The Rise of Political Party Activity

marked the first time that even remotely open and democratic elections had taken place in Russia since the birth of the Soviet Union in 1917. The 1989 elections can be viewed as the progenitor of the current political situation in Russia for it was those first elections that launched the long and rocky devolution of the centralized, one-party Soviet state into the multiparty Russian system that faced the electorate for the first time this December 12. A great deal has changed in Russia since the first contested elections at the national level took place across the USSR almost five years ago. So much in fact-the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the one-party monopoly on power and the introduction of market reforms, to name but a few significant alterations-that it is easy