The Russian Duma ‘opposition’: no drama out of crisis?

Abstract

Why did the post-2008 economic crisis in Russia fail to become a political crisis before the 2011 parliamentary elections? One key reason is the failure of Russian political parties to become the aggregators of growing popular discontent, particularly the three national-level ‘opposition’ parties, the Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia, and Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Analysing the rhetoric of these three parties towards the authorities and their anti-crisis programmes shows that the Duma opposition parties do articulate a potentially radical critique of contemporary Russian politics and economy. However, their inability to translate rhetoric into action is best explained by informal ‘rules of the game’ that limit their practical opposition activities to lobbying the Kremlin in private and maintaining public deference to the federal authorities.

Keywords:

• political parties
• Russian Federation
• opposition
• crisis

Notes

The number of people believing that ‘our country is developing in the wrong direction’ grew from 24% in September 2008 to 40% in June 2009 before falling until early 2011 (Russia Votes 2011).

For instance, the CPRF was not involved in the initial protest in St. Petersburg on 9 January 2005. Although it was involved in later protests these were often organised locally by a plethora of groups. See Robertson (2009).

For some of the literature on how populism should be defined see: Albertazzi and McDonnell (2007); Canovan (1981); Deegan-Krause and Haughton (2009); and Taggart (2000).

In March 2010, such examples included false LDPR electoral material being distributed in Ryazan' oblast’ and its candidates being refused registration in Tuva. See LDPR (2009b).

Disagreements between UR and JR continued to fester until Mironov resigned as JR chair in April 2011 (although he continues as de facto leader) and was ousted as head of Russia's Federation Council in May 2011.