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A frank conversation did not work out, one of its participants complained to Newsweek last Thursday after a meeting between Vladimir Putin and the heads of the regional branches of United Russia at the Volzhsky Utes rest house in Samara. “Tune in, the leader will look at you,” the party member quotes the words of farewell, with which Vyacheslav Volodin, secretary of the presidium of the party’s General Council, addressed them before the meeting. That's pretty much how it happened. They were waiting for a conversation about the prospects of the party, the participant of the meeting continues, but such a conversation did not work out: "It was an evening of questions and answers." The activists, the source of Newsweek makes it clear, were given the wrong questions that they care about: about the Ossetian people, the Compatriots program, cadet corps, the Arctic shelf, etc.

Only one question was partly devoted to a topic that agitated the party. On September 12, a memorandum was signed on the merger of United Russia with the Agrarian Party (APR). “In this regard, how will the relations of United Russia with other parties be built and how can this affect the political system?” - fell to ask the head of the party faction in the legislature of the Vladimir region, Sergei Borodin. “We must definitely have political forces with different points of view on the political stage of the country,” Putin answered: “both left-wing parties, and centrist ... and right-wing parties with liberal economic views ...”

It is not by chance that the agrarians joined United Russia right now, and Putin did not lie when he explained that the left and right forces should remain. The Kremlin has begun preparations for the 2011 parliamentary elections. The future Duma will be different from the current one. The so-called one and a half party system - "United Russia" and a relatively developed left flank - is becoming a thing of the past, and "ER" itself should become a "nationwide party" from just a leading one. This means that she will not have at least some noticeable competitors, and she will reign in the very center, and not on the side, as today. And the design will become slender.

RIGHTS

Summer is over, and parties merge one after another. APR joined United Russia. A Just Russia includes the Social Justice Party and the Greens. This is the new policy. “How many in the Duma - so much in the ballot,” explains the Kremlin official. In last autumn's elections, the dwarf parties that did not get into the Duma received 7% of the votes. Now there will be 3-4 small parties, the Kremlin plans, and then these 7% will almost entirely go to United Russia. All "dwarfs" are faced with a choice, one of the Duma deputies says: either they will join one of the strong, or they will be destroyed. The merger process is gaining momentum: on Friday its leader, Nikita Belykh, resigned from the Union of Right Forces. And on October 2, the party leadership will approve its participation in the new Kremlin project.

The fate of the Union of Right Forces was decided: it was merged with the "Civil Force" ("GS") and the Democratic Party of Russia (DPR). According to Newsweek, they will announce one of these days that they are going to disband in order to unite later. The Kremlin's Department of Internal Policy (UVP) has been discussing the creation of a new right-wing party since spring. Several sources confirm at once: this is Putin's wish and proposal, he wants to see loyal liberals in the future Duma and, through Kremlin managers, oversees the creation of a new party. With the leaders of the "GS" and the DPR, Mikhail Barshchevsky and Andrey Bogdanov, the head of the UVP, Oleg Govorun, met immediately after the war in South Ossetia, and it was already about organizational questions. The Kremlin is creating, in the words of an official working there, "the broadest possible coalition" of the "GS", DPR and SPS and wants to introduce "new faces" into it.

So a fresh brand will soon appear on the right flank: the congress of the new party should take place before the end of the year. Here the matter is also about money, experts explain: the parties that did not get into the Duma owe the Central Election Commission an average of $ 7 million each for free air, and it is cheaper to create a new one than to repay the debt. The Union of Right Forces is also obliged, and this could not but affect the position of the party activists. Besides party members want to participate in elections. “The only way is to hold some kind of negotiations [with the Kremlin],” one of the SPS leaders, Boris Nadezhdin, explains why it was decided to surrender. “During this year, the party failed to register a single list in the elections, and without elections it is no longer a party.” In the Kemerovo region, elections are on October 12, and the leader of the Kemerovo Union of Right Forces, Dmitry Shagiakhmetov, gives an example: “The quality of the signatures, I assure you, was exactly the same as always. And we found 63% of marriage. The party of Sazha Umalatova has 100%.”

Even before the fateful decision, the Union of Right Forces understood that, in fact, there were only two options: with the Kremlin or on the street. If it had not been possible to attract the Union of Right Forces, it would have been split, confirms a technologist close to the Kremlin, and up to 20 regional branches of the Union of Right Forces were ready to join the "GS" and the DPR in any case. The Kremlin also discussed the option of forming an alternative leadership. It would have seized the brand and power over the party, as they already successfully did with the Party of Pensioners and with the same DPR, when Mikhail Kasyanov wanted to head it, but Andrei Bogdanov intervened and took the party. As a result, Nikita Belykh chose the street. “I wrote a letter and left. I don't want to be the Kremlin's favorite democratic wife. That's it," he told Newsweek immediately after his resignation.

The complexity of the project developed in the Kremlin, in particular, is that not everyone in the Union of Right Forces will want to unite with Bogdanov and Barshchevsky. "Bogdanov? In my opinion, I will leave the party in this case,” Shagiakhmetov told Newsweek. At the same time, Shagiakhmetov does not want to go to the street: "We are leaving for the forests - this option was not supported among serious large [regional] organizations." In the last elections, Bogdanov's mission was to discredit the SPS, and he was not shy about means. The Kremlin understands this: it has already been decided that Barshchevsky and Bogdanov will recede into the background in the new party.

LEFT

Putin honestly meets with all parliamentary parties (communists are next in line), he also met with Sergei Mironov's Just Russia, but they are clearly offended by him there. The Socialist-Revolutionaries have a feeling that Putin has cooled off towards them: back in the summer, recalls a source from Mironov’s entourage, at a meeting in the Federation Council, Putin sharply criticized all his proposals for a political structure: they say, this is not so, there is no money for this, and this is generally not true. Mironov still sees his party second in the country, another party member confirms, but the question hangs in the air: "Let's decide already - who are we?" This is not even a question, but rather a request to Putin and President Medvedev. Relations with Medvedev also did not improve, they admit in the party, there are no signals from him.

The Kremlin believes that there are too many leftists in the Duma today - two parties, but one is needed. Actually, instead of one of them, the right one was now needed. And neither the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, nor the “SR” are completely satisfied with the Kremlin managers: the Mironovites are unpopular, the Communists are not always and not completely loyal, especially on the ground. And what to do is not entirely clear: the closure of the "SR" - according to Newsweek, this option is being discussed among others - on the contrary, will strengthen the Communist Party. It is not so easy to attach the communists to the "SR". “They won't blossom to come to us,” sighs a source among the Mironovites. The Social Revolutionaries have another reason for great resentment - they did not allow the same farmers to join, although Mironov asked about it twice: in early 2007 - Putin and this summer - Medvedev, says a source in the Kremlin.

Now everyone is waiting for a political decision. But he is not there, and as a result, both the Mironovites and the Communists are nervous. Four years ago, Gennady Zyuganov almost lost his party - in the same way that power was changed in the Pensioners' Party and the DPR. A group of influential secretaries of the Central Committee rented a ship, held a parallel congress on board and elected a new leader, and the current leader of the Patriots of Russia party, businessman Gennady Semigin, led this process. Having burned themselves in milk, now the Zyuganovites are blowing on the water and waiting for a dirty trick before the November Party Congress. “There was a suggestion that the first secretary should not go as a delegate [to the congress]. But I said: you know, guys, at another time I would gladly give up my place to a person, roughly speaking, from the village, but in the current situation, wait for hell, ”says Alexander Novikov, first secretary of the Arkhangelsk regional committee.

Novikov worries so much in vain: in any case, the Kremlin official says, this is a question for next year - now the Communists and Socialist-Revolutionaries will not be touched. He predicts that the Kremlin will be cautious and at first, probably, will unite "SR" with the very "Patriots of Russia" Semigin. “[To] see how similar it would be to the Communist Party,” says a Kremlin official. Another option, in his words, is this: "Prick the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in parts and create a new party with" SR "." So far, with the exception of the exit from the Communist Party of several well-known deputies, the most powerful split among the Communists, according to the Secretary of the Central Committee Oleg Kulikov, happened in the Kemerovo region. There, in October, elections to the legislative assembly, and prominent communists, including the secretary of the city committee, went over to the side of the governor Aman Tuleyev. Local communists were left without a headquarters in Kemerovo, and in exchange for the second line in the electoral list, Novokuznetsk businessman Dmitry Kachadze provided them with premises - and the Communist Party was accused of sympathizing with the Georgian president, says Duma deputy Nina Ostanina.

Until now, the Kremlin has not been able to get rid of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, or at least its leader Zyuganov, but today, experts believe, it is possible: “Apple”] - no one noticed.” And the former communist deputy from the “SR” Ilya Ponomarev is completely sure that Zyuganov is “waiting for compensation” and it is enough for him to offer the post of ambassador to Cuba so that he abandons his party. But sociologists have been saying for a long time: the voters of the Communist Party are used to Zyuganov, he is like a party for them, and it is not at all a fact that they will follow a new leader and schismatics.

IN THE CENTER

So, of the small parties, it seems that only the LDPR of Vladimir Zhirinovsky can relax: it is in its place and does not interfere with anyone. Bringing Putin's party plan to fruition may not be so easy in practice (the main difficulty is with the left), but so far everything is going pretty smoothly. Not only the rightists are uniting, but the agrarians also quickly resigned themselves to the fact that they were included in the "United Russia". The issue was delicate, and the Kremlin feared the farmers from the APR who were always ready to make a fuss. That is why Putin spoke to them separately in Samara's Volga Cliff last Thursday after his meeting with United Russia.

And on Friday, the meeting of the APR plenum began with an hour's delay. “People are tired [after meeting with Putin],” one participant told Newsweek. They planned to involve one of its leaders - Vyacheslav Volodin or Oleg Morozov - in the task of persuading the party activists to disband and join the United Russia, but in the end they managed without them: there was no need to persuade the farmers. Of the dwarf parties, APR is the most significant. Still, in the last elections, the agrarians received more than 3%, and almost all of these 3%, technologists in the Kremlin came to the conclusion, the party took away from United Russia. It turned out that last December the inhabitants of the village voted mainly for the United Russia, and not for the communists, as before.

With the takeover of the APR, the expansion of United Russia is most likely over. It was huge and without farmers. Sources in ER and the Kremlin confirm that there are a lot of conflicts within the party. Chairman of the Supreme Council Boris Gryzlov is in a strong quarrel with his curator - the first deputy head of administration Vladislav Surkov, and local branches filled up the executive committee with complaints about their bosses in the regions. Now the executive committee has accumulated more than six hundred such complaints. As an example of party confusion, experts cite the elections in Nizhny Tagil, where five members of the party simultaneously compete for the post of mayor.

The party system in Russia has already been brought to its logical end, says political scientist Vinogradov - parties have become a meaningless institution, and the Duma's attractiveness has declined: there are no longer any benefits to being a deputy, except for the status itself. Where to look now for new bright faces for new party brands, experts are perplexed, and why slow down the current working system? “The one and a half party system humiliates Putin,” a Kremlin source offers one of the answers. According to him, Putin's report at the party congress in November will be dedicated to "the new role of the United Russia party in Russian society."