Agrarian Party of Russia
Founded	1993
Dissolved	2008
Preceded by	None
Merged into	United Russia
Ideology	Agrarianism, Socialism
Political position	Left
International affiliation	unknown
Official colours	Yellow

The Agrarian Party of Russia (Agrarnaya Partiya Rossii, Аграрная Партия России, АПР) was a left wing agrarian party in Russia. Founded in February of 1993, it was among the oldest political parties in modern Russia. While not officially communist, it displayed many similarities with the ideologies of collectivism and socialism, while at the same time promoting some private property for small farmers. On September 12, 2008 the leadership of the party stated that the party had decided to merge with the United Russia party; The merge was made official on October 10, 2008.^[1]

The party was founded and led by Mikhail Lapshin until 2004; the last leader of the party was Vladimir Plotnikov. In the State Duma election of December 1993, the Agrarian Party of Russia obtained 37 seats in the parliament and won 8% of the popular vote. Between 1994 and 1996 party member Ivan Rybkin was a speaker of the Russian parliament. In the State Duma elections in December 1995, the APR did not make it over the 5% threshold, obtaining only 3.78% of the vote. At the last legislative elections, 7 December 2003, the party won 3.6% of the popular vote and 3 out of 450 seats.

Agrarian party member Nikolay Kharitonov ran as a presidential candidate of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation in the 2004 Russian Presidential election and won 13.7% of the vote, placing second to Vladimir Putin.

In the 1990s the party deputies were usually allies of the Communist Party in the State Duma and advocated greater government support for the agricultural sector.

The party won 2.30% of votes in the 2007 elections, not breaking the 7% barrier, and thus capturing no seats in the Duma.

The Agrarian Party supported the candidacy of Dmitry Medvedev in the 2008 presidential election. It merged into United Russia.^[2]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official web site

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