WP: Russia's Party for One

Putin Hopes to Use Body to Consolidate Power

Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01

MOSCOW, Dec. 5 -- The party has neither a legislative program nor an ideology. Its leaders refuse to debate, and its main selling point is that it already runs the country. Its all-things-to-all-people message on campaign posters features both Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Indeed, United Russia exists less as a political party than as a vehicle to promote the standing of one man, President Vladimir Putin.

By all accounts it has been an extraordinarily successful strategy.

United Russia is poised to collect more votes in national parliamentary elections Sunday than any party has in the dozen years since the Soviet collapse, according to polls and analysts. The results could cripple the Communists, who were the biggest vote-getters in the last two Russian legislative elections.

"United Russia has a very simple message -- it's the party of the president," said Kremlin pollster Alexander Oslon. "It's just one thing -- it's Putin. That factor of Putin is the decisive one."

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40074-2003Dec5.html

in the Bush "New World Order"...