Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: How many political parties are in Russia?
All parties registered by the Ministry of Justice have the right to participate in any elections all over the country. The list is placed on the Justice Ministry website. In December 2012, there were 48 registered parties in Russia; 6 of them are currently represented in the State Duma as of 2017.
The Russian military is divided into the Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. There are also three independent arms of service: Strategic Missile Troops, Aerospace Defence Forces, and the Airborne Troops. , the military comprised over 1 million active duty personnel, the fifth largest in the world. Additionally, there are over 2.5 million reservists, with the total number of reserve troops possibly being as high as 20 million. It is mandatory for all male citizens aged 18–27 to be drafted for a year of service in Armed Forces.
The Russian Empire, also known as Imperial Russia or simply Russia, was an empire that existed across Eurasia and North America from 1721, following the end of the Great Northern War, until the Republic was proclaimed by the Provisional Government that took power after the February Revolution of 1917.
The CIS-Election Monitoring Organisation () is an election monitoring body that was formed in October 2002, following a Commonwealth of Independent States heads of states meeting which adopted the "Convention on the Standards of Democratic Elections, Electoral Rights, and Freedoms in the Member States of the Commonwealth of Independent States". The CIS-EMO has been sending election observers to member countries of the CIS since this time; they approved many elections which have been heavily criticised by independent observers.Russia has been urging that the Russian language receive official status in all of the CIS member states. So far Russian is an official language in only four of these states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. Russian is also considered an official language in the region of Transnistria, and the autonomous region of Gagauzia in Moldova. Viktor Yanukovych, the Moscow-supported presidential candidate in the controversial 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, declared his intention to make Russian an official second language of Ukraine. However, the Western-supported candidate Viktor Yushchenko, the winner, did not do so. After his early 2010 election as President Yanukovych stated (on 9 March 2010) that "Ukraine will continue to promote the Ukrainian language as its only state language".
In the 1925 census Russians were already reported as the largest minority (10.6%) and Russian was spoken as the family language by 14% of inhabitants. A small percent of Russian speakers were not ethnic Russians and conversely a small percentage of ethnic Russians used another language in family, which was attributed to mixed marriages, living in area with another majority language and, in case of Russian speakers, Russification policies of Russian empire. In 1930 census Russian was reported as family language by 13% of inhabitants.
It does not consider the former Soviet Union socialist, but rather a "tragic degeneration" of the Russian Revolution and the socialist tradition. While it views the Russian Revolution positively as a mass democratic revolution of the working class in Russia, it is in complete opposition to the bureaucratic dictatorship that came about after the death of Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin's subsequent reign of terror. It sees these not as an inevitable outcome of the Russian Revolution, but an expression of Russia's isolation and economic starvation and a result of the vacuum of workers' power from below. "This was not a healthy ground upon which socialism could be built. The whole basis of socialism is having enough to go around, but Russia didn't have that. In this context, the democratic structures in the Soviets (workers' assemblies) ceased to function.
A week after the election, Nazarbayev became the president of an independent state when the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed documents dissolving the Soviet Union. He quickly convened a meeting of the leaders of the five Central Asian states (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan), raising the possibility of a Turkic confederation of former republics as a counterweight to the Slavic states of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus in whatever federation might succeed the Soviet Union. This move persuaded the three Slavic presidents to include Kazakhstan among the signatories of a recast document of dissolution. Kazakhstan's capital lent its name to the Alma-Ata Protocol, the declaration of principles of the Commonwealth of Independent States. On 16 December 1991, five days before the declaration, Kazakhstan became the last of the republics to proclaim its independence.
In 2000 Russian was spoken natively by 37.5% of inhabitants and by 43.7% as the second language. In 2011 census 37.2% reported Russian as the language they primarily speak at home. In Latgale region Russian was spoken at home by 60.3% of population, but Zilupe County was the county with the biggest percentage of Russian speakers (92.1%). In the capital Riga Russian was spoken at home by 55.8% inhabitants.
Russia has thousands of rivers and inland bodies of water, providing it with one of the world's largest surface-water resources. However, most of Russia's rivers and streams belong to the Arctic drainage basin, which lies mainly in Siberia but also includes part of European Russia. Altogether, 84 percent of Russia's surface water is located east of the Urals in rivers flowing through sparsely populated territory and into the Arctic and Pacific oceans. In contrast, areas with the highest concentrations of population, and therefore the highest demand for water supplies, tend to have the warmest climates and highest rates of evaporation. As a result, densely populated areas such as the Don and Kuban River basins north of the Caucasus have barely adequate (or in some cases inadequate) water resources.
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR or UkrSSR or UkSSR; , УРСР ; , УССР ; see "Name" section below), also known as the Soviet Ukraine, was one of the constituent republics of the Soviet Union from the Union's inception in 1922 to its breakup in 1991. The republic was governed by the Communist Party of Ukraine as a unitary one-party socialist soviet republic.
In Moldova, Russian is considered to be the language of inter-ethnic communication under a Soviet-era law. According to estimates from Demoskop Weekly, in 2004 there were 450,000 native speakers of Russian in the country, and 1.9 million active speakers. 50% of the population was fluent in Russian in 2006, and 19% used it as the main language with family, friends or at work. Russian is the language usually spoken by 16% of Moldovans according to a 2004 estimate from the World Factbook.
Eventually, after the creation of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine in Moscow, a third Ukrainian Soviet government was formed on 21 December 1919 that initiated new hostilities against Ukrainian nationalists as they lost their military support from the defeated Central Powers. Eventually, the Red Army ended up controlling much of the Ukrainian territory after the Polish-Soviet Peace of Riga. On 30 December 1922, along with the Russian, Byelorussian, and Transcaucasian republics, the Ukrainian SSR was one of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The 1917 republic, however, was only recognised by another non-recognised country, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, and with the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was ultimately defeated by mid-1918 and eventually dissolved. The last session of the government took place in the city of Taganrog. In July 1918, the former members of the government formed the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine, the constituent assembly of which took place in Moscow. With the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, Bolshevik Russia resumed its hostilities towards the Ukrainian People's Republic fighting for Ukrainian independence and organised another Soviet government in Kursk, Russia. On 10 March 1919, according to the 3rd Congress of Soviets in Ukraine (conducted 6–10 March 1919) the name of the state was changed to the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet Republic (abbreviated "УСРР" in Ukrainian as opposed to the later "УРСР").
The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS; ), also sometimes called the Russian Commonwealth in order to distinguish it from the Commonwealth of Nations, is a regional intergovernmental organization of 10 post-Soviet republics in Eurasia formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It has an area of 20,368,759 km² (8,097,484 sq mi) and has an estimated population of 239,796,010. The CIS encourages cooperation over economical, political and military aspects and has certain powers possessing coordinating in trade, finance, lawmaking and security. It has also promoted cooperation on cross-border crime prevention.
The three largest and most significant political parties that support the Union are the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservative and Unionist Party, all of which organise and stand in elections across Great Britain. The three parties have philosophical differences about what Scotland's status should be, particularly in their support of devolution (historically Home Rule) or federalism. These parties hold representation in both the Scottish and UK Parliaments. Other smaller political parties support the Union, including the UK Independence Party (UKIP), A Better Britain – Unionist Party, Britain First, Britannica Party, the British National Party (BNP), National Front (NF) and the Scottish Unionist Party (SUP).
During the 1930s, there were significant numbers of ethnic minorities living within the Ukrainian SSR. National Districts were formed as separate territorial-administrative units within higher-level provincial authorities. Districts were established for the republic's three largest minority groups, which were the Jews, Russians, and Poles. Other ethnic groups, however, were allowed to petition the government for their own national autonomy. In 1924 on the territory of Ukrainian SSR was formed the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Upon the 1940 conquest of Bessarabia and Bukovina by Soviet troops the Moldavian ASSR was passed to the newly formed Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, while Budzhak and Bukovina were secured by the Ukrainian SSR. Following the creation of the Ukrainian SSR significant numbers of ethnic Ukrainians found themselves living outside the Ukrainian SSR. In 1920s the Ukrainian SSR was forced to cede several territories to Russia in Severia, Sloboda Ukraine and Azov littoral including such cities like Belgorod, Taganrog and Starodub. In the 1920s the administration of the Ukrainian SSR insisted in vain on reviewing the border between the Ukrainian Soviet Republics and the Russian Soviet Republic based on the 1926 First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union that showed that 4.5 millions of Ukrainians were living on Russian territories bordering Ukraine. A forced end to Ukrainisation in southern Russian Soviet Republic led to a massive decline of reported Ukrainians in these regions in the 1937 Soviet Census.
Joseph Stalin, who had been in Soviet administration throughout the Russian Civil War and its aftermath, well remembered how the attempt to fight Bolshevik-style revolutions throughout Europe during and after World War I—the revolutions of 1917–23—had mostly failed. (Many Old Bolsheviks had thought at the time that these revolutions were the vanguard of the world revolution, but the latter never materialized.) It was this very reality that had driven the development of the idea of Socialism in One Country as the Soviet Union's own path. With such historical lessons in mind, at the end of World War II Stalin suggested to the leaders of Eastern European communist parties that they should present themselves as advocates of a "people's democracy". After the defeat of Nazi Germany and its allies in Eastern Europe, Marxist–Leninist theoreticians first began expanding on the idea of a possible peaceful transition to socialism, given the presence of the Soviet Red Army. In most areas of Eastern Europe, the Communist Parties did not immediately take power directly but instead worked in Popular Coalitions with progressive parties. Unlike the Soviet Union, which was officially a one-party state, a majority of people's democracies of Eastern Europe were theoretically multi-party states. Many of the ruling Leninist parties no longer called themselves Communist in their official title as they had in the 1930s. The Socialist Unity Party of Germany for instance was ostensibly a union of the Social Democratic Party of Germany and the Communist Party of Germany. Many of the other European states were ruled by Worker's or Socialist Parties. In the Eastern Bloc, "People's democracy" was a synonym for socialist state.
Despite having evolved over the years, Marxism–Leninism had several central tenets. The main tenet was the party's status as sole ruling party. The 1977 Constitution referred to the party as the "leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state and public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union." State socialism was essential, and from Joseph Stalin until Mikhail Gorbachev official discourse considered private social and economic activity as retarding the development of collective consciousness and of the economy. Gorbachev supported privatization to a degree, but based his policies on Vladimir Lenin's and Nikolai Bukharin's view on the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and supported complete state ownership over the commanding heights of the economy. Unlike liberalism, Marxism–Leninism stressed not the importance of the individual, but rather the role of the individual as a member of a collective. Thus defined, individuals had only the right to freedom of expression if it safeguarded the interests of the collective. For instance, in the 1977 Constitution Marxism–Leninism it was stated that every person had the right to express their opinion, but that opinion could only be expressed if it was in accordance with the "general interests of Soviet society." In short, the number of rights granted to an individual was decided by the state, and could be taken away by the state as it saw fit. Soviet Marxism–Leninism justified nationalism, and the media portrayed every victory of the Soviet Union as a victory for the communist movement as a whole. In large parts, Soviet nationalism was based upon ethnic Russian nationalism. Marxism–Leninism stressed the importance of the worldwide conflict between capitalism and socialism, and the Soviet press talked about progressive and reactionary forces, while claiming that socialism was on the verge of victory; that the "correlations of forces" were in the Soviet Union's favour. The ideology professed state atheism, and party members were not allowed to be religious. The state professed a belief in the feasibility of communist mode of production, and all policies were justifiable if it contributed to the Soviet Union's reaching that stage.
Ukrainization was thoroughly implemented through the government apparatus, Communist Party of Ukraine membership and, gradually, the party leadership as well, as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenization policies. At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in government affairs. While initially, the party and government apparatus was mostly Russian-speaking, by the end of the 1920s ethnic Ukrainians composed over one half of the membership in the Ukrainian communist party, the number strengthened by accession of Borotbists, a formerly indigenously Ukrainian "independentist" and non-Bolshevik communist party.
Strikingly different interpretations of the medieval state of Kievan Rus' appear in the four schools of historiography within Ukraine: Russophile, Sovietophile, Eastern Slavic, and Ukrainophile. The Sovietophile and Russophile schools have become marginalized in independent Ukraine, with the Ukrainophile school being dominant in the early 21st century. The Ukrainophile school promotes an identity that is mutually exclusive of Russia. It has come to dominate the nation's educational system, security forces, and national symbols and monuments, although it has been dismissed as nationalist by Western historians. The East Slavic school, an eclectic compromise between Ukrainophiles and Russophilism, has a weaker ideological and symbolic base, although it is preferred by Ukraine's centrist former elites.
Despite having evolved over the years, Marxism–Leninism had several central tenets. The main tenet was the party's status as the sole ruling party. The 1977 Constitution referred to the party as "The leading and guiding force of Soviet society, and the nucleus of its political system, of all state and public organizations, is the Communist Party of the Soviet Union". State socialism was essential and from Stalin until Gorbachev, official discourse considered that private social and economic activity retarding the development of collective consciousness and the economy. Gorbachev supported privatization to a degree but based his policies on Lenin's and Bukharin's opinions of the New Economic Policy of the 1920s, and supported complete state ownership over the commanding heights of the economy. Unlike liberalism, Marxism–Leninism stressed the role of the individual as a member of a collective rather than the importance of the individual. Individuals only had the right to freedom of expression if it safeguarded the interests of a collective. For instance, the 1977 Constitution stated that every person had the right to express his or her opinion, but the opinion could only be expressed if it was in accordance with the "general interests of Soviet society". The quantity of rights granted to an individual was decided by the state and the state could remove these rights if it saw fit. Soviet Marxism–Leninism justified nationalism; the Soviet media portrayed every victory of the state as a victory for the communist movement as a whole. Largely, Soviet nationalism was based upon ethnic Russian nationalism. Marxism–Leninism stressed the importance of the worldwide conflict between capitalism and socialism; the Soviet press wrote about progressive and reactionary forces while claiming that socialism was on the verge of victory and that the "correlations of forces" were in the Soviet Union's favour. The ideology professed state atheism; Party members were not allowed to be religious.
Russia lacked a strong party system, thus partisan divides were less a factor for campaigns as they were in democracies with more developed party systems, such as France, the United Kingdom and the United States. In both the 1993 and 1995 parliamentary elections, half of Russia's parliamentary seats were decided by voting in single-mandate districts. However, the other half was determined by a national system of proportional representation. Proportional representation encouraged the existence of a plethora of political parties and little incentive for party consolidation. In 1993, thirteen separate parties contested in legislative elections. In 1995, forty-three different parties did. This was seen by the campaign's new leadership as being problematic to Yeltsin's candidacy. They believed that in order to win he would need to convince voters that he was the lesser evil, which he would be unable to effectively do without first convincing voters that they had only two options. Essentially, the strategy was to manufacture a public perception that there existed a political duopoly consisting of Yeltsin and Zyuganov's Communist Party. They would instill such a perception in spite of the fact that Russia had a multi-party system.
These parties have been considered parties of power:According to studies, United Russia voters in 2007 were younger and more market-oriented than the average voter. The party's electorate includes a substantial share of government employees, pensioners and military personnel, who are dependent on the state for their livelihood. Sixty-four percent of United Russia supporters are female. According to researchers, this could be because women place a great value on stability. In the run-up to the 2011 Duma elections, it was reported that support for United Russia was growing among young people.
United Russia is a large and diverse party and has several internal subdivisions. The party has 4 internal groupings, organized around common policy interests. In addition, the party makes use of four internal political clubs to debate policy: liberal conservative 4 November Club, social conservative Centre for Social Conservative Politics, conservative liberal State Patriotic Club and liberal Liberal Club. Based on this division, the party considered entering the 2007 Duma elections as three separate "columns" (liberal, conservative and social), but the idea was subsequently abandoned.
United Russia () is the ruling political party of the Russian Federation. United Russia is the largest party in Russia and it holds 335 (or 74.44%) of the 450 seats in the State Duma.