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Parliament The Kremlin has more support in parliament now than at any point since 1992, before relations soured between President Yeltsin and the leadership of the Supreme Soviet. The pro-Kremlin Unity bloc is the second largest in parliament, and together with the closely allied People's Deputy faction (formed out of deputies elected as independents) it outnumbers even the bloc of Communists and Agrarians. A deal with the Communists enabled Unity deputies to take the chairmanship of numerous key parliamentary committees, and has secured for now the good will of the Communist speaker of parliament, Gennady Seleznyov. The Russian constitution, anyway, deprives the Russian parliament of teeth to call government to account. If the parliament passes one vote of no confidence the authorities need not respond; if it passes two within three months, the president has the right to dissolve it. The Kremlin can also tempt deputies to conform by distributing perks, from apartments to fax machines. But … The Kremlin does not command an automatic majority in parliament - the level of support from deputies is likely to vary from one issue to the next. Relations between Unity and the Communist Party are inevitably fragile because of their very different positions on economic policy.

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