[jhgb]

You can create a political party in the US with exactly the same amount of effect on future politics that such an attempt would have in Russia. Compared to either of those, influencing the political scene by creating a new party is vastly easier in many other parts of the civilized world. For example, there are parties in my country's parliament that didn't even exist a decade ago. It would seem that the last time a non-Democrat, non-Republican party had a seat in US Congress was around 1950 or so - seventy years ago. That seems like quite the difference in political culture to me.