Third force, in relation to the 1996 Russian presidential election, refers to the possibility of a center-left third party voting bloc being formed in order to create a viable alternative to Boris Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov.
[1] Speculation of a third force largely centered on a potential united bloc led by Alexander Lebed, Grigory Yavlinsky and Svyatoslav Fyodorov.
[2] At the time, Sergei Kovalev, a former Yeltsin ally who had recently sided as a strong critic of the president, remarked that Yavlkinsky's proposal for a coalition with Congress of Russian Communities was a risky proposition.
[2] At the same time, Ella Pamfilova (Duma deputy and the head of the Common Cause bloc) sought to convene a congress of all rightist, right-of-center and centrist parties and movements in order to nominate a united democratic candidate for president.
[2] The central issue that arose in negotiations for forming a third-force coalition between Lebed, Yavlinsky, and Fyodorov was determining which two would withdraw from the race to support the other.
[3] Proponents of a third force coalition discussed a number of means of deciding this, including holding a primary election or selecting the candidate with the highest public opinion ratings.
[citation needed] On March 15, Federov announced that he had conducted high-level discussions with both Lebed and Yavlinsky about forming a coalition.
He promised that they would, in the near future, be releasing a joint statement about, "the Brezhnev-Stalinist socialism of the Communists and the wild west capitalism of Yeltsin."
[4] At the start of March, after three-party negotiations had stalled, Lebed and Fyodorov proceeded without Yavlinsky with a tentative agreement to work alongside Alexander Rutskoy and Stanislav Govorukhin to form a third force coalition.
[1][5][6][7] Upon entering the race in early March, Mikhail Gorbechev proclaimed that, despite polls showing he had immense unpopularity, he would be able to win as the leader of a democratic coalition.
[8] Nevertheless, later in March, after announcing that he had collected the required signatures to officially register as a candidate, Gorbachev reiterated the need for voters to have a third option to serve as an alternative to Yeltsin and Zyuganov, and refused to rule-out forming a coalition with Fydorov or Yavilinsky.
[4] By April 1996, opinion polls had placed Boris Yeltsin and Gennady Zyuganov ahead of the rest of the candidates running, essentially making the election a two-person race.
[9] Media oligarch and Yeltsin-ally Berezovsky subsequently worked to provide favorable coverage of Lebed in order to build-up his candidacy.