last year many parties spent more than they received

The Central Election Commission published party reports on receipts and expenditures of funds for the fourth quarter of 2023, which allows us to summarize the results of the past year as a whole. It turned out that preparations for the presidential campaign, which started in December, did not in any way affect the budgets of even those parties that nominated their candidates—they remained practically at the level of the previous year. But even for current work, many had to “uncork” previously accumulated reserves.

The largest increase in income was demonstrated by United Russia (UR), which collected 8.8 billion rubles – this is 400 million more than in 2022, but still does not reach the figures of 2020, when the party’s budget reached record levels so far 9.6 billion rubles. The income of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Liberal Democratic Party (1.7 billion and 741 million rubles, respectively) remained at last year’s level, “A Just Russia – For Truth” (SRZP) was able to collect 719 million rubles. (66 million rubles more), and “New People” – 491 million rubles, only 2 million less than in 2022. At the same time, the budget of the non-parliamentary Yabloko increased by 13 million – from 175 million to 188 million rubles.

The main source of funds for parliamentary parties remains the federal budget, from which they receive annual payments based on the results of elections to the State Duma (152 rubles for each vote received from party lists). Even for United Russia, these payments (4.3 billion rubles) account for almost half of the revenues and are one of the main sources of income. For other parties, this figure is even higher, and the record holder last year was the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, in whose budget state payments amounted to 94% of all revenues. In second place are “New People” (92%), with the LDPR and SRZP this figure is slightly lower than 90%.

Three non-parliamentary parties – the Russian All-People’s Union (ROS), the For Justice Party and the Direct Democracy Party – showed a zero balance, that is, not a single ruble passed through their accounts for the year. At the same time, at the end of 2023, ROS even nominated its chairman Sergei Baburin for president, and he claimed that he had collected 120 thousand signatures, however, immediately after submitting them to the CEC, he withdrew his candidacy.

As follows from the reports, funds were transferred to the election funds of their presidential candidates by “New People” (10 million rubles, Vladislav Davankov indicated them in his first financial report) and the LDPR (30 million rubles). However, in the financial report of Leonid Slutsky, references to There was no money coming from the party, but the LDPR press service assured Kommersant that they actually transferred this money at the start of the campaign, on December 28. At the same time, the LDPR is the only party that regularly transferred funds to various election funds: the largest payments (372 million rubles, or 51% of total revenues for the year) were made in the third quarter of last year, at the final stage of regional elections. The SRZP regional campaign cost 52 million rubles, Yabloko – 13 million rubles, and New People limited itself to 1.2 million rubles.

However, in the structure of parties’ expenses traditionally the leading expenses are not on elections, but on the maintenance of their own infrastructure: regional branches and governing bodies. EP spent 5.4 billion rubles last year. to the regions (61% of the budget and 2 billion more than a year earlier, but then the party transferred 1.3 billion to election funds) and 1.3 billion rubles. (14%) to governing bodies. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation allocated 64% of the budget (1.2 billion rubles) for the maintenance of branches and a little more than 10% (186 million rubles) for management. But local LDPR cells received 19% of the budget (142 million rubles), while 60% of the collected funds (445 million) were spent on maintaining the leadership. SRZP divided revenues almost equally: 27% (198 million rubles) for the central office and 29% (205 million rubles) for the regions. Finally, from New People, the regions received the lion’s share of all funds – 78% (425 million rubles), while they spent only 13% on the apparatus.

Agitation and propaganda remain one of the leading expense items for most parties: United Russia spent 1.3 billion rubles on this last year. (slightly less than in 2022) and another 1.5 billion for public events (a third more than a year earlier). The Communist Party of the Russian Federation invested 112 million rubles. in campaigning and another 183 million in publishing activities, but the communists spent only 12 million rubles on public events, and all expenses occurred in the last quarter. The LDPR (9 million rubles) and Yabloko (928 thousand) also saved on public events, but SRZP had the most modest budget for this item – only 177 thousand rubles. In addition, EP spent 6.9 million rubles. for international activities, and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and SRZP were engaged in charity work (214 million and 102 million rubles, respectively).

At the same time, it turned out that almost all parties (except United Russia) spent more in 2023 than they received—this became possible thanks to account balances accumulated over the previous year. The largest “cash gap” was with the LDPR – it spent 112 million rubles. more than I collected. “New People” had a deficit of 52 million rubles, and SR — 12 million rubles.

Anastasia Kornya, Grigory Leiba