vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #161 / Social life / Reading article...

Former members of Vladivostok's City Soviet will meet on Feb. 28 to discuss adopting a city charter and scheduling local Duma elections. The only problem – the Soviet-era parliamentary body dissolved five years ago.

An estimated 35 former representatives of the original 200 will reconvene, even though President Boris Yeltsin signed the Soviet out of power in 1993.

Circumstances behind the Soviet's resurrection are unclear. The city prosecutor's office promised to investigate the case, but officials have little information. Local press reported that mayor Victor Cherepkov met with former members of the Soviet three weeks ago.

The body's legality is questionable, a fact admitted even by participants in the new Soviet. "The prosecutor could raise some doubts about the legality of reinstalling 'soviet power' in the city," said acting head of the Soviet, Yuri Avdeyev, in a press release. Avdeyev was deputy head of Soviet when it was disbanded in 1993.

"But there is no other was to cut the Gordian knot of the political deadlock [between Vladivostok and the krai]," he said.

Others were not convinced by Avdeyev's logic. "It's absolutely not serious," the head of the krai electoral commission, Sergei Knyazev, told reporters. "If the Soviet tries to come to some sort of decision, for example on the city charter or on the date of Duma elections, that would be an illegal grab for power."

According to Avdeyev, the City Soviet will not literally be reinstated. "The deputies met as people who are concerned about the state of the city," Avdeyev said. He was also vague about the deputies' actual power.

"You have to distinguish here between the authority of deputies and the authority of a body," he said. "The Soviet was dissolved but the authority of deputies is not void until a new body is elected."

So, even though the deputies will discuss the city charter and may support particular candidates to the Duma, they will not actually make any decision, Avdeyev said.