Second, the new mass basis made the party ideologically still more nebulous and colorless than it already was.[36]
Third, the influx of new members brought into the party people with different ideas
and ideological backgrounds, which soon led to a pressure for the formation of “party
wings.” These problems became more acute in 2008, when Medvedev succeeded Putin as
president and Putin became prime minister. From that moment it was in Putin’s interest
to change the “President’s Party” into “the Prime Minister’s Party” or better, into
“Putin’s Party”
In November 2007, some months before the presidential elections of 2008, Putin began to criticize the party. He said: “Does it [United Russia] look like the ideal political structure? Of course not. There is still no established ideology, principles for which the overwhelming majority of the members of this party would be prepared to fight and to accept its authority.”[37] He added that “it is close to the state. And, as a rule, all kinds of criminals try to infiltrate into such structures . . . . The goal of these people is not the welfare of the people, but their personal enrichment. And, of course, by such actions, they compromise the state and the party.”[38] Putin formulated here two new objectives: first, the need for United Russia to develop its own ideology, and, second, the need to purge the party of unwanted, “criminal” elements. Shortly thereafter, on April 15, 2008, Putin accepted the position of chairman of United Russia. In 2010, however, the announced purge was still waiting to be implemented. The party membership had not diminished, but had grown from 1,980 million in April 2008 to 2,026 million in May 2010. United Russia had become a huge bureaucratic organization with 2,598 local divisions, employing 40,000 employees.[39] It was clearly on the way to becoming a clone of the Soviet-era CPSU. However, the other goal formulated by Putin in 2007: giving United Russia an ideology, was in full implementation. Marlène Laruelle wrote that
a new wave of Russian nationalism has been emerging that broadly exceeds the influence of older strains of nationalism, whether founded on Slavophilism, Soviet nostalgia, or Eurasianist theories . . . .[40] Western observers and political scientists have a tendency to reserve the label “nationalist” only for small extremist groups or political parties, such as Gennady Ziuganov’s Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovski’s LDPR. It prevents them from taking stock of the existence of an ideological continuum that encompasses the entire Russian political spectrum. Indeed . . . the presidential party United Russia is itself thoroughly permeated with ideological debates about the nature of the country’s national identity. Owing to its ability to co-opt doctrinaires, to finance them, and to broadcast their messages to media and public opinion, it has even become one of the major actors of the nationalist narrative.[41]
United Russia, far from distancing itself from the ultranationalist discourses of Zhirinovsky’s LDPR and Zyuganov’s Communist Party, had begun to develop its own version of a “patriotic” ideology. This “ideologization process” had three characteristics:
It was related to the formation of “wings” in the party.
It was led by the Kremlin.
It was not restricted to pure party politics, but embedded in a broader “Gramscian” strategy of securing an overall ideological “hegemony” in Russia.
The Bear Wants to Fly: How United Russia Got Different Party Wings
