elections. The first one represented federal power that was puzzled by the plan “Successor”, the other one represented the regional elite, whose members tried to challenge the Kremlin scenario. In line with the logic of party elections, each side formed its own electoral alliances. The pro-Kremlin bloc was represented by the inter-regional movement “Unity”, while the regional governors were represented by the coalition “Fatherland—All Russia”. In a tense contest, the Kremlin party managed to defeat the governors’ alliance, which initially had a much better chance of winning. Analysts explain this victory as being due to the impacts of information wars, the success of the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya, and the personal popularity of the successor who openly supported the “Unity”. However, all these factors do not fully clarify how an electoral association registered only two months before the elections managed to achieve record results. This article attempts at analyzing the peculiarities of the electoral strategy of the “Kremlin party” during the first stage of the operation “Successor”. The research subject is the mechanism of crisis consolidation which was employed by the presidential power to promote its electoral interests under conditions of political stalemate. The formation of another “party of power” is examined in the context of Russian electoral politics in the late 1990s. This approach led to the conclusion that the key to the “Unity”’s success was the mixed electoral system that the president had fought so hard against after 1993. Fearing party elections, Kremlin spin doctors tried to steer the “Unity”’s election campaign away from purely party agenda towards a single member’s vote in a federal electoral district, where a single candidate with a high personal rating quietly ran for office. Having lost the campaign for abolition of the elections on party lists, the Kremlin managed to partially impose its scenario of “single mandate voting” in the federal constituency .