What are the opportunities for the opposition in Russian elections?

This analysis is a continuation of the first article by Alexei Gilev, What Are the Specifics of Russian Parliamentarism, which explores the evolution of the Russian parliamentary system.

In this article, the author explains, using specific examples, why Russian authorities are confident that they can “win” in any election but at the same time continue to put pressure on undesirable candidates, civil society activists and independent election observers.

Kremlin Is Restless Before the Elections. Why?

In August 2023, the press secretary of Russian President Dmitry Peskov made a loud statement in an article in The New York Times. He bemoaned that the presidential elections were costly, but even now, in his opinion, it was obvious that Vladimir Putin would win. In later interviews, Peskov denied that he had called the presidential elections in Russia “not really a democracy.” Defending the democratic nature of the elections, Peskov cited that Putin himself called the elections a democracy, and also noted that Putin himself had decided to hold them. It seems that Peskov’s reasoning about the redundancy of elections and references to the final authority of the president’s words and his good will to participate in the elections are even more self-exposing than the awkward wording “not really a democracy.”

However, 11 days after Peskov talked about the unnecessariness of the elections, Grigory Melkonyants, one of the leaders of the Golos election monitoring association, was arrested. Isn’t there a contradiction in the fact that the Russian political elites are confident in the outcome of the elections, while Russian election observers are faced with yet another wave of repressions? As a matter of fact, there is no contradiction here.

As I wrote in the first article of this series, Russian regime of electoral authoritarianism has an arsenal to prevent the victory of undesirable candidates. However, even the exclusion of the most principled and dangerous oppositionists from the elections cannot assuage the authorities. After all, any elections in Russia inevitably convey clear messages about the level of support for the authorities. Moreover, opponents of the regime will catch this signal, even if candidates who adhere to the framework of permitted opposition win. More than that, even if the government candidates formally win, gross and large-scale violations will indicate real weakness, thus, it is not surprising that the authorities want to interfere with independent observation.

Elections as a Battle with Magical Transformations

The confrontation between the opposition and the incumbent authorities in conditions of electoral authoritarianism reminds me of a well-known fairy tale about a duel between two wizards, when one turns into a rabbit, so his nemesis turns into a fox, then the response to this is turning into a hunter, and so on. Thus, the authorities can legislate new rules that hinder their opponents and then violate these rules scot-free when it is necessary to win. In such circumstances, the opposition has to come up with symmetrical responses and new creative tactics in campaigning, documenting violations and protesting against the stolen elections. In 2020, in Belarus, neighboring Russia, President Alexander Lukashenko had an unlimited arsenal of tactics to hold on to power, including the option of imprisoning any opponent and rewriting election results, however, the opposition got very close to using its chance; the elections led to a revolutionary situation, when at some point Lukashenko’s power hovered in the air.

In the Russian history of the electoral confrontation between the government and the opposition, the stakes have never been as high as in Belarus in 2020. But since the resounding public protest of 2011-2012, elections have become a site for positional confrontation between the regime and its opponents. The authorities are expanding their stockpile, from powerful tools such as the introduction of unaccountable online voting to regular tiny unnoticeable innovations. For example, in 2023, they limited observation of the vote count for journalists and introduced a minimum limit on donation amount. One can't help explaining the latter other than by a desire to prevent crowdfunding of independent candidates amongst non-wealthy citizens.

What can opponents of the Russian government achieve in the face of constantly introduced obstacles? The answer will depend on the type and level of the elections. Below I will give examples of elections where opponents of the government managed to win actually and morally.

Executive Elections: High Stakes, Rare Successes

It is worth starting with the elections of the executive branch, which, due to the constitutional tradition of the new Russia, dominates at any level. It must be admitted that the most important elections, presidential ones, have always been held according to the authorities’ script, even during the difficult competitive period, like in 1996 and 2000. The authorities primarily used their dominance in the media and tactically engaged dummy candidates (‘spoilers’ – read here about this election tactics) to intercept and isolate certain groups of the undecided electorate. Presidential elections brought nothing but disappointment to the opposition. During the electoral-authoritarian period, the closest to outwitting the system was Aleksey Navalny, who on the eve of the 2018 elections fostered a striking campaign, but was not registered by the Election Commission.

Regional governors appear the most important link in the regime, so with the return of gubernatorial elections in 2012, the authorities hedged their bets by introducing the so-called ‘municipal filter’. Formally, this meant that the gubernatorial candidate must secure the backing of a certain percentage of municipal deputies in the region. But it actually made it possible to block the nomination of any unacceptable candidate. The only case where a non-systemic opposition was accepted to take part in regional elections was Moscow mayoral elections in 2013, where the authorities hoped to demonstratively crush Navalny, but he reached the second place, signaling his high electoral potential.

In practice, the ‘municipal filter’ can be deployed not only against non-systemic opponents but also against popular politicians associated with parliamentary parties. In 2014, an experienced local communist, Sergei Levchenko, was elected as governor of the Irkutsk region. After this, governors were usually protected from the most powerful and recognizable opponents, who were either offered other posts or simply refused registration through the municipal filter. In 2018, this did not save the government from failure. Then, against the background of an extremely unpopular reform presuming a substantial increase in the retirement age, protest voting brought to power candidates without any particular opposition charisma in three regions at once. The subsequent strategies of the authorities in relation to them show the range of opportunities of the authoritarian regime. One of the governors quietly moved to a deputy position in the Duma, another one was being slighted and media-attacked by the Kremlin throughout his governance, and finally, the third, Khabarovsk governor Sergei Furgal, showed to be a popular and responsive leader, and then was arrested and sentenced to 22 years.

Another example is a gubernatorial election in the Primorsky region in 2018 that was on the verge of failure for the Kremlin. This case also illustrates the potential of the government's tactical arsenal to eliminate an electoral threat. Communist Andrei Ishchenko was confidently beating the government candidate during the counting of votes when at the very last polling stations he unexpectedly received abnormally low results and lost. The dubiousness of such an outcome was obvious; the election commission did not recount the results, but called new elections. The communists did not propose Ishchenko for runoff; he nominated himself individually but did not pass the ‘municipal filter’. As a result, over the course of several years, Ishchenko went from almost being the governor of one of the most important regions for Russian diplomacy to a political outcast; in the end, he was arrested and convicted.

To sum it all up, gubernatorial elections can indeed send a powerful signal about the weakness of the government, but for opposition candidates the possibility of success is associated with individual risks. The government has made sure that gubernatorial elections are not regarded as a window of opportunity for an ambitious opposition politician. Incumbent governors face only token resistance from opponents and usually win steadily.

Elections of municipal leaders brought several encouraging victories to the opposition in the early 2010s, for example in large cities such as Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Yaroslavl and Petrozavodsk. The main response of the authorities was the final abolition of mayoral elections in almost all regions. In relation to opposition mayors, the authorities usually used predictable tactics, co-opting with one hand and imprisoning with the other. In the second half of the 2010s, the effect of the most striking success of an independent candidate, Sardana Avksentyeva in Yakutsk, was blurred by demonstrably benevolent co-optation.

Elections to the State Duma as the Government's Main Challenge

Elections of deputies at different levels leave more opportunities for the success of the opposition and the failure of the government. Even the Duma elections are indicative in this sense. On the one hand, since the 2003 elections, the authorities have been somehow achieving acceptable results. On the other hand, the elections of 2011 and 2021, with the unconvincing victory of United Russia and obvious fraud, created political turbulence and clearly demonstrated protest sentiments in society. The falsifications recorded by thousands of observers in the 2011 elections provoked a large wave of protests, giving impetus to the growth of self-awareness and organizational building among opponents of the regime in Russian society.

During the 2021 elections, a vivid presentation of the Smart Voting tactics developed by Navalny’s team struck on the national level. The Smart Voting scheme involved voting for the strongest contender of the candidate whom the authorities considered the expected winner and identifying such opponents on the basis of their own analytics. As a result, Smart Voting candidates won two dozen districts across Russia and came close to winning most of the districts in Moscow, where authorities eventually corrected the results owing to online voting which was inaccessible to observers' monitoring. Thus, the authorities still achieved the passage of their candidates, but only at the cost of scandalous and dubious online voting; as a result, the scandal became one of the conspicuous accounts of the 2021 Duma elections.

It is noteworthy that the relative achievements of parliamentary parties in confrontation with the authorities inspired the most consistent opponents of the Putin regime among protest citizens, who felt they were contributing to the protest vote. For their part, parliamentary politicians of an acceptable level of opposition started testing the waters and more actively interacted with the protest mass audience, whose presence was palpable at polling stations and on the streets. In both cases, the authorities quickly managed to move to reaction, but it was the federal Duma elections that most clearly demonstrated the potential for all-Russian protest.

Elections of Regional and Local Deputies - A Source of Opportunities for the Opposition

To date, perhaps the most promising platform for competition with the authorities has been the elections of regional assemblies. Throughout the 2010s, bureaucratic and economic conflicts arose in many regions, creating opportunities for party competition and, accordingly, options for coalitions of opposition parties with activists. In competitive regions, authorities have to put up with bigger diversity in the assemblies than in the Duma, including deputies from the pro-democracy Yabloko party in half a dozen regions.

To make regional assemblies more acceptable, regional authorities use their electoral manipulation toolkits. In 2019, the refusal to register oppositionists for elections in Moscow provoked a powerful wave of urban protest, which became a national-level problem for the government. The street protest was then converted into an electoral one with the help of the Smart Voting tactics.

Finally, in the elections of municipal assemblies the government suffered defeats from both left-wing and liberal candidates. The authorities demonstrated their vulnerability both in economically struggling municipalities and in large cities, characterized by modern lifestyle and consumption. Often it was the opposition that turned out to be more convincing than the authorities in paying attention to specific problems of development, ecology or transport. Elections of municipal assemblies attracted less public attention; by and large, only the municipal elections in Moscow in 2017 became an event of national attention (at least among the politicized public), interrupting a series of failures for the opposition. But even in less visible municipal elections, a network of grassroots independent and opposition-minded politicians with practical experience in collecting signatures, campaigning, and in the best cases even participating in municipal governance, was formed. It is worth noting that in 2022 opposition municipal deputies collectively condemned the war in Ukraine, although many of the signatories remained in Russia at the moment (read more about it in our article A Slow Death of Municipal Autonomy in Russia).

Thus, elections to assemblies at the local and regional levels remain the main platform for political competition in Russia. The rest of the elections are of a bigger importance for the Kremlin and, therefore, more controlled. Unexpected successes of the opposition are extremely rare there.

The cases of the opposition gaining a share of seats in local and regional assemblies, as well as the government's losing of face in more fundamental elections, are interesting not from the perspective of the opposition’s ability to change the political courses. They are important as a signal of the lack of support for the authorities, as well as for creating a structure of political opportunities for local activists and as simulators for the acquisition of political skills for opposition independent politicians.

By Alexey Gilev, University of Helsinki