The Party of Life, a minor Kremlin-loyal party led by the upper house of parliament's speaker, and Rodina (Motherland), which many observers said was set up in 2003 to take away potential Communist votes, will seek to consolidate left-leaning political forces, the leaders told journalists at a news conference.
"We have decided to pool the efforts of the two parties: the Party of Life and Rodina," Rodina boss Alexander Babakov told a joint news conference with Party of Life leader Sergei Mironov. "Today, we have only announced the decision without specifying the terms for the unification since they will take a long time to elaborate."
He said the leaders were open to negotiations with other political forces and claimed the two parties had a combined membership of about 300,000.
Sergei Mironov said the idea was not to create an electoral bloc but a new left-leaning party.
"Needless to say, we will focus primarily on [the 2007] State Duma elections, and these elections will be contested by a new party that, as we hope, will unite leftist constructive forces," he said.
Although Rodina stormed to an unexpected 9% of the vote in 2003 on the back of a populist election campaign headed by then leaders Sergei Glazyev and Dmitry Rogozin that targeted inequality created by the oligarch class, it has since courted controversy with local advertisements that led to accusations of racism.
The Party of Life failed to win the 5% of the vote in 2003 needed to take up seats in the Duma - even though it ran in harness with a bloc led by the then Duma speaker, Gennady Seleznyov - and has had little impact on the political scene.
And a senior Communist Party official reacted skeptically Tuesday to the parties' election chances of clearing the new 7% election hurdle.
"I am not convinced that this process [of unification] will produce any positive results for them," Ivan Melnikov said. "But even if they merge, I do not think that they will have any chance of overcoming the 7% barrier."
"I believe they will attempt to work the leftist field, but they will not make it because by uniting they are actually weakening their positions even more," he said.
