The First Deputy Head of the Yabloko faction in the State Duma, Sergei Ivanenko, thinks that the Unity party will virtually devour the Fatherland movement in the case of a merger of these two organisations.

On April 12, 2001the leader of the Fatherland movement Yuri Luzhkov (Ed.: also the present Mayor of Moscow) and the leader of the Unity party Sergei Shoigu announced at their joint press-conference their intention to merge the two organisations into a single party.

Politically, ideologically and organisationally we should speak of the dissolution of the Fatherland into Unity, rather than a merger of the parties, said Ivanenko in an interview with journalists on April 12.

According to Ivanenko, the past year demonstrated that Fatherland suffered a crushing political defeat. Ivanenko also said that today the differences between the Fatherland and the Unity are not as conspicuous as before.

The main difference between the two political forces was that Unity joined together the “top bureaucracy” and Fatherland the regional bureaucracy. “Today it [bureaucracy] consolidated,” added Ivanenko.

According to Ivanenko, considerable changes in the Duma can be expected in view of the declaration of the leadership of Unity and the Fatherland to merge.

Ivanenko also said that some of the deputies from the Fatherland-All Russia faction may transfer to other factions, such as Yabloko, the Union of Right-Wing Forces and the CPRF, but that nobody would transfer to the Unity faction. “It is unlikely that all of them will agree to simply become voting buttons,” noted Ivanenko.

He also assessed the declaration of the forthcoming merger of Unity and Fatherland as a victory for the Kremlin, which had succeeded in the goal of increasing its control over theDuma.

Based on Interfax reports.