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Introduction: The Many Dimensions of Russian Liberalism

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Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism

Part of the book series: Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations ((PPCE,volume 8))

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Abstract

Liberalism in Russia is one of the most complex, multifaced and, indeed, controversial phenomena in the history of political thought. Values and practices traditionally associated with Western liberalism—such as individual freedom, property rights, or the rule of law—have often emerged ambiguously in the Russian historical experience through different dimensions and combinations. Economic and political liberalism have often appeared disjointed, and liberal projects have been shaped by local circumstances, evolved in response to secular challenges and developed within usually rapidly-changing institutional and international settings. This volume provides a broad set of insights into the Russian liberal experience—through a dialogue between past and present, and intellectual and empirical contextualization, involving historians, jurists, political scientists, and theorists. The first part focuses on the Imperial period, analyzing the political philosophy and peculiarities of pre-revolutionary Russian liberalism, its relations with the rule of law (Pravovoe Gosudarstvo), and its institutionalization within the Constitutional Democratic Party (Kadets). The second part focuses on Soviet times when liberal undercurrents emerged under the surface of the official Marxist-Leninist ideology. After Stalin’s death, the “thaw intelligentsia” of Soviet dissidents and human rights defenders represented a new liberal dimension in late Soviet history, while the reforms of Gorbachev’s “New Thinking” became a substitute for liberalism in the final decade of the USSR. The third part focuses on the “time of troubles” under the Yeltsin presidency, and assesses the impact of liberal values and ethics, the bureaucratic difficulties in adapting to change, and the paradoxes of liberal reforms during the transition to post-Soviet Russia. Although Russian liberals had begun to draw lessons from previous failures, their project was severely challenged by the rise of Vladimir Putin. Hence, the fourth part focuses on the 2000s, when the liberal alternative in Russian politics confronted the ascendance of Putin, surviving in parts of Russian culture and in the mindset of technocrats and “system liberals.” Today, however, the Russian liberal project faces the limits of reform cycles of public administration, suffers from a lack of federalist attitude in politics and is externally challenged from an illiberal world order. All this asks us to consider: what is the likelihood of a “reboot” of Russian liberalism?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London: Penguin, 1992).

  2. 2.

    Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

  3. 3.

    See Lilia Shevtsova, Russia lost in transition: the Yeltsin and Putin legacies (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2007).

  4. 4.

    See William Taubman, Gorbachev : His life and times (London: Simon & Schuster, 2017), ch. 18.

  5. 5.

    In Russia, the early enthusiasm of perestroika and the intellectuals’ expectations for a changing society, for a free press and for the first openings after decades of authoritarian rule, vanished. Hence, the older generation of journalists formed during glasnost appears as the bravest, most liberal, and most critical voice against the regime. This small group of professional journalists resists by defending freedom of information and remains devoted to realizing a sustainable democratic regime. See Nadezhda Azhgikhina, “When dreams come true: Liberal trends and liberal mythology in Russian media”, in Riccardo Mario Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia (Rome: Reset, 2017), pp. 178–192; Brian McNair, Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Soviet Media (London: Routledge, 1991); Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary: A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia (London: Harvill Secker, 2007); Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, “Fighting Putin and the Kremlin’s grip in neo-authoritarian Russia: The experience of liberal journalists”, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, May 2017 (prepublished online); Riccardo Mario Cucciolla, “Aleksandr Minkin: A Pioneer of Investigative Journalism in Soviet Central Asia (1979–1991)”, Journalism: Theory, Practice & Criticism, January 2018 (prepublished online); Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova, Russia’s Liberal Media: Handcuffed but Free (New York and London: Routledge, 2018); Michael Urban, The Russian Free Press in the Transition to a Post-communist Society (Washington, DC: National Council for Soviet and East European Research, 1992).

  6. 6.

    See Richard Rose, Elections Without Order: Russia’s Challenge to Vladimir Putin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Richard Sakwa, The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism, and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (New York: Tim Duggan Books, 2018); Brian D. Taylor, State Building in Putin’s Russia: Policing and Coercion after Communism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). See also the 2018 report of the American NGO Freedom House critically assesses Russia as a “Not Free” country. See Freedom House, Freedom in the World 2018: Democracy in Crisis – Russia (https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2018/russia)

  7. 7.

    See Andrei Melville, “Post-Communist Russia: Democratic Transitions and Transition Theories,” in Stein Ugelvik Larsen (ed.), The Challenges of Theories on Democracy: Elaborations over new Trends in Transitology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), pp. 147–179.

  8. 8.

    See Vladimir Shlapentokh and Anna Arutunyan, Freedom, repression, and private property in Russia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), Joachim Zweynert, When ideas fail: economic thought, the failure of transition and the rise of institutional instability in Post-Soviet Russia (London-New York: Routledge, 2018).

  9. 9.

    See Vladislav Zubok, “‘Unsuccess’ of Russian Liberalism: Contemporary Reflections,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 193–208; Olga Malinova, Liberalnyi natsionalizm (seredina XIX – nachalo XX veka) (Moskva: RIK Rusanova, 2000).

  10. 10.

    A general belief is that the Russian mentality has been deeply influenced (or traumatized) by the dramatic history of a country torn by cycles of wars, revolutions, famines, state violence, economic crisis etc. This would explain the common fatalism and conservative mentality of the Russian people, who generally fear big changes, identifying them as constraints and problems and not as opportunity and challenges. This pessimistic outlook for the future—and the general lack of a future dimension, even in the Russian language—would thus constitute the (unconscious) basis of the Russian conservative attitude.

  11. 11.

    See Katharina Bluhm and Mihai Varga (eds.), New conservatives in Russia and East Central Europe (Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2018); Vladimir Gel′man (ed.), Authoritarian Modernization in Russia: Ideas, Institutions, and Policies (London: Routledge, 2017); Richard Pipes, Russian conservatism and its critics: a study in political culture (New Haven-London: Yale University Press, 2007); Cameron Ross and Vladimir Gel’man (eds.), The Politics of Sub-National Authoritarianism in Russia (London-New York, Routledge, 2016); and Andrei P. Tsygankov, The strong state in Russia: development and crisis (Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). See also Nina Khrushcheva, “Cultural Contradictions of Post-Communist Russian (Il)Liberalism,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 163–177.

  12. 12.

    In Lev Gudkov’s account, Putin’s neo-conservative ideology based on “restoration of the moral and political unity of the authorities and the people – boils down to the following ideas: ‘stability’ – unchangeability of the authorities – overcoming ‘chaos’ caused by Yeltsin’s reforms; ‘traditionalism’; a special role of Orthodoxy and its importance in the matter of society’s ‘moral upbringing’; fighting Western influence – civil society organizations as well as constitutional state and human rights movements are appointed ‘agents’ thereof by the Kremlin political engineers.” Lev Gudkov, “The ‘Great Power’ Ideologeme as a Condition of Putin’s Regime Legitimacy,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, p. 56. See also Boris Makarenko (ed.), Konservatizm i razvitiye: Osnovy obshchestvennogo soglasiya (Moskva: Alpina, 2015); and Andrei Melville, “Russian Political Ideology,” Irvin Studin (ed.), Russia: Strategy, Policy and Administration (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 31–41.

  13. 13.

    See Olga Malinova, “‘Experts’ and Pluralism of Political Ideas in Russia (2008–2016),” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 116–130; Alexander Sungurov, Nikolai Raspopov, and Alexander Beliaev, “Instituty-mediatory i ikh razvitie v sovremennoi Rossii,” Polis 4, 2012, pp. 99–116; Olga Malinova and Philip Casula, “Political and National Identity in Russian Political Discourse,” in André Lecours and Luis Moreno (eds.), Nationalism and Democracy. Dichotomies, Complementarities, Oppositions (London-New York: Routledge 2010), pp. 170–183; and Alexey Barabashev, “The Discourse of Russian Bureaucracy and its Influence on the Political Discourse,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 91–102.

  14. 14.

    In the current Russian political discourse holy elements of the Orthodox Church appear, together with other “sacred” topics closed for discussion such as the purity of the victory in World War II. On the influence of religion on Russian politics see: Geoffrey Evans and Ksenia Northmore-Ball, “The Limits of Secularization? The Resurgence of Orthodoxy in Post-Soviet Russia,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 51, no. 4, 2012, pp. 795–808; Geraldine Fagan, Believing in Russia: religious policy after communism (London: Routledge, 2013); Pankhurst, Jerry G., and Alar Kilp. “Religion, the Russian Nation and the State: Domestic and International Dimensions: An Introduction,” Religion, State and Society 41, no. 3, 2013, pp. 226–243; Irina Papkova, The Orthodox Church and Russian Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Katja Richters, The Post-Soviet Russian Orthodox Church: Politics, Culture and Greater Russia (London-New York: Routledge, 2014); Adriano Roccucci, Stalin e il patriarca: Chiesa ortodossa e potere sovietico, 1917–1958 (Torino: Einaudi, 2011); Kristina Stoeckl, The Russian Orthodox Church and Human Rights (London: Routledge, 2014); and Mikhail Suslov, “The Genealogy of the Idea of Monarchy in the Post-Soviet Political Discourse of the Russian Orthodox Church,” State, Religion and Church 3, no. 1, 2016, pp. 27–62.

  15. 15.

    See Maria Engström, “Russia as ‘Katechon’: Neo-Conservatism and Foreign Policy,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 131–145.

  16. 16.

    See Robert Conquest, The Last Empire: Nationality and the Soviet future (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2017); John B. Dunlop, The Rise of Russia and the Fall of the Soviet Empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011); Sven Eliæson, After the Soviet Empire: Legacies and Pathways (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2016);Silvio Pons, The global revolution: A History of International Communism 1917–1991 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Vladislav M. Zubok, A Failed Empire. The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007).

  17. 17.

    See Alisher Ya. Babadzhanov, Voyenno-politicheskoye sotrudnichestvo postsovetskikh gosudarstv. Problema sochetayemosti natsional’nykh podkhodov (Moskva: Aspekt, 2013); Pavel K. Baev, “The Interplay Between the ‘Hybrid War’ Narrative and the ‘Sovereignty-Territory-Resources’ Discourse,” in Riccardo Mario Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back? The Evolution of Russian Political Thought After 1991 (Rome: Reset, 2016), pp. 98–107; Aleksandr B. Bezborodov and Olga V. Pavlenko, “Voennotekhnicheskiye aspekty natsional’noy bezopasnosti Rossiyskoy Federatsii,” Vestnik RGGU. Seriya Mezhdunarodnye Otnosheniya. Zarubezhnoe Regionovedenie 140, no. 18, 2014, pp. 133–153; Constantin P. Danopoulos & Cynthia A. Watson (eds.), The Political Role of the Military: An International Handbook (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996); Mark Galeotti, Russia’s War in Chechnya 1994–2009 (Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2014); William C. Fuller, Strategy and Power in Russia, 1600–1914 (New York: The Free Press, 1992); Mark Galeotti, Time to think about ‘hybrid defense’, War on the Rocks, 30 July 2015 (http://warontherocks.com/2015/07/time-to-think-about-hybrid-defense/); Alexander Golts, “State Militarism as a Basis for Russian Identity,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 91–97; Kalevi J. Holsti, The State, War, and the State of War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Mark Kramer, “War and its Impact on Politics and Political Thought,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 79–90; John P. Moran, From Garrison State to Nation State: The Russian Military and Political Power under Gorbachev and Yeltsin (Westport: Praeger, 2001); William E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Brian Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations 1689–2000 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Marcel van Herpen, Putin’s Wars: The Rise of Russia’s New Imperialism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

  18. 18.

    See Andrei Kolesnikov, Russian Ideology After Crimea (Moscow: The Carnegie Moscow Center, 2015) (http://carnegieendowment.org/files/CP_Kolesnikov_Ideology2015_web_Eng.pdf); Andrei Melville, ““Fortress-Russia”: Geopolitical Destiny, Unintended Consequences, or Policy Choices?,” in Albert J. Bergesen and Christian Suter (eds.), The Return of Geopolitics (Berlin : LIT Verlag, 2018), pp. 97–112; Olga Pavlenko, “Transformation of Security Culture in Russia: Domestic and Foreign Factors,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 121–135; Andrey P. Tsygankov, Mezhdunarodnyye otnosheniya: traditsii russkoy politicheskoy mysli (Moskva: Al’fam, 2013).

  19. 19.

    The concept of the “Nation State” – along its ethnic (russkiy) and civic (rossiyskiy) declinations – in a multiethnic state such as the Russian Federation is quite contradictory. See Alexey Miller, “Nation, Nation-State, State-Nation and Empire-State in Post-Soviet Russia,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 62–67; Alexey I. Miller, “Debaty o natsii v sovremennoy Rossii,” Politicheskaya Nauka 1, 2008, pp. 7–30; Valeriy A. Tishkov, “Chto yest’ Rossiya I rossiyskiy narod,” Pro et Contra 11, no. 3, May 2007, pp. 21–41. See also Andrei Melville, “Neo-Conservatism as National Idea for Russia?,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 146–160.

  20. 20.

    Gudkov , “The ‘Great Power’ Ideologeme,” pp. 49–61.

  21. 21.

    See Mark Bassin and Gonzalo Pozo (eds.), The Politics of Eurasianism: Identity, Popular Culture and Russia’s Foreign Policy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017); David Cadier and Margot Light, Russia’s Foreign Policy: International Perceptions, Domestic Politics and External relations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Andrei P. Tsygankov, Russia and the West from Alexander to Putin : Honor in International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); Andrei P. Tsygankov, Russia’s Foreign Policy: Change and Continuity in National Identity (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016).

  22. 22.

    See Alan M. Ball, Imagining America: Influence and Images in Twentieth-century Russia (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2003); Anton Barbashin, “Post-Crimean Political Discourse and Russian Foreign Policy Narratives,” in Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia, pp. 103–115; Glenn Diesen, EU and NATO Relations with Russia: After the Collapse of the Soviet Union (London-(New York: Routledge, 2015); Alexei Levinson, “America as «Significant Other»,” Pro et Contra 11, no. 2, March–April 2007; James W. Peterson, Russian-American relations in the post-Cold War world (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017); Richard Sakwa, Russia against the Rest: The Post-Cold War Crisis of World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Liliya F. Shevtsova, Odinokaya derzhava. Pochemu Rossiya ne stala Zapadom i pochemu Rossii trudno s Zapadom (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2010); Angela Stent, The Limits of Partnership: U.S.-Russian Relations in the 21st Century (Princeton-Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014); Andrei P. Tsygankov, “The Russia-NATO mistrust: Ethnophobia and the double expansion to contain “the Russian Bear”,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 46, no. 1, 2013, pp. 179–188; Victoria I. Zhuravleva, “America as the ‘Other’ in Russian Political Discourse: Post-Soviet Reality and International Challenges,” in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 108–120.

  23. 23.

    See Mark Bassin, Sergei Glebov and Marlene Laruelle (eds.), Between Europe and Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015); Samuel A. Greene and Graeme B. Robertson, Identity, Nationalism, and the Limits of Liberalism in Russian Popular Politics, PONARS Eurasia, Policy Memo No. 323, June 2014; Marlene Laruelle, Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion of Russia (New York-London: Routledge, 2009).

  24. 24.

    See Andrei Arkhangelsky, Is Liberalism the Future for Russia?, Open Democracy. Russia and beyond, 2 February 2016 (https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/is-liberalism-future-for-russia)

  25. 25.

    See the volumes collecting conference proceedings of the previous “Russia Workshop” events organized by Reset DOC in 2015–2016: Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?; and Cucciolla (ed.), State and Political Discourse in Russia.

  26. 26.

    See Elena Chebankova, “Contemporary Russian Liberalism”, Post-Soviet Affairs 30, no. 5, 2014, pp. 341–369.

  27. 27.

    Philip Boobbyer, “Russian Liberal Conservatism”, in Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (eds.), Russian Nationalism: Past and Present (Basingstoke-London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), pp. 35–54; Susanna Rabow-Edling, “Liberalism and nationalism in Russia. Boris Chicherin as a modernist nationalist”, Nations and Nationalism 18, no. 4, October 2012, pp. 701–718.

  28. 28.

    See Julia Berest, The Emergence of Russian Liberalism: Alexander Kunitsyn in Context, 1783–1840 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Peter Enticott, The Russian Liberals and the Revolution of 1905 (London-New York: Routledge, 2016); Aleksei Kara-Murza (ed.), Rossiyskiy liberalizm. Idei i lyudi. V 2 tomakh (Moskva: Novoye izdatel’stvo, 2018); Victor Leontovitsch, The History of Liberalism in Russia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012); Marc Raeff, Michael Speransky : Statesman of Imperial Russia, 1772–1839 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1957); Konstantin I. Shneider, Mezhdu svobodoi i samoderzhaviem: Istoriia rannego russkogo liberalizma (Perm: Permskii gosudarstvennyi natsional’nyi issledovatel’skii universitet, 2012).

  29. 29.

    Gary Hamburg, Liberalism, Russian, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 1998 (https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/liberalism-russian/v-1/sections/the-revival-of-liberalism-in-post-soviet-russia)

  30. 30.

    See George Fischer, Russian Liberalism: From Gentry to Intelligentsia (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958); Oleg V. Khlevniuk, Stalin : New Biography of a Dictator (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); Stephen Kotkin, Stalin. Volume 2, Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941 (New York: Penguin Press, 2017); Norman M. Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Andrea Graziosi, Istoriya SSSR (Moskva: ROSSPEN, 2016).

  31. 31.

    The 1990s were characterized by liberal projects—dominated by political leaders such as the “young reformers” Anatoly Chubais, Boris Nemtsov, and Yegor Gaidar—namely, privatizations and free market reforms. These formations were crucial in building government majorities and were electorally successful. In 1993, the center-right, pro-capitalist party Democratic Choice of Russia obtained 15.51% of the vote; its successor, the Union of Right Forces, took 8.52% in the 1999 elections. In the 1995 elections, the political party Our Home—Russia of former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin won 10.13% of the electorate.

  32. 32.

    See Lilia Shevtsova, Russia: Did Liberals Bury Liberalism?, Eurozine, 23 June 2017 (https://www.eurozine.com/russia-did-liberals-bury-liberalism/).

  33. 33.

    See Viktor Sheynis, Vzlet i padeniye parlamenta: perelomnyye gody v rossiyskoy politike (1985—1993) T. 1–2 (Moskva: Moskovsky Tsentr Karnegi, 2005).

  34. 34.

    David E. Hoffman, The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in the New Russia (New York: Perseus Book Group, 2002); Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart Lansley, Londongrad. From London With Cash: The Inside Story of the Oligarchs (London: Fourth Estate, 2009).

  35. 35.

    See Torbjörn Becker and Susanne Oxenstierna (eds.), The Russian Economy Under Putin (New York-London: Routledge, 2018); Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010); Martin Gilman, Defolt, kotorogo moglo ne byt’ (Moskva: Vremya, 2009); Vladimir Mau, Russia’s Economy in an Epoch of Turbulence: Crises and Lessons (New York-London: Routledge, 2017).

  36. 36.

    Marlene Laruelle, Cultural Studies and Their Role in Understanding Russia’s Political Regime, working paper presented at the Conference on Regime Evolution, Institutional Change, and Social Transformation in Russia: Lessons for Political Science, Yale University, 28 April 2018.

  37. 37.

    The full list of officially registered parties is available at the webpage of the Russian ministry of justice. See Ministerstvo yustitsii Rossiyskoy Federatsii, Spisok Zaregistrirovannykh Politicheskikh Partiy (http://minjust.ru/nko/gosreg/partii/spisok)

  38. 38.

    Actually 338 of the 450 delegates in the State Duma, 128 of 170 in the Federal Council, 77 of 85 governors, 3091 of 3980 representatives in the regional assemblies and 20 of 31 ministers are members of United Russia.

  39. 39.

    See Evgeny Gontmakher and Cameron Ross, “The Middle Class and Democratization in Russia,” Europe-Asia Studies 67, no. 2, 2015, pp. 269–284.

  40. 40.

    See Fabio Bettanin, Putin e il mondo che verrà. Storia e politica della Russia nel nuovo contesto internazionale (Viella: Roma, 2018); Ben Judah, Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell in and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013); Sergio Romano, Putin e la ricostruzione della grande Russia (Milano: Longanesi, 2016); Richard Sakwa, Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (London-New York: Routledge, 2014); Valerie Sperling, Sex, Politics, & Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

  41. 41.

    Some liberal formations supported Putin’s regime on several occasion. In 2002, the green liberal party called the Network Party for Support of Small and Middle-Sized Business was established. In 2004 it was renamed Free Russia and in February 2007 changed again, to Civilian Power. The party supported Medvedev in the 2008 presidential elections and the reelection of Putin in 2018. The Party of Growth—a political formation founded in February 2009—includes some members who moved from the Union of Rightist Forces, Civilian Power and Democratic Party of Russia. The party promotes a liberal free-market economy, democracy and protecting the rights of the middle class. In the 2012 presidential elections, it supported the candidacy of Vladimir Putin. Since February 2016, the Party of Growth is represented by Boris Titov who was a candidate at the 2018 presidential elections, taking 0.8% of the vote. As well, there is the liberal–conservative Civic Platform led by the businessman Mikhail Prokhorov, a figure who obtained 7.94% of the votes in the 2012 presidential elections and who has assumed more a conciliatory tone with Putin.

  42. 42.

    Despite its name, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is in no sense “liberal” but is rather a populist, chauvinist and ultraconservative outfit led by the maverick Vladimir Zhirinovsky. In his memoirs, Aleksandr Yakovlev describes this party as a façade project of the CPSU and the KGB founded with some three million rubles and Vladimir Zhirinovsky as a puppet figure. See Aleksandr Yakovlev, Sumerki (Moskva: Materik, 2003), p. 574; Robert Service, “Zhirinovskii: Ideas in Search of an Audience”, in Geoffrey Hosking and Robert Service (eds.), Russian Nationalism: Past and Present (Basingstoke-London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), pp. 179–197.

  43. 43.

    In the 1993 legislative election, Yabloko obtained 7.86% of the votes, sending 27 deputies to the State Duma. This share declined in the next elections: 6.89% of votes in 1995 (45 seats), 5.93% in 1999 (21) and 4. 3% in 2003 (4). See Henry Hale, “Yabloko and the Challenge of Building a Liberal Party in Russia”, Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 7, 2004, pp. 993–1020; David White, The Russian Democratic Party Yabloko: Opposition in a Managed Democracy (Burlington: Ashgate, 2006).

  44. 44.

    Actually, Yabloko saw three of its members elected as deputies in Karelia in 2016, one in Kostroma oblast in 2015, one in Pskov oblast in 2016, and two in Saint Petersburg in 2016. In the 2018 presidential elections, Yavlinsky obtained only 769,644 votes (1.05%).

  45. 45.

    Parnas was formed by the opposition forces of the Russian People’s Democratic Union led by Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister in 2000–2004 who tried to challenge the United Russia candidate Dmitry Medvedev during the 2008 presidential elections; the dissolved forces of the Republican Party of Russia led by the historian Vladimir Ryzhkov; the Democratic Choice led by the former deputy minister of energy, Vladimir Milov; and members of Solidarity, a political movement represented by the chess champion Garry Kasparov and the politician Boris Nemtsov. This latter was the former first deputy prime minister of Russia (1997–1998) and a liberal politician who in the late 2000s became an active organizer and participant in Dissenters’ Marches (2011–2013), Strategy-31 civil actions and rallies under the For Fair Elections banner. He criticized Putin’s lifestyle and harshly denounced corruption in the state apparatus and the Russian military intervention in Ukraine. Nemtsov was assassinated on 27 February 2015 while he was crossing the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow.

  46. 46.

    In November 1990, the Republican Party of the Russian Federation was founded by reformist members of the Democratic Platform of the CPSU and chaired by Nikolay Lysenko, Stepan Sulakshin and Vyacheslav Shostakovsky. At that time, the party joined the Democratic Russia bloc and was close to the Social Democratic Party of Russia and supported the Yeltsin and Gaidar reforms until October 1993. In the 1990s, republicans survived in alliance with minor liberal groups and reorganized the party in 2002. The Republican Party of Russia was officially dissolved in 2007, but its supporters joined the The Other Russia and since October 2010 supported the liberal-democratic coalition For Russia Without Lawlessness and Corruption. In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights condemned the party’s dissolution and in 2012 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation quashed its previous decision.

  47. 47.

    The regime has persisted for more than eighteen years with wide popular support re-affirmed at each election. In 2000, Vladimir Putin took 53.4% of the vote in the presidential election, rising to 71.9% when he was resoundingly re-elected in 2004. In 2008, his close ally, Dmitry Medvedev, was elected president with 71.2% of votes cast and upon his return to the hustings for a third run at the presidency in 2012, Putin won 63.6% of the ballots. In 2018, he received his best vote-share to date (76.69%).

  48. 48.

    Lev Gudkov, “The ‘Great Power’ Ideologeme as a Condition of Putin’s Regime Legitimacy”, in Cucciolla (ed.), The Power State is Back?, pp. 49–61.

  49. 49.

    See Nat Moser, Oil and the Economy of Russia: From the Late-Tsarist to the Post-Soviet Period (New York-London: Routledge, 2017).

  50. 50.

    See Benjamin Smith, “Oil Wealth and Regime Survival in the Developing World, 1960–1999”, American Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2, April 2004, pp. 232–246.

  51. 51.

    Pavel A. Tsygankov and Andrei P. Tsygankov, “Dilemmas and Promises of Russian Liberalism”, Communist and Post-Communist Studies 37, no. 1, March 2004, pp. 53–70.

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  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Riccardo Mario Cucciolla

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  1. National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia

    Riccardo Mario Cucciolla

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© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG, corrected publication 2020

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Cucciolla, R.M. (2019). Introduction: The Many Dimensions of Russian Liberalism. In: Cucciolla, R.M. (eds) Dimensions and Challenges of Russian Liberalism. Philosophy and Politics - Critical Explorations, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05784-8_15

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