Democratic Party of Russia

The Democratic Party of Russia or DPR (, Demokraticheskaya Partiya Rossii) is a conservative Russian political party that was founded in 1990. Under the leadership of Andrey Bogdanov, the party advocated the entry of Russia into the European Union. In 2008, the party merged with several others to form the Right Cause. It was re-established as a party and officially registered again in 2012. History The Democratic Party of Russia was founded by Nikolay Travkin. Other early leaders included Stanislav Govorukhin and Sergey Glazyev. In the 1990s it was a prominent democratically oriented party holding seats in the first State Duma and was a member of the Democratic Russia coalition. After the coup in 1991, the party evolved from liberal anticommunism to centrism (1992–1993) and later to moderate Russian nationalism (1994–1995). In 1991, the Democratic Party differed from other liberal/democratic organizations with its 'demopatriotic' stance (similar to Aksyuchits' Christian-Democratic Party and Astafyev's Constitutional Democrats). The Democratic Party was opposed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and criticised Latvia's and Estonia's policies towards their Russian-speaking minorities. After the signing of the Belovezhye treaty, the DP organized a number of demonstrations against the treaty. In the 1993 parliamentary elections in Russia, the party received 5.52% of the Proportional Representation ballot vote (2,969,533 votes) as well as 2.1% (1,094,066 votes) of votes on individual district ballots. This translated into 14 and 7 seats, respectively, for a total of 21 seats in the 450-seat Duma.