Left or right? The CPRF and the problem of democratic consolidation in Russia

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is the largest of the successor organizations to the CPSU and, paradoxically, one of the leading conservative parties. The party's organizational development reflects the larger problem of party formation in Russia but has distinctive features of its own. The CPRF's programmatic evolution is symptomatic of the larger issue of post‐communist ideological confusion. Finally, the CPRF's contribution to the consolidation of Russian parliamentarianism in particular and the political system in general is ambivalent.