John T. Ishiyama, "Red Phoenix?: The Communist Party in Post-Soviet Russian Politics," Party Politics , 2 (April, 1996), 147-175.

First Paragraph:
Since 1991 a growing body of literature has emerged on the subject of political parties in the Russian Federation. By and large, these works have generally been skeptical about the utility of western theories of party development in explaining post-Soviet party politics. This skepticism is fed by observations that the 'parties' in post-Soviet politics remain largely groups of notables who are politically weak and lack a firm social base (Evans and Whitfield, 1993). Others have pointed to the absence of stable social interests capable of supporting party politics (Evans and Whitefield, 1993; White et al., 1993; Salmin et al., 1994; McAllister and White, 1995), or the fact that the very concepts of 'party' and 'responsible opposition' are alien to Russian political leaders (Sakwa, 1993). Further, the emergence of a stable, responsible opposition in Russia, a prerequisite for structured party politics, is also seen as quite unlikely (Evans and Whitefield, 1993).

Figures and Tables:
Table 1: Occupational data for affiliated persons by party.
Table 2: Patterns derived from occupational data, appearance on party list, and party membership.
Table 3: OFFSEEK scaling results, for all individuals.
Table 4: OFFSEEK scaling results, for top 35 names on party list.
Table 5: Coefficient estimates for results of probit procedure by party dependent variable cand.
Table 6: Difference of means test for OFFSEEK values for leadership core and district nominees by party.

Last Paragraph:
Theoretically, the analysis has demonstrated the utility of western-based organization theory to explain party behavior in Russia. As an alternative to 'grand theory', organization theory offers the opportunity to account for the behavior of individual parties, within the constraints imposed by the environment of democratic transition. Although this does not yield the same overall predictions offered by such grand theories, it is surely, in the short run, far more useful. It offers insight into how internal constraints affect the behavior of individual parties and hence their potential as forces promoting further democratization. Thus it assists in explaining how key actors at crucial moments can affect the emergence of stable or unstable party politics and, consequently, stable or unstable trajectories of democratization.