Parties in a coma
13.05.2024
This publication is a reprint of the article by Riddle in which journalist Andrey Pertsev explores the bleak prospects of the Russian systemic opposition. To access the original text, follow this link.
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The results of the presidential campaign in Russia raise questions about the future of the country’s party system in its current form. For the first time in recent Russian political history, none of the parliamentary candidates won more than 5 percent of the vote (at least, not according to official results). This means that the party machinery for mobilizing core supporters is virtually inoperative. For a while, the Kremlin will keep it «on life support» by allocating quotas to parties in federal and regional parliaments. But if Putin’s regime is preserved, the current party system will inevitably be transformed into something new. It could be replaced by a quasi-two-party structure with a dominant party of power and a left party based on the remnants of the Communist party and Just Russia. The scenario of a single pro-Putin bloc with the United Russia party in the center and niche pseudo-parties on the periphery is also likely.
HISTORY OF GOVERNANCE
The Russian party system has long been by and large controlled by the Kremlin. As early as the late 1990s, the political bloc of the Presidential Administration, which at the time was headed by Vladislav Surkov, influenced and even created decision-making processes in the systemic parties. For example, the Just Russia party was born in the mid-2000s as an artificially grown «social-democratic» project, a brain child of the presidential administration. «Rodina» appeared around the same time as a controllable national-patriotic alternative to the communists (CPRF). In 2020, with the help of the Administration’s political bloc, the «New People» party was created to cater to the «urban electorate». The «old» parties have long been ready to make concessions and deals with the presidential administration. As early as the 1990s, Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic party (LDPR) voted in favor of government initiatives such as the budget plan or a new prime minister appointment.
As opposed to LDPR, the CPRF was able to disagree with the Kremlin, but on the most sensitive issues it always met Kremlin's demands. In the 2004 presidential election, which paved the way for the formation of the so-called vertical of power, the Communist Party did not nominate its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, as a presidential candidate, but instead chose Nikolai Kharitonov (previously a member of the Agrarian party, the very same Kharitonov who ran in 2024 presidential election). The presidential administration wanted to show the public that there was no alternative to Putin and that a very high percentage of voters supported him. At the time, the authorities did not do a good job in rigging the election results, so the president needed the weakest possible sparring partners. The Kremlin was prepared to tolerate the Communists’ refusal to support the draft budget or the prime ministerial candidates because, thanks to the «United Russia» majority in the State Duma and Zhirinovsky’s malleability, the Communist Party’s votes had no impact on the Duma vote. Against this background, the presidential administration still tried to weaken the CPRF by making it more pliable, trying to split it and employing a wide range of spoiler tools against the party («Communists of Russia», the Party of Pensioners, etc.).
In 2011, Just Russia and CPRF sought to capitalize on the all-round wave of protests and briefly got out of control. They supported the Bolotnaya and Sakharov protests. High-profile representatives of the Communists and the Just Russia party spoke at these rallies, addressing the crowd. But in 2012, after Putin won the next election, the Kremlin began to tighten the screws and the systemic opposition gave up. MPs started voting in favor of prohibitive, repressive laws, and in return the parties received gubernatorial posts for candidates approved by the Presidential Administration. Later they were also allowed to win in single-mandate districts for the 2016 and 2021 Duma elections. The start of the full-scale invasion further strengthened the loyalty of the parliamentary opposition to the Kremlin. The CPRF, LDPR and Just Russia all enthusiastically supported the war. The New People party tries to avoid that subject without openly criticizing Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, just as they do not criticize any other major initiatives undertaken by the government. Representatives of the systemic opposition have not criticized Putin for quite a long time, and since recently they have also refrained from criticism of the key government officials.
LOSING ONE'S FACE
With their growing loyalty to the Kremlin, Russian systemic opposition parties are naturally losing their voters' support. Unsurprisingly, their electorate struggles to understand why they should keep voting for their former favorites while the latter constantly pledging allegiance to Putin and endorsing his policies. The so-called «protest electorate», who did not support Putin’s regime, used to vote for the Communists as a kind of sublimation of the abolished «none of the above» ballot option, but they no longer do so. Such voters are mostly in favor of ending the war and moving on to peace talks, and they simply cannot support a militant Communist Party.
Just Russia vacillated between social democracy and ultra-patriotism, eventually losing the moderate left-wing voters it had long catered to. The LDPR has lost its main asset — its founder and leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky died in 2022. The Liberal Democrats have never had a clear ideology or party line to begin with: the party’s popularity was based on Zhirinovsky’s populist charisma. The party’s new leader, Leonid Slutsky, appointed from above by the presidential administration, can be best described as an anti-Zhirinovsky. Slutsky has no rhetorical or political talents and he is not adept at navigating the murky depths of court intrigue. The new leader’s entourage could not come up with a new party ideology. As a result, Zhirinovsky’s name remains the main element of the LDPR’s campaign in the regions and even after his death. Of course, the party will not be able to capitalize on the legacy of its passed-away founder for too long. The New People party was able to promote itself thanks to the voters’ demand for new faces, but in four years the party has not been able to outline a clear ideological message. The party tries to speak from moderate positions but does not dare to cross the red lines drawn by the Kremlin.
The utter loss or lack of face is the result of both parties’ own malleability, their eagerness to compromise and please the Kremlin, and the influence of the Presidential Administration. For example, nationalities matters have always been a taboo in election campaigning. One could come up with very abstract slogans (such as the LDPR’s «We are for the poor, we are for the Russians»), but nothing more than that. The same general platitudes were usually spoken by representatives of the authorities. In the early 2000s, leadership of the Rodina party tried to promote the nationalist agenda at its own risk, but quickly paid the price: the party was dismantled and merged with Just Russia. Targeted criticism of Putin and his inner circle is yet another taboo. With the beginning of the full-scale invasion, another taboo emerged: criticism of the war. Wider criticism of the government and the top officials is now also becoming a taboo. In these conditions, the systemic parties willing to remain part of the system have no way of showing their true political «face». The specific agenda promoted by the Communists is their orientation towards Stalinism, but it tends to repel large swaths of the pro-communist electorate. This «Stalinist» identity chosen by the Communist party is convenient for the Presidential Administration.
The loss of face, of distict political identity and the consequent loss of voters is primarily the fault of the parties themselves and their leadership.
GLASS CEILING
In many respects, the human resources policy of the systemic parliamentary parties copies the human resources policy of Putin’s power vertical. The leaders of the CPRF, LDPR and Just Russia seek to undermine competing charismatic figures within their parties, preventing internal competition and change of leadership. For Gennady Zyuganov, Sergei Mironov and the late Vladimir Zhirinovsky, personal power and personal interests have always been more important than the competitiveness and future of the political structures they headed for so many years. Within the CPRF, charismatic members have always been pushed away from federal leadership positions because they posed a threat to the faceless Soviet-era apparatchiks at the top. The CPRF also has been fighting against its active regional party branches headed by charismatic leaders.
For instance, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the Communists orchestrated a real purge of their own St. Petersburg City Committee and the Moscow Committee, the latter headed by a former military officer and scientist Vladimir Ulas. Ulas tried to cooperate with various political forces, including non-systemic ones, and he managed to seriously improve the Communist Party’s standing in Moscow. In the aftermath of the purge, the St Petersburg and Moscow branches lost their charismatic leaders and joined the general family of «grey, faceless obkoms». Ironically, it was Valery Rashkin who spearheaded these purges - a State Duma deputy from Saratov city, whom many Communists regarded as an old Soviet apparatchik, extremely loyal to Gennady Zyuganov. In the 2020s, Rashkin himself, who by then had gained political capital and was an outstanding Moscow politician, especially against the background of other faceless CPRF politicians, became subjected to a purge.
Sergei Mironov, the leader of Just Russia, ran a conglomerate of fairly bright regional politicians but prevented any of them from becoming strong enough to lead the party. Mironov was able to do this because he and Putin go back a long way, to the old days in the St Petersburg mayor’s office and the city legislature. Vladimir Zhirinovsky deliberately built the party apparatus on the principle of personal loyalty, handpicking young people whom he personally liked. The so-called «Zhirinovsky's falcons» had no ambitions of their own and were always satisfied with the comfortable jobs as MPs or members of the party apparatus. Heads of regional branches were quite happy with LDPR’s franchise model and had no ambitions to lead the party.
Paradoxically, the New People‘s human resources policy is somewhat reminiscent of the LDPR in Zhirinovsky’s time. The party’s MPs were personal acquaintances of the party leader Alexey Nechayev, graduates of his «Captains» training program for young businessmen, and ‘franchisees’ from the regions with connections to local authorities. Most of the New People's regional branches are run by these ‘captains’, alumni of Nechayev’s educational project. The exception that proves the rule is the former mayor of Yakutsk, Sardana Avksentyeva, the most prominent figure in the New People party. In the four years of the New People's existence, no bright figures similar to Avksentyeva have appeared in the party’s ranks.
Predictably, such a human resources policy has led to a severe shortage of cadres within the parliamentary parties who could act as party ambassadors at the federal and regional levels and command respect. Naturally, this also leads to the decreasing popularity of the systemic opposition.
THE POLICY OF THE PRESIDENTIAL ADMINISTRATION
The Presidential Administration is interested in preserving some more or less predictable systemic parties because it has no other interface for dealing with the discontent. On the one hand, the Kremlin interfered in the internal work of the parliamentary parties when the situation demanded it. On the other hand, it did not react in any way to the degeneration of the human resources policies within the parties. At a certain point, this was advantageous for the vertical of power: the political bloc was used to interact with the same familiar figures who posed no threat to Putin. In the event of a real intra-party struggle, alternatives to the incumbent president could emerge within the systemic forces. The parties’ overarching loyalty to the Kremlin and their willingness to respect all the new taboos also worked in Kremlin’s favor. The Presidential Administration could set new records for Putin and the ruling United Russia party in terms of seats won in the parliament and official percentages of votes cast in their support. The purges in the regional branches of the systemic parties also helped the power vertical: they eliminated the threat of potential rivals to Kremlin governors and United Russia mayors.
In this form, the machinery of «managed democracy» could only further degenerate. The abolition of mayoral elections and the strict regulation of the so-called ‘municipal filter’ in gubernatorial elections further exacerbated this deterioration. At some point, charismatic figures within the systemic parties popular with the local public could still move to official positions and retain their influence on the electorate (this is what happened, for example, with the Communist Anatoly Lokot’, a long-time mayor of Novosibirsk, or Sergei Levchenko, the former governor of Irkutsk from the CPRF, not to mention the former governor of the Khabarovsk Krai from the LDPR, Sergei Furgal). But this option is off the table now. The leadership of the systemic opposition parties is not only reluctant to offer prized positions to the ambitious members of these parties or those who would like to join their ranks. It is simply no longer in a position to do so.
The Presidential Administration needs this quasi-party system and the illusion of at least some democracy. These are the controlled channels for letting off steam, without which the potential protest can spin out of control. Moreover, the very structure of the controlled multi-party machine is familiar to Putin, who in his old age does not like to change habits and wants to operate within the familiar political landscapes around him. The systemic opposition is part of that landscape. Therefore, the presidential administration will try to preserve this degraded system in at least some form.
TWO PATHS
No doubt that the systemic parliamentary opposition is going to experience even more losses. Just Russia has already fallen below the 5% rating needed to secure seats in the State Duma and its popularity is unlikely to grow. The party pushes away charismatic moderate regional politicians, such as Oleg Shein, and is beginning to reject the «ultra-patriots» artificially transplanted to its soil (via merging with "Patriots of Russia" and "For Truth" in 2020), such as Zakhar Prilepin. Sergei Mironov’s party offers its potential voters nothing but support for the war. The problem is, he gets to share this pro-war electorate with the much more popular United Russia, while the pro-war rhetoric does nothing but repel protest voters. It is likely that in the foreseeable future Sergei Mironov, leader of Just Russia, will take up a post in the Federation Council as a honorable retirement, while the prominent members of his party will scatter to other parties.
The future of the LDPR also looks bleak: it will be even more difficult to ride on Zhirinovsky’s charisma in the 2026 Duma elections. It is unlikely that within the next two years, the party (the Presidential Administration that closely monitors it) will be able to find a new, promising image and ideology as well as a new leader equipped with public policy skills. Breaking the 5 percent barrier will be almost impossible for the Liberal Democrats, although the Presidential Administration may «gift» the LDPR a few extra percent to at least keep it in the new parliament. Either way, in the next couple of years Zhirinovsky’s party will cease to exist as a significant political actor.
The CPRF, likewise, will soon face a leadership problem: Gennady Zyuganov is about to turn 80 this year and will no longer be able to campaign as actively as before. Most likely, the Communist Party will be led by its first deputy chairman, Yuri Afonin, who is unlikely to inspire even the most devoted CPRF voters. But there are simply no politicians in the Communist Party who are both promising and loyal to the Kremlin and who could become an alternative to Afonin. As a result, the CPRF, like the LDPR, will soon be close to the 5% threshold to the Duma. The popularity of New People will also fluctuate around these percentages - it is unlikely that the party’s leadership will suddenly turn into charismatic figures and attract popular attention. In the end, it may well turn out that for objective reasons (both in terms of ratings among loyalists and the use of administrative resources) only the United Russia party will be able to enter the State Duma. Those Russians who do not support it will simply have no alternative to vote for. A significant part of the society will lose its parliamentary representation. People will be left with only one option — to take to the streets, which is likely to happen in these circumstances. The Presidential Administration will try to avoid this scenario at all costs, so we can expect a redesign of Russia’s party system.
One of the two possible ways forward is to create a manageable two-party system, with a broad party of power, including moderate figures from New People, on one side, and a «party of the past» based on the Communist Party with Afonin at the helm (thoroughly controlled by the political bloc), on the other. The public will be given the illusion of a struggle between these two forces. This option is quite risky for the regime: in times of crisis, the «second» party can be used by disgruntled elite groups as a tool to seize power. This second party itself may also feel its strength and oppose the government at least on some matters.
The second option is to turn the State Duma into a sort of Civic Chamber. Quotas for Civic Chamber membership are allocated artificially by the authorities themselves based on the Kremlin’s ideas about popular social movements (however, the genuinely popular ones have long been substituted by the regime-loyal movements). The Presidential Administration will support the functioning of this artificial organism by issuing quotas for the distribution of seats in it. This quota can follow two models. The Kremlin applied the first one in the annexed territories, where it gave parliamentary parties the percentages required to overcome the entry threshold and allocated one seat to each of them. But this scheme looks too artificial and is fraught with a complete loss of any sense of legitimacy and, consequently, may trigger public protests.
A softer version of the quota system will be used in the Moscow City Duma elections - its future members will only be elected in single-mandate districts, and the mayor’s office will give each system party a district where they are guaranteed to win. This scenario ensures some degree of representation without giving an impression of manipulated numbers. To proceed with this scenario, the regime will have to change the scheme for forming the State Duma, and there is less and less time to do so. However, the Kremlin will not be able to avoid redesigning the system as a whole: the mechanism is too worn out to preserve it as it is.
By Andrey Pertsev, Journalist and Meduza Special Correspondent
