rodina

Rodina (Russian родина) is a transliteration of a generic Russian word meaning place of birth. When capitalized, it's a term used to describe the whole country, particularly in political speech. Russian language assigns arbitrary genders to nouns. The word rodina is feminine and thus usually translated to English as motherland as opposed to otchizna - fatherland.

Rodina is the name for one of the four parties that controls seats in the Russian legislature. It is a coalition of 30 national-socialist groups that was established by Dmitri Rogozin, Sergei Glazyev, and others in August of 2003. Many accuse Rogozin and Glazyev of establishing the party on behalf of the Kremlin to siphon power from the Communist Party. In the 2003 Duma elections, Rodina managed to win 9.2 percent of the vote or 37 of the 450 seats in the Duma. Analysts contend that most of these voters had become disillusioned with the Communist Party after it accepted bribes from leading Russian oligarchs. However, following allegations brought by the Communist Party and ousted reform-oriented liberal parties such as the Union of Right Forces and Yabloko that Putin's United Russia coalition had manipulated elections to insure a favorable outcome, Rodina declined to officially choose its own presidential candidate for the 14 March, 2004 elections. This created a schizm in Rodina; Glazyev insisted on running for President under the banner of an officially separate Rodina party. Rogozin managed to consolidate the support and defeat Glazyev.

Rodina

See also