United Russia and the Agrarian Party of Russia (APR) decided to unite on Friday. Although the final decision is still to be made at the convention, everybody is certain that the Agrarians will simply merge with 2,000,000-strong United Russia. Fair Russia is now bewailing the loss of their might-have-been comrades, and the Communists are celebrating a victory.
Vyacheslav Volodin, Secretary of the United Russia General Council Presidium, and Vladimir Plotnikov, the Agrarian Party leader
Vyacheslav Volodin, Secretary of the United Russia General Council Presidium, and Vladimir Plotnikov, the Agrarian Party leader, have explained that the decision has so far been made in the form of a memorandum. However, Plotnikov pointed out that his party’s convention would definitely support the idea.
For the Agrarians, the decision seems to be quite logical. One of the oldest Russian political parties founded in 1993 to support the agro-industrial nomenklatura, APR kept on balancing throughout the 1990s between its left-wing supporters and the government, often giving preference to the latter. In December 2007, the Agrarian Party was one of the four political parties that nominated Dmitriy Medvedev.
The Communists approve of the Agrarians’ decision. According to Ivan Melnikov, First Deputy Chairman of the CPRF Central Committee, “Russian politics has finally rid itself of a parasite known as the Agrarian Party”, thereby making life easier for the Communists, for it will no longer steal votes from them.
Without such a merger, the Agrarian Party would obviously be doomed to slow extinction, because the Russian rural constituencies have always voted for United Russia and the CPRF.
It is no less obvious that the merger will hardly add “rural” votes to United Russia. Valery Fedorov, General Director of the All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center (VCIOM), believes that those few that still vote for the Agrarians will merge with United Russia’s electorate. “Yet it is hard to say whether or not the Agrarian Party fully dissolves”, he told Expert Online.
Vera Kholmogorova
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