The history of democracy in Russia

The democratic movement in Russia has a very long history, and for almost its entire duration, it has been forced to face enormous difficulties. Short periods of victory occurred during very difficult times for the country, and democracy did not always manage to show its effectiveness. Today, democrats are still fighting for the freedom of Russia and its people against their sworn enemies — statists, who seek to make its inhabitants as disenfranchised as possible and to establish imperial orders. Some countries (for example, Germany or Spain) won a similar battle after long centuries of struggle and failure, including bloody ones, while others (for example, the DPRK) are even further from victory than Russia. Thus, in the history of Russia’s struggle for democracy and a normal life, there are not enough significant upswings and too many downfalls, but every upswing, even a small one, has changed it, gradually bringing closer the final victory of democratic forces, which we have not yet reached.

The pre-Mongol period

The very origin of Russian statehood has Scandinavian, European roots. As the Great Russian Encyclopedia notes, in the 9th century, the name “Rus” referred specifically to the Varangians, and at that time, “Rus” was distinguished from the Slavs¹. The Normans (Varangians) were the founders of Rus — the invitation of Rurik and his brothers to serve as princes is considered the starting point of Russian history. That is, historically, the normal path of development for it is the Scandinavian tradition, the Scandinavian model (associated in the future with social democracy). At the same time, the Byzantine historian and chronicler Procopius of Caesarea wrote as early as the 6th century: “These tribes, the Slavs and the Antes, are not ruled by one man, but from ancient times have lived in democracy, and therefore everything involving their welfare or woe is referred to the people”².

The first Russian principalities had a management system that can be conditionally classified as a hybrid regime — the presence of the boyar class was combined with elected positions (posadniks, tysyatskys) chosen at popular assemblies known as the veche³. The most familiar example of such a structure to the general public was the Novgorod Republic, where the prince was elected at the veche and had limited powers — mainly of a military nature. Between 1095 and 1305, princes in Novgorod were replaced 58 times; in total, the democracy of the Novgorod veche existed for more than 600 years⁴. A similar structure existed in the Pskov Republic, while in the Vyatka Republic, the “position” of prince was absent altogether⁵. The veche system was characteristic not only of Novgorod and Pskov (where it reached its highest development), but at one time or another of all ancient Russian territories⁶.

Researchers note that in the pre-Mongol period, Rus did not develop sufficient conditions for the emergence of autocracy; moreover, the development of institutions of autonomy, self-government, and princely rule within the framework of historical popular traditions could have led to either a federation or a single unitary state, to either a republic or a monarchy, limited or absolute⁷. However, invaders from the Mongol Empire intervened, whose invasion in 1237-1241 broke the traditional way of life, destroying in a significant part of Russian territories what can conditionally be called the “First hybrid regime”.

Under the yoke of occupation and autocracy

After the arrival of the Mongols, Russia was deprived of opportunities for establishing democracy and any noticeable democratic movement for many years. Anti-Mongol forces, as a rule, were not democratic themselves, and their progressiveness consisted mainly of replacing Mongol authoritarianism with a more progressive national one. It is difficult to classify the rebellion of Stepan Razin, which occurred after the end of the Mongol yoke, as democratic, as it did not have clear and understandable demands — only vague goals such as “beating the boyars”, carrying out reprisals, while expressing reverence for the Tsar⁸ (for example, the rebels claimed that Tsarevich Alexei was among them and was marching on Moscow by his father’s decree). The introduction of certain forms of Cossack self-government by the rebels hardly allows us to speak of the democratic nature of this rebellion as a whole.

As we wrote in the article about statists, at the end of the 17th century, Peter I chose a path of imitating Western culture. Peter’s own reign was characterized by a rigid authoritarian style of government, the disenfranchisement of subjects, and constant wars aimed at building an Empire and seizing territories. However, at the same time, the orientation towards Europe could not help but lead to the emergence of opportunities for democratization. Scientific institutions were opened, elites learned European languages and felt themselves part of European civilization.

However, the first steps towards democratization were taken only after the rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev, which lasted from 1773 to 1775. The rebellion itself, like Razin’s, was weakly organized, often bandit-like in nature, and did not have a coherent, constructive program. However, while Razin’s rebellion did not force Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich to soften the regime, Catherine II, who ruled in the second half of the 18th century, decided to do so in some aspects (in many others — for example, regarding the situation of the peasants — her policy was rigid and oppressive: for instance, in 1765, a decree was issued granting landowners the right to exile peasants to hard labor for any term with the right of return, and in 1767, a decree was issued prohibiting complaints against landowners to the head of the country personally⁹). In the course of the provincial and judicial reforms (1775-1776), an elective element was introduced: representatives of the nobility and wealthy townspeople were allowed to participate in local government bodies under the direct control of governors and governors-general¹⁰. Part of the powers of central departments was transferred to local government bodies, and for the first time, judicial proceedings were separated from administrative bodies¹¹. The use of torture as a means of interrogation was limited, the list of crimes punishable by death was reduced, and the principles of presumption of innocence and proportionality of punishment to the crime were introduced into legislation¹². Thus, Pugachev’s rebellion, even if it was not a democratic movement in its content, still in some sense turned out to be democratizing in its outcome.

Catherine II could not be called a democratic ruler. Along with the aforementioned reforms and non-interference in the struggle of the North American colonies for independence (which ultimately played into their hands)¹³, the period of her reign was characterized as the peak of the peasantry’s disenfranchisement, aggressive foreign policy (such as the first three partitions of Poland), sending Russian troops to help the anti-French coalition¹⁴, and so on. During her reign, cultural figures began to appear who took the first timid steps of Russian democrats against autocracy — such as Denis Fonvizin, the author of the play “The Minor” (which contained a critique of the mores of the nobility)¹⁵ or Alexander Radishchev, the author of “A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (a work directed against autocracy)¹⁶, but all of them were persecuted by Catherine.

Her son Paul I possessed a similar duplicity. On the one hand, he limited the rights of the nobility, forbade forcing peasants to work on Sundays, introduced volost peasant self-government, barrack accommodation for troops (which eased the burden of quartering duties for residents), improved uniform allowances and food for lower ranks, and prohibited using soldiers for purposes other than their intended duty, for “private labor”¹⁷. Paul I interrupted preparations for war against revolutionary France, canceled the recruit levy, and terminated the Persian Campaign of 1796. At the same time, the emperor later took part in the creation of the 2nd anti-French coalition and wars with France, banned young people from traveling to study abroad, prohibited the use of the word “citizen”, banned the import of books and sheet music from abroad, and pursued a course toward the centralization of state administration.

“The wonderful beginning of Alexander’s days”

Many of Alexander I’s reforms were progressive in nature (the famous poet Alexander Pushkin would later describe this as “the wonderful beginning of Alexander’s days”¹⁸). In the first years of his reign, the ban on traveling abroad was lifted, subscribing to foreign newspapers and magazines was permitted, private printing houses were allowed, freedom of trade was declared, and the Secret Expedition, which engaged in investigation and reprisal, was abolished¹⁹. He also announced the cessation of the practice of granting state peasants to private individuals.

The Decree on Free Cultivators of 1803 provided for the liberation of serfs for ransom with land, either in entire villages or separate families by agreement with landowners. Despite the problematic nature of the decree (there were cases of non-compliance with the legal formalities of the procedure for the transition of peasants into free cultivators, landowners refusing to complete it, and heirs complaining about the decision to release peasants) and the low level of widespread implementation (by 1825, over 36,000 peasants had bought their freedom, and by the second half of the 1850s, over 107,000 peasants, which was due both to the unwillingness to part with “baptized property” that brought in a significant portion of a nobleman’s income, and to the complexity of the bureaucratic procedure for transferring peasants to the new status), it became an important stage in the development of general principles for carrying out the full-scale abolition of serfdom²⁰.

In Estonia and Livonia, household-owning peasants were declared lifelong and hereditary owners of their land plots. In 1801, merchants, townspeople, and state peasants were given the right to buy uninhabited lands; for the first time in Russia, the right to own land was recognized for peasants²¹. Peasants received the right, with the permission of the landowner, to trade, take bills of exchange, and engage in contracting; enriched peasants appeared, including serfs who had bought their freedom. Several new universities were opened, and the Charter of 1804 granted them wide autonomy: the election of the rector and their own university court²².

One of the important reforms could have been the implementation of the plan outlined by statesman Mikhail Speransky in his “Introduction to the Code of State Laws”. This man of progressive views for Russia at that time had a great influence on Alexander I and also participated in the upbringing of Alexander II, who would later continue the reforms. His plan consisted of creating a system of separation of powers into legislative, executive, and independent judicial branches. The process of forming the Duma resembled the principles of democratic centralism and included three intermediate stages: first, lower volost dumas were created, then district ones, and finally provincial ones²³. The deputy corps from the district to the all-imperial level was formed by delegating deputies from the lower-level assembly to the higher-level one. Of course, the project was not fully democratic — for example, the Duma did not have the right of legislative initiative (which belonged to the emperor), nor even the right to independently edit bills. The emperor could dissolve and reconvene the Duma at any moment. However, even such a half-hearted project provoked rabid resistance from statists who did not want to give citizens even an iota of power. They wrote denunciations of Speransky with false accusations of spying for France, mocked his humble origins, and the statist and conservative Nikolai Karamzin wrote “Note on Ancient and New Russia”, in which he argued for the necessity of autocracy and the nobility, protesting against “excessive love for state transformations”²⁴. Under pressure from numerous statists, Alexander was forced to retreat from implementing Speransky’s plan, and the reformer himself was sent into exile.

The second, and already the last attempt during this period to change the situation in the country can be considered the fact that in 1815, Alexander I signed the Constitution of the Kingdom of Poland, and in his speech at the opening of the Sejm in 1818, he announced his intention to extend constitutional orders to other lands as well²⁵. The Emperor instructed the Minister of Justice, Nikolai Novosiltsev, to prepare a constitutional project — the State Charter²⁶, and Alexei Arakcheev and Dmitry Guryev to develop projects for the universal abolition of serfdom. Starting in 1821, Alexander received information about the existence of secret societies; he threw one of the denunciations into the fire, remarking that he could not punish the conspirators because “in his youth he shared their views”.

By the end of his reign, however, Alexander was under the influence of statists: in 1821-1823, a secret police was created in the guard and the army; in 1822, Masonic lodges and other societies were banned. It can be assumed with high probability that in the event of weak resistance from statists and the presence of strong democratic forces supporting him, the Emperor would have gone ahead with both the adoption of the Constitution and the abolition of serfdom, after which Russia could have successfully developed as a constitutional monarchy and democratized along the lines of other European constitutional monarchies (Great Britain, Sweden, and so on). However, because of the statists, it was destined to go down a path of suffering, blood, and failure. The responsibility for the terror of the early 20th century, military defeats, and revolutionary chaos lies precisely with the representatives of this ideology.

A group of supporters of democratic reforms that formed around the Emperor was called the “Unofficial Committee”²⁷; statists who felt fierce hatred for them called them a “gang”. This committee included, besides the Emperor himself, Viktor Kochubey, Pavel Stroganov (who had been a member of the Jacobin Club in France), Adam Czartoryski, and Nikolai Novosiltsev. The committee members also involved Alexander Vorontsov and Frédéric-César de La Harpe²⁸, as well as Nikolai Mordvinov²⁹, in drafting projects. This committee was one of the first attempts to create progressive democratic organizations in Russia with constructive proposals for transforming the country. Not only did they try to promote reforms, but also certain other individuals, such as Adjutant General Pavel Kiselev, who submitted a memo to the Emperor in 1816 titled “On the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in Russia”³⁰.

During the reign of Alexander I, other democratic societies also began to form, some of which are known today under the general designation “Decembrists”. As a rule, they advocated for the abolition of serfdom and the reform of the political system — ranging from limiting autocracy with representative institutions to establishing republican rule. These ideas became popular against the backdrop of two processes. The first was the positive results of Alexander I’s reforms. The second was the European campaigns of Russian soldiers, during which they saw the daily life and structure of European society. Upon returning, they could no longer tolerate the autocratic-serfdom structure and traditions. At first, this was expressed in the creation of pre-Decembrist organizations, such as the “Order of Russian Knights”, the “Sacred Artel”, the officer artel of the Semyonovsky Regiment, and Vladimir Rayevsky’s circle. Members of these organizations, as a rule, did not have clearly formulated and structured political views, but opposition organizations gradually progressed.

At the beginning of 1816, the first secret Decembrist society emerged — the Union of Salvation. Its goals were the liberation of peasants and the establishment of a constitutional monarchy³¹. In 1818, the Union of Salvation was replaced by the Union of Prosperity. The members of the Union considered their goal to be the dissemination in society of the conviction of the necessity for socio-political reorganization of the Russian Empire — the liquidation of serfdom and the limitation of autocracy, and the introduction of constitutional rule. They believed that the driving force of the transformations would be public opinion formed, including through their efforts. After the split of the Union at the Moscow Congress in 1821, the Southern Society (with the programmatic document “Russian Truth” authored by Pavel Pestel) and the Northern Society (with the draft Constitution authored by Nikita Muravyov) were formed.

Although the societies were generally ideologically similar (in particular, they were against autocracy, for the freedom and equality of people, the liquidation of serfdom, and granting land to peasants), there were serious differences in their vision of the structure of future Russia. The Northern Society was moderate and stood for the positions of a constitutional monarchy, the separation of powers, and a federation³². In terms of rights, their Constitution would have restrictions on citizenship (which granted the right to vote and be elected), expressed in property and gender qualifications (an educational qualification would have been introduced 20 years after the adoption of the Constitution)³³. The Southern Society stood for republican positions³⁴, for the establishment of a transitional period³⁵, and a unitary state³⁶.

Besides Pestel, Muravyov, and Rayevsky, other important figures in the Decembrist organizations were the famous poet Kondraty Ryleyev, Sergey Muravyov-Apostol (who led the uprising of the Chernigov Regiment), Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin, Sergey Trubetskoy (who was elected commander of the Decembrist uprising and was the author of the manifesto that was planned to be published), Matvey Muravyov-Apostol, Yevgeny Obolensky, Sergey Volkonsky, Ivan Pushchin, Ivan Yakushkin, the economist and publicist Nikolai Turgenev (who, on his own estate, transferred peasants from corvée to quitrent, reducing the total amount of obligations, and wrote a memo to Alexander I on the abolition of serfdom), Ivan Annenkov (to whom Alexander Dumas’s novel “The Fencing Master” is dedicated), the man of letters Nikolai Bestuzhev (a member of the Free Society of Lovers of Russian Literature and the Free Economic Society, who on December 14, 1825, brought the regiment of the Naval Guard Crew to the square), Mikhail Bestuzhev (who brought his regiment to the square of the uprising), the man of letters Alexander Bestuzhev, Alexander Muravyov, and others. One can also recall Pyotr Kakhovsky — the assassin of General Mikhail Miloradovich, which became one of the first acts of revolutionary terror and which inspired future revolutionary terror. This, of course, was not a democratic method. Nevertheless, the subsequent policy of the Empire led to this method becoming popular, but more on that later.

However, Ryleyev was not the only progressive cultural figure. Perhaps one of the symbols of Russia — the poet Alexander Pushkin — was a friend of the Decembrist Pushchin, an acquaintance of many other Decembrists, and generally supported their views (furthermore, the poet showed interest in the aforementioned Pugachev rebellion, having written “A History of the Pugachev Rebellion”). However, being an opponent of autocracy, Pushkin was hardly a democrat, and his progressiveness is evident only against the background of the Russia of his time. Probably, the same can be said about another famous literary figure of those times — Alexander Griboyedov (the author of the comedy “Woe from Wit”, who was arrested in the Decembrist case).

During the interregnum of 1825, after the sudden death of Alexander I, members of the Northern Society of Decembrists, under the pretext of refusing to take an oath to the new emperor Nicholas, led about 3,000 guardsmen and sailors to Senate Square. This happened on December 14, 1825, and is known in Russian history as the Decembrist Uprising. The indecisive behavior of the rebels allowed the forces of reaction to draw troops and artillery to the square, after which they dispersed them with artillery fire. Nicholas I became emperor, about whom we wrote in the article on statists, and a period of reaction and failure for Russia began, and repressions were carried out against the Decembrists.

From Nicholas to Nicholas

Under the conditions of the Nikolaev reaction and the rampant spread of statist propaganda, the democratic movement in Russia found itself under the strongest pressure. However, in these conditions, a small circle of high-ranking officials of the Empire began to form, who are known by the name of “liberal bureaucrats”, who were also called by their contemporaries “reds”, “democratic officials”, “progressives”, and so on³⁸. This included Alexander Golovnin, Nikolai Milyutin, Mikhail Reytern, Dmitry Nabokov, and several other figures. All “liberal bureaucrats” were united by the conviction of the necessity and inevitability of abolishing serfdom, reforming the judiciary, local administration and self-government, and other spheres of Russian society. They advocated for the introduction of the principle of glasnost, striving to ensure public support for reforms. Later, under Alexander II, they would be able to begin implementing part of their projects.

Also at this time, the “Westernizer” trend began to form — in 1839, the circle of Timofey Granovsky took shape, and even earlier, a more heterogeneous circle of Nikolai Stankevich appeared, and from 1845 — the circles of the Petrashevists (who were interested in the ideas of utopian socialism). Granovsky noted that the slogan of the French Revolution “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” was the highest ideal of humanity³⁹. Westernizers were supporters of freedom of conscience, public opinion, and the press, as well as the publicity of government actions and the transparency of judicial proceedings; the basis of their worldview was the ideas of the European Enlightenment, they were opponents of serfdom, and the majority of them were atheists. At different times, such individuals as Pyotr Chaadayev (author of “Philosophical Letters”, whom the statists declared insane and assigned a doctor, which is considered one of the first cases of their use of “punitive psychiatry”), Alexander Herzen (author of the famous work “Who Is to Blame?”, who later worked in emigration), Vissarion Belinsky, and Nikolai Ogarev were considered Westernizers. The Westernizers also had their own press — the newspapers “Kolokol” (“The Bell”) and “Moskovskie Vedomosti”, the journals “Moskovskiy Nablyudatel”, “Otechestvennye Zapiski”, and “Russkiy Vestnik”. Progressive views were expressed by such writers as Ivan Turgenev, Ivan Goncharov, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, and Nikolai Nekrasov. However, the Westernizers did not have a coherent and unified view on the structure of the political system, so calling their movements democratic can only be done partially and cautiously. Russia was not yet ripe at that time even for progressive reforms, let alone democracy.

However, a crushing defeat in the Crimean War soon followed. Simultaneously with the disgrace of the defeat, Nicholas I died, leaving his successor, Alexander II — who was forced to sign the Treaty of Paris in 1856 — with a pile of problems. In the very first years, the new emperor reduced the size of the army from 2.2 million to 1.5 million people, abolished military settlements, suspended the recruitment levy for 3 years, abolished the “Buturlin Committee” (a censorship body under Nicholas), and wrote off peasant arrears⁴⁰. He also amnestied the Decembrists, participants of the Polish Uprising of 1830–1831, and the Petrashevists.

The “Great Reforms” of Alexander II were carried out based on the ideas of the aforementioned “liberal democrats”. The Peasant Reform of 1861, under which peasants received personal and property freedom, became the main achievement of the democratic movement during that period. In 1864, the Zemstvo reform was carried out, introducing bodies of local self-government based on the principles of election, non-class status, and self-financing⁴¹ — the zemstvos.

What were the zemstvos? They were representative bodies elected by all classes for a three-year term, consisting of administrative bodies in the form of district and provincial zemstvo assemblies, as well as executive bodies, which were the district and provincial boards. The Statute on Provincial and District Zemstvo Institutions introduced zemstvo institutions only at the district and provincial levels, without central zemstvo representation and without volost zemstvos. The zemstvos themselves did not cover all provinces — for instance, in 1864, there were only 34 provinces where they were implemented, and by 1916 there were 43 out of 94 provinces and regions of Russia. In terms of population, the zemstvos covered 110 million out of a total of 172 million people⁴².

Zemstvo deputies were called “glasnye” (vowels/members); they were elected for a three-year term and did not receive any official advantages or remuneration. Elections to district zemstvo assemblies were held in three electoral congresses (by curiae). The first curia consisted of landowners, the second of urban voters, and the third of electors from rural communities (peasants at volost assemblies chose electors, from among whom district members were elected). Each curia had its own property qualification. The provincial zemstvo assembly was composed of members already elected by the district zemstvo assemblies for three years from among their own ranks. One member for every 6 district members was sent to the provincial zemstvo assembly. The managers of the local Chamber of State Domains and the local Appanage Office participated in the provincial zemstvo assembly on equal terms with others. The provincial zemstvo assembly elected a provincial zemstvo board consisting of a chairman and six members for three years and could appoint a salary for them⁴³.

The zemstvos themselves were, on the whole, noble bodies. If in 1865–1867, among district zemstvo members, 42% were nobles, 38% peasants, 10% merchants, 6.5% clergy, and 3% others, then in provincial zemstvo assemblies, nobles held an absolute majority — 74.2%, while the merchant class made up 10.9%, the peasantry 10.6%, and others 4%. These bodies were deprived of political functions. The sphere of zemstvo activity was limited exclusively to economic issues of local importance. They were responsible for: the construction and maintenance of local roads, zemstvo mail, zemstvo schools, hospitals, almshouses (charitable institutions for the maintenance of disabled persons) and shelters, the care of local trade and industry, and local food supply. But the main point was that the zemstvos were under the control of central and local authorities — the Minister of Internal Affairs and the Governor, who had the right to suspend any resolution of the zemstvo assembly if they deemed it “contrary to laws or the general interests of the state”. At the same time, the bodies themselves, as Sergei Witte noted, sought to expand their activities, to enter into closer contact with peasant self-government, and to gain the opportunity to participate in legislative activities. The question was even raised about creating a central all-zemstvo body — a Zemstvo Sobor — which, in turn, caused pressure from the authorities on the zemstvos on one hand, and opposition from the zemstvos on the other — in particular, there were persistent demands for the creation of a Constitution⁴⁴.

In the same year of 1864, a judicial reform was carried out, resulting in the introduction of a non-class independent court, adversarial proceedings, and public trials with the participation of a lawyer, and the institution of jurors appeared. Women were granted the right to receive higher education⁴⁵. University autonomy was expanded, and it became possible for private individuals and local self-government bodies to open elementary schools. Censorship was abolished for many books and periodicals. A reorganization of urban self-government was also being prepared.

In 1870, another important reform was carried out, similar to the zemstvo one, namely the urban reform, which was based on the principle of non-class status. The representative body of urban government became the City Duma. Its deputies (members) were elected by the population for four years regardless of social class. Local residents (“urban inhabitants”) who were subjects of the Russian Empire, had reached the age of 25, were not restricted in their rights, and met the requirements of the property qualification acquired the right to vote in municipal elections. The property qualification was indeed a restriction on democracy in this case — in fact, the right to vote was held by persons with merchant certificates, owners of factories and other industrial or commercial establishments located on urban land with an annual production turnover of at least 6,000 rubles, real estate owners who paid at least 1,000 rubles from their income (in cities with 2 to 10 thousand inhabitants), as well as representatives of private individuals and enterprises. In fact, the so-called “census elements” received the right to vote.

Alexander II generally cannot be called a democratic figure in the full sense of the word, as evidenced by the suppression of the Polish Uprising of 1863–1864, the strengthening of the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty’s Own Chancellery, and aggressive foreign policy. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 was a controversial process — on the one hand, Alexander achieved the liberation of the Balkan states from the authoritarian and conservative Ottoman Empire; on the other hand, the war was accompanied by heavy human losses. One of the emperor’s most famous ministers, Mikhail Loris-Melikov, also — despite some democratic ideas (for example, the so-called “Loris-Melikov Constitution”, a package of proposals to ensure elections in cities and zemstvos with the subsequent selection of 10–15 most “experienced” representatives to the State Council) — combined them with repressions and the suppression of the “non-systemic” opposition.

The aforementioned actions, coupled with the absence of a parliamentary system, a powerful statist lobby, and the insufficient pace of democratization resulting from the latter factor, became the conditions in which opposition movements continued to develop and begin radicalizing. First and foremost, this was the Narodnik (Populist) movement, which generally strived for social justice and popular rule, advocated for the realization of the ideals of utopian socialism, yet still did not realize the importance of the demand for parliamentary democracy. Organizations such as “Land and Liberty” (Zemlya i Volya), the Ishutinites, the “Ruble Society”, and so on were created. The most radical was the “People’s Punishment” (Narodnaya Rasprava) organization led by Sergey Nechayev, the author of “The Catechism of a Revolutionary” and the murderer of one of his organization’s members — seemingly, this very organization made the tradition of anti-democratic radicals significant within the Russian opposition. As a rule, the terrorist acts of radical Narodniks led to an intensification of reaction (such as the aforementioned strengthening of the Third Section, or the accession of Alexander III) or other failures — for example, their activities inspired Fyodor Dostoevsky to write the novel “Demons”, which worked to foster a revulsion toward the opposition in Russian society.

More moderate organizations paid more attention to education — such as the Great Society of Propaganda (the “Tchaikovskites”). One of the most prominent figures of the society, Nikolai Tchaikovsky, worked abroad, where he studied the experience of building democratic states and founded the Free Russian Press Fund. Tchaikovsky actively raised funds for his movement, and in 1905, together with Japanese Colonel Motojiro Akashi, Georgy Gapon, and Konni Zilliacus, he organized an operation to deliver weapons for Russian and Finnish revolutionaries on the steamship “John Grafton”. The Tchaikovskites were difficult to call democrats, as they advocated for a stateless system⁴⁶. Later, figures such as Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Sofia Perovskaya, Mark Natanson, and others grew out of this movement. Among them at that time was also Pavel Axelrod, who would later become one of the most important figures in the RSDLP.

In 1874, the Narodniks began the famous “going to the people” campaign with the aim of preparing a peasant revolution in Russia. Participants of the movement traveled from village to village, often disguised as peasants, propagated the ideals of anarchism, inciting rebellion and the overthrow of the monarchy, and their propaganda officially covered 37 provinces⁴⁷. During this campaign, it was discovered that the peasants were either uninterested in rebellion or hostile to anarchist ideas. Most of the participants in the “Going to the People” movement were arrested and convicted in the “Trial of the 193”. This forced the Narodniks to transition from “mobile” to “settled” propaganda (often living in villages under the guise of clerks or doctors and engaging in education). The organizational system of circles was replaced by the first centralized revolutionary organization, which was also called “Land and Liberty” (sometimes the first organization with this name is called “Land and Liberty of the 1860s”, and the second “Land and Liberty of the 1870s”). In 1879, the organization split into two parts — “Black Repartition” (Cherny Peredel), which maintained the previous propaganda tactics, and “The People’s Will” (Narodnaya Volya), an underground party that prepared a coup aimed at establishing a parliamentary republic. The participants of “Black Repartition” were opponents of revolutionary terror.

“The People’s Will” had an all-Russian scale, a developed ideological platform (several programmatic documents and a significant number of programmatic articles), and an organizational structure. It was the first of the Narodnik organizations to declare the necessity of fighting the government for political freedoms (conscience, press, assembly, association, electoral agitation) and the establishment of a republic⁴⁸. The party set its goals as follows: to establish a permanent popular representation as the supreme organ of power; to introduce universal suffrage, the electivity of all state positions, and national equality; to grant nations the right to self-determination; to nationalize land, factories, and plants, transferring land to the use of peasants and industrial enterprises to workers’ communes; and to liberate the peasant commune from administrative tutelage.

“The People’s Will” created workers’ circles, mutual aid funds, participated in organizing strikes, and arranged student assemblies and demonstrations. In response to the executions of revolutionaries (21 people in 1879–1880), the organization passed a death sentence on Alexander II and declared “red terror” against government representatives⁴⁹, resulting in the emperor’s assassination in 1881. Immediately after this, the Executive Committee appealed to the new emperor, Alexander III, with a letter declaring its readiness to cease the “armed struggle” on the condition that a Constituent Assembly be convened, hoping that it would vote to replace the autocracy with a republic. However, the new tsar held a reactionary stance; at the end of 1881, the military organization of “The People’s Will” planned to arrest Alexander III’s family and launch an uprising in Kronstadt, followed by a march on St. Petersburg, where an uprising was also supposed to begin (the plan was not implemented due to the arrests of Military Organization members). By the spring of 1883, almost the entire membership of the party had been arrested.

Returning to the reign of Alexander II, it should be noted that the culture of revolutionary democracy continued to develop during this time. Nikolai Chernyshevsky wrote the novel “What Is to Be Done?”, and Leo Tolstoy published his works. The influence of populist ideology manifested itself in visual arts through the works of painters such as Vasily Vereshchagin, Vladimir Makovsky, Vasily Perov, Ilya Repin, and others.

The assassination of the emperor only harmed the democratic movement — he was succeeded by his son Alexander III, who became one of the most reactionary rulers in Russian history. The statist Konstantin Pobedonostsev became the “gray eminence” under his rule. After this, the fate of the country was sealed, and a future Civil War became inevitable. The new emperor began to carry out so-called “counter-reforms”, anti-Semitic policies, strengthening of security services (the “Okhrana”), segregation measures (the “circular on cook’s children”), liquidated university autonomy, and limited peasant self-government. Simultaneously, Alexander III attempted to modernize industry, failing to understand that modernization creates threats to authoritarianism.

Under these conditions, the Narodniks, devastated by repressions, continued to publish newspapers and attempted to revive the party⁵⁰, and neo-populism emerged (from which the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Popular Socialist Party would soon grow). Also, in 1883, the “Emancipation of Labor” group appeared (founded by former members of “Black Repartition”), which would later become the foundation for the RSDLP — the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. The group’s goals were the dissemination of Marxist ideas, which had reached Russian territory, and the preparation of conditions for creating a party. The group aimed first for the establishment of a democratic republic, and then for socialism⁵¹. The group’s illegal printing house in Geneva published books, collections, and leaflets, which were also illegally smuggled into Russia and distributed among the revolutionary milieu. The group established ties with social-democratic organizations in Russia and with European social democrats, and participated in international socialist congresses.

Another democratic tradition was also emerging — namely, the zemstvo movement, from which the liberal-democratic Russian movement and the Constitutional Democratic Party would later grow. Participants of the zemstvo movement (which, in truth, originated in the last few years of Alexander II’s reign) advocated for equal voting rights for all population groups in zemstvo elections, the liberation of zemstvos from government regulation, the introduction of universal primary education, the support of communal land ownership as a means against the dispossession of peasants, the abolition of collective responsibility in communes, the replacement of the poll tax with progressive taxation, the development of land credit, freedom of the press, and the expansion of the jurisdiction of jury trials⁵². That is to say, liberal democrats in Russia historically advocated for a progressive tax! Most participants in the movement supported the idea of organizing a permanent consultative body under the emperor composed of zemstvo representatives (a Zemstvo Sobor, or Council), and the most radical ones advocated for the creation of a legislative representative body and the introduction of all basic democratic rights and freedoms. Participants of the movement wrote letters to the emperor asking him to convene a Zemstvo Sobor, grant freedom of the press, and ensure the inviolability of personal rights and the independence of the judiciary. The zemstvo movement held congresses, spoke out in the press, and published and distributed literature (including illegal publications).

Democratic culture managed to manifest itself even during the era of counter-reforms. One of the most brilliant humanistic figures of that time was Vladimir Korolenko. Democratic views, close respectively to the Narodniks and social democrats, were held by writers Dmitry Mamin-Sibiryak and Maxim Gorky.

After the death of Alexander III in 1894, Nicholas II became the Emperor of Russia — a man of far from the most democratic views; however, for the democrats, what mattered was that he was a person capable of compromise. An era had begun that could have ended in Russia’s flourishing, yet it ended tragically.

The second hybrid regime

By the end of the 19th century, as a result of Alexander III’s policies, the situation in Russia began to resemble a volcano ready to erupt; it worsened even further during the economic crisis of 1900–1903. Starting in 1899, a wave of student demonstrations began. Revolutionary terror continued — in 1901, Minister Nikolai Bogolepov was killed, in 1902, Minister Dmitry Sipyagin, and in 1904, Minister Vyacheslav Plehve. In July-August 1903, a massive political strike occurred in the South of Russia and in Transcaucasia, in which about 200,000 workers participated.

After the crisis, illegal organizations of zemstvo liberals were created — the Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists (in 1903) and the Union of Liberation (in 1904). The former advocated for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy, and at the organization’s Second Congress, the overwhelming majority of members spoke in favor of introducing political freedoms and a parliament⁵³, while the Fourth Congress decided on the necessity of universal, direct, equal, and secret elections, as well as socio-economic reforms, one of which was to be the expansion of peasant land ownership at the expense of the state. The Union of Liberation recognized its tasks as the establishment of a constitutional order, the affirmation of the principles of a state governed by the rule of law (primarily personal freedom), the implementation of broad agrarian reform in favor of the peasants, and the reform of labor legislation. It included such well-known figures as Nikolai Berdyaev, Vladimir Vernadsky, Pyotr Struve, Pavel Milyukov, and Andrei Shingarev. Representatives of the organization took part in the Paris Congress of Russian opposition and revolutionary organizations (which opened on September 30, 1904), where an agreement was reached on a unified strike against the government.

The Union of Liberation also held the “Banquet Campaign” of 1904. About 120 banquets took place in 34 Russian cities (attended by up to 50 thousand people): as a rule, representatives of one profession (doctors, lawyers, teachers, and so on) gathered in restaurants, anti-government speeches were delivered; the demands of some speakers went beyond the program (the necessity of class struggle, social revolution). The campaign accelerated the formation of a number of professional-political unions of the Russian intelligentsia (Academic Union, All-Russian Union of Lawyers) and prompted the workers of Saint Petersburg to draw up a petition to Nicholas II (more on this later). The Union of Liberation actively participated in the creation and formation of trade unions, as well as the Union of Unions. Both the Union of Zemstvo Constitutionalists and the Union of Liberation united figures of the left wing of the zemstvo movement; socialists often joined as well. In 1905, the parties decided at their congresses to jointly create the Constitutional Democratic Party, also subsequently known as the “Cadets”.

Other democratic parties were also emerging. In 1901–1902, the Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, also known as the “SRs”, was formed from a number of Narodnik groups. At the end of 1905, its founding congress took place, where the program developed by Victor Chernov was adopted. The Combat Organization, which had its own charter and treasury, operated within the party with autonomous status. The central print organs were the newspapers “Revolutionary Russia” (Revolyutsionnaya Rossiya) and “Banner of Labor” (Znamya Truda). In 1905, the party’s membership was about 3 thousand people; in 1906–1907, it was about 60–65 thousand; and in September 1917, over 1 million people. The PSR program asserted that capitalism is not an organic phenomenon for Russia and was brought in from the outside⁵⁴. Its tasks were set as the overthrow of the autocracy, the convocation of a constituent assembly, the establishment of a federative democratic republic with the provision of national-cultural autonomy to every nation, autonomy for urban and rural communes, the ensuring of the rotation and accountability of all officials; the separation of church from state, the introduction of compulsory universal free education, labor protection legislation, and an 8-hour workday. The ultimate goal was proclaimed to be a “social-revolutionary upheaval”, the destruction of private ownership of natural resources and means of production, and the division of society into classes.

However, even before both the Cadets and the SRs, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) was created, formed at the first congress in Minsk in 1898. It was created from the merger of “Emancipation of Labor” (based in Geneva) with the Saint Petersburg “Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class” — one of the first illegal Marxist organizations of the Russian Empire. It included Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, and Alexander Potresov. The “Union” printed and distributed leaflets and created workers’ circles in factories and plants. The main print organ of the RSDLP was the newspaper “Iskra” (The Spark). At the Second Congress of the party, held in Brussels and London, the immediate political tasks of the RSDLP (minimum program) were formulated: the overthrow of the autocracy and the establishment of a democratic republic, the provision of the right to self-determination for the peoples of Russia, the resolution of the labor question (establishment of an 8-hour workday, state insurance, etc.), the return to the peasants of the “otrezki” (land they lost as a result of the Peasant Reform of 1861), and the abolition of redemption and quitrent payments, with the return of already paid sums. The ultimate goal of the party (maximum program) was proclaimed to be the “social revolution of the proletariat” — its conquest of political power in the form of a dictatorship, the suppression of the “resistance of the exploiters”, the replacement of private ownership of means of production with public ownership, the systematic organization of the production process, and the destruction of all forms of exploitation and division of society into classes. We see that the RSDLP initially advocated for the “dictatorship of the proletariat“, albeit as a distant prospect, meaning it was not a democratic party in the full sense of the word. However, the party soon split into “Mensheviks” (supporters of Martov), who would later move to democratic positions, and “Bolsheviks” (supporters of Lenin). The central print organ of the Bolsheviks would become the newspaper “Vperyod” (Forward).

In 1905, the Union of Unions was created — a federation of autonomous political professional unions. Its goals were to mobilize forces for the struggle against the government and to convene a Constituent Assembly. The creation of the Union was prepared by the agitation of the Union of Liberation. Later, the Peasant Union also joined it, and by September 1905, the total membership of the associations was about 40 thousand people.

In the course of the war with Japan (1904–1905), which was catastrophic for Russia, a procession of workers (25–30 thousand people) took place in Saint Petersburg to the Winter Palace with the aim of handing a petition to the emperor, which contained a demand to convene a Constituent Assembly, while maintaining faith in the tsar; that is, in essence, the petition expressed a desire for a transition to a constitutional monarchy. The procession ended with the shooting of the demonstration, which went down in history under the name “Bloody Sunday”. The shooting outraged Russian society, and the wave of this outrage grew into the Revolution of 1905–1907. As a retaliatory measure, the SRs assassinated the Moscow Governor-General, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich.

In June 1905, the Black Sea Fleet mutinied, and in October an all-Russian political strike took place⁵⁵ (organized with the assistance of the Union of Unions). The strike achieved the fulfillment of some of its demands — amnesty for political prisoners and the freedoms granted by the Manifesto of October 17, 1905: a two-chamber parliamentary system was created (the State Duma and the State Council), the creation of public organizations and political parties was facilitated (the Temporary Rules on Societies and Associations — registration was introduced instead of the authorities’ permission for their organization, which meant the legalization of political parties that did not advocate for changing the state system). Witte became the Chairman of the Council of Ministers and, with the sanction of the emperor, invited leaders of the liberal opposition (Alexander Guchkov, Pavel Milyukov, and several others) to join the government. However, they put forward a demand for the convocation of a Constituent Assembly and a number of other conditions unacceptable to the authorities, refusing to enter the government. Nicholas II approved the Temporary Rules on the Press of 1905–1906 (a notification procedure for opening periodicals was established, and preliminary censorship was abolished). During the general strike, grassroots organs of self-government — Soviets — also began to form (initially in the form of organs of leadership for the uprising).

In December 1905, armed uprisings began under the slogans “Down with the autocracy!”, “Land and Liberty!”. The organization was handled by the SRs, Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, and anarchists. The start of the uprisings was preceded by mass strikes of workers and employees. The insurgents united into armed squads (some were created based on party affiliation), built barricades, killed representatives of the police, gendarmerie, and senior bureaucracy, issued their own newspapers, organized medical detachments to help the wounded, sometimes levied special taxes on entrepreneurs, and freed prisoners from jails⁵⁶. The uprisings were accompanied by the looting of state and private property. The government’s struggle against the insurgents was complicated by the penetration of revolutionary sentiments into the army. The active participation of railway workers and employees in the uprisings and strikes hindered the delivery of government-loyal troops to the cities engulfed by the uprising and facilitated the insurgents’ ability to receive reinforcements from other cities. In January 1906, the uprisings were suppressed by government troops and the police.

In March 1906, the first elections to the legislative body of the Russian Empire, the State Duma (de facto the lower house of parliament), took place, but this body was limited both in its electoral system and in its functionality. Let us start with the elections, and what is worth noting here is that people were divided into curiae, of which there were four: landowner, urban, peasant, and worker⁵⁷. The elections were indirect, taking place through several stages of specially formed electoral colleges. The maximum number — 4 stages — was provided for the peasant curia (rural, volost, and district assemblies successively chose representatives, and the district assembly in turn sent electors to the provincial electoral assembly). Men under 25, women, students, military personnel, and those holding certain positions did not have the right to vote⁵⁸, and there were also many property qualifications that varied across curiae (in particular, the property qualification). Furthermore, during the elections, agitation was conducted by the authorities against opposition parties (Constitutional Democrats, Social Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, and so on), pressure was exerted on voters, and arrests were made⁵⁹, although ultimately the effect of this was minimal.

It can be said that the parliament of the Russian Empire was very outdated in its method of election. Even in the Grand Duchy of Finland (which was part of Russia), elections were very progressive⁶⁰: in particular, they were direct and secret, and deputies were elected on the basis of universal and equal suffrage. Women were granted voting rights (both active and passive) on an equal footing with men. Elections were held under a proportional system. The parliament itself was oppositional in nature, which is why it was dissolved very frequently (8 times in 1908–1917)⁶¹. Despite a similar voting system and pressure, the opposition — represented by those same Constitutional Democrats, the Trudovik Group, and the Social Democrats — won the majority in the First State Duma of the Russian Empire, securing 306 out of 497 seats, which is about 61.5% of the seats⁶².

At a meeting with Nicholas II on April 27, 1906, deputies of the lower house of the Duma demanded a political amnesty, radical reforms in the agrarian sphere, and the granting of greater rights to national borderlands. It was not possible to reach an agreement with Nicholas, who had only recently made concessions in the form of creating a parliament, and in July 1906 the emperor dissolved the Duma, dismissed the government, and appointed Pyotr Stolypin as prime minister. This was a wrong step, and the blame here lies both on the opposition’s weak understanding of the situation and on Nicholas’s conservatism. In response to the dissolution of the Duma, the opposition issued the Vyborg Manifesto. It called on citizens to protest against the dissolution of the Duma, not to pay taxes, to evade military conscription, and declared invalid any state loans that would be concluded without the consent of the Duma. Criminal prosecution was initiated against the signatories, and 167 of them were sentenced in 1907 to three months in prison, which meant the deprivation of their voting rights in subsequent elections to the State Duma and to public office.

Under constant pressure from the opposition, Nicholas was forced to carry out certain democratic reforms. In 1906, he equalized the peasants with other social estates: they were given the opportunity to enter public service without restrictions, freely leave the commune, travel across the country, and choose their place of residence. Two years earlier, he had approved Pyotr Sviatopolk-Mirsky’s proposal to pursue a policy of religious tolerance.

The composition of the second Duma turned out to be even more radical than that of the first: for example, it included Socialist-Revolutionaries, the Peasant Union (they entered into a faction with the Trudovik Group), and Popular Socialists⁶³. The deputies spoke out against the agricultural transformations carried out by the government (Pyotr Stolypin’s reforms) and, like the deputies of the first Duma, proposed projects for the municipalization, socialization of all land, or forced alienation of part of the landowners’ land for compensation. They allowed insulting outbursts not only against the government and the army (the “Zurabov incident”), but also personally against Nicholas II. This led to the “Coup of June Third” in 1907, when the emperor decided to dissolve the Duma once again and also announced a change to the electoral law (doing so in violation of his own law without the consent of the Duma itself and the State Council⁶⁴), which gave an advantage in elections to landowners rather than peasants. As a result, the third Duma (dubbed the “landowners’ Duma”), where nationalists and conservatives held the majority, became much more convenient for the emperor and the ruling elites. The tsar not only turned the parliament and elections into a farce, into a controlled clown show, constantly changing his own decisions and showing that laws did not apply to him, but in doing so, he pushed Russia even further onto the path of civil war. What the parliament could have solved through reforms, the Bolsheviks would later solve through rifles and bayonets, because the parliament was not allowed to do it peacefully.

Following the issuance of the Manifesto of October 17, the “Union of 17 October” party (also known as the “Octobrists”) was formed on the basis of the moderate wing of the zemstvo movement, representing right-wing liberals and moderate conservatives. The party’s first congress was held in 1906. Its goal was the implementation of the reforms proclaimed in the Manifesto and the transformation of Russia into a constitutional monarchy. The party’s leaders were Alexander Guchkov, Mikhail Rodzianko, Nikolai Khomyakov, and Vladimir Lvov. The party advocated for the expansion of zemstvo and urban self-government rights, their extension to the entire territory of the country, the preservation of the country’s unitary structure under the autonomy of the Grand Duchy of Finland, and the gradual abolition of restrictions against Jews. Later, it would play a rather significant role in the February Revolution, despite having frequently formed blocs with the right wing and reaction prior to that (though in 1913 Guchkov would declare the policy of cooperation with the authorities to be unpromising).

In 1906, two more parties were founded — the Party of Peaceful Renewal and the Party of Democratic Reforms, which later broke up, with some of their members organizing the Progressist Party in 1912, representing the center of the liberal movement between the left-wing Cadets and the right-wing Octobrists. Program: establishment of government accountability to the State Duma, expansion of the voter base (prospectively — universal and equal suffrage), abolition of the enhanced and extraordinary security regime, administrative oversight over zemstvo and urban self-government bodies, and so on. Among the party’s leaders were Ivan Efremov and Alexander Konovalov.

New parties were also being created on the left. In 1906, the Popular Socialist Party (also known as the “Popular Socialists” or “trudoviks-populists”) was created, occupying a place in the party system between the Cadets and the SRs. Its founders were publicists of the magazine “Russian Wealth” (Russkoye Bogatstvo). The Popular Socialist platform provided for the struggle to achieve basic civil rights and freedoms, the creation of a unicameral parliament with broad powers, and the expansion of the functions of local self-government bodies. They advocated for the nationalization of land (gradual through compensation for allotment and private lands, immediate for other categories of land) and its distribution to direct producers according to labor norms. They planned to grant each nation the right to establish its own autonomy within Russia, involve workers in production management, introduce the freedom of strikes and trade unions, introduce an income tax, and abandon the protectionist policy.

Finally, in 1906, the Trudovik Group (also known as the “Trudoviks”) was created, one of whose leaders would become Alexander Kerensky. The draft program of the Trudoviks provided for the establishment of democratic freedoms, the introduction of universal suffrage, an 8-hour workday with a ban on child labor (under 16 years of age), the nationalization (gratuitous or for compensation) of all lands (except peasant allotment and privately owned lands not exceeding the “labor norm”) and their transfer to peasants for use via elected peasant land committees.

The SR party continued to develop, becoming large. During the Revolution of 1905–1907 alone, the SRs published 196 periodicals, published no less than 24 million copies of books and brochures in many languages of the peoples of Russia, and millions of copies of leaflets. They also played a significant role in deploying the peasant movement during this period. After the revolution, the activity of the SRs declined as repressions were deployed against them, and the scandal involving the exposure of the tsarist Okhrana provocateur Yevno Azef also had an impact. Following these events, the leadership of the PSR condemned terrorist methods.

Meanwhile, after the Revolution of 1905–1907, the RSDLP actively expanded. The working masses demanded the unification of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, and at the end of December 1905, a new composition of the party’s Central Committee was formed on a parity basis, preparing the so-called Unification Congress of the party (held in 1906 in Stockholm). The congress decided on the entry into the RSDLP of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL, numbering 26 thousand members), the Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party (renamed at the same time to the Social Democracy of the Latvian Krai — SDLK; 14 thousand members), and the Bund (about 33 thousand members). The unified Central Committee elected by the congress included 7 Mensheviks and 3 Bolsheviks, while the Central Organ (the newspaper “Social-Democrat”) included only Mensheviks. Following the issuance of the Manifesto of October 17, several currents emerged within the party. The Menshevik “liquidators” called for abandoning illegal activities and shifting the center of gravity of party work to trade unions, various legal organizations, and the State Duma. The Bolshevik “otzovists” (recallists), on the other hand, proposed recalling deputies from the Duma and focusing on illegal work. The “Vperyod” group of the RSDLP advocated for the unification of all trends within the RSDLP and against extreme viewpoints on parliamentarism. The Menshevik “party members” considered it necessary to preserve illegal party structures.

After the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the left wing of the Mensheviks and SRs, as well as the Bolsheviks, immediately took an anti-war stance. In 1915, following defeats at the fronts, the “Progressive Bloc” was formed — an alliance of Duma deputies and members of the State Council that demanded the replacement of the government with a “cabinet of confidence” consisting of public figures and officials. The bloc’s program was published in newspapers in August 1915. According to this program, the new government was to change the composition of the local administration, eliminate administrative oversight over the activities of urban and zemstvo self-government while expanding their powers and the circle of voters, introduce zemstvos in the borderlands, abolish national and religious restrictions as well as “constraints” on the press, restore Polish and Finnish autonomy, introduce freedom for trade unions, declare an amnesty for political prisoners, and so on. The “Progressive Bloc” actively criticized the power and authority of the emperor, especially during the Duma session that began in November 1916. At the end of 1916, the Police Department admitted that it was unable to control the situation in Russia, but Nicholas still postponed long-overdue reforms until the end of the war.

The February revolution

Military failures, mounting inflation, the decline in the purchasing power of the ruble, and disruptions in the supply of bread and basic necessities created an explosive situation in society. In January 1917, strikes began in memory of the events of “Bloody Sunday”, with 150,000 workers striking. In February, at a meeting of the State Duma, Milyukov, Kerensky, and Menshevik Nikolai Chkheidze delivered harsh criticisms of the government. On February 17, a strike began at the Putilov Plant, triggering a solidarity movement among workers across all of Petrograd. On February 23, mass strikes and demonstrations took place. The first clashes occurred between demonstrators and Cossacks and police. On February 24, a general strike began (over 214,000 workers at 224 enterprises). On Znamenskaya Square, the Cossacks refused to act against the massive gathering of protesters; the police opened fire on the protesters on February 26. On February 27, the general strike escalated into an armed uprising in Petrograd.

In the morning, soldiers of the Volhynian, Lithuanian, and Preobrazhensky regiments mutinied (the number of insurgent soldiers more than doubled by the end of the day), joining forces with the striking workers. The District Court was set on fire, prisoners were released from the House of Preliminary Detention, and later — prisoners from Kresty Prison and the Lithuanian Castle. Over 385,000 workers from 869 enterprises took to the streets. The government completely lost control of the capital. Kerensky, Chkheidze, and Matvey Skobelev, speaking before workers and soldiers at the Tauride Palace, ensured the protection of the palace and gave instructions to other armed groups of people. In the afternoon, the Council of Elders of the State Duma, on the instructions of a private meeting of its deputies (the initiative belonged to the “Progressive Bloc”), elected the Provisional Committee of the State Duma to restore order in Petrograd and to communicate with institutions and individuals, which marked the beginning of the coup d’état. The Provisional Committee of the State Duma sent its commissioners, mainly Duma deputies, to ministries, other state institutions, military units, provinces, districts, and cities. By evening, the Petrograd Soviet, headed by Chkheidze, was formed in the Tauride Palace.

Driven into a corner by the civil movement, Nicholas II agreed to “grant” Russia a ministry responsible to the Duma headed by Rodzianko, but it was too late. Regardless of this, the Provisional Committee of the State Duma formed the Provisional Government headed by Prince Georgy Lvov. On March 2, the emperor abdicated power not only for himself, but also for Tsarevich Alexei in favor of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich. The latter, under pressure from the Provisional Committee of the State Duma and the Provisional Government, and especially Kerensky, refused on March 3 to accept the throne until the issue was resolved by the future Constituent Assembly. The February Revolution had taken place, and Russia became a republic. The first composition of the Provisional Government included independents, Cadets, Octobrists, and the SR (at the time of foundation, a Trudovik) Kerensky.

During the revolution in Petrograd, two soviets were elected — of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, which were soon united into the Petrograd Soviet, an elective revolutionary body headed by Chkheidze, with Menshevik Irakli Tsereteli as the informal leader of its executive committee. Following this, soviets began to be massively formed throughout Russia. Members of the Petrograd Soviet decided not to join the government (Kerensky did so without the official consent of the soviet). In addition to the soviets, public executive committees also began to form, created by provincial zemstvos and urban public administrations to restore order and to communicate with institutions and individuals. They participated in removing governors from power. In general, power was divided between the government, the soviets, and public committees (the government prevented the resumption of the State Duma’s work), without being sufficiently centralized to implement normal state governance.

The most numerous party after the February Revolution turned out to be the socialist PSR. At the same time, a split emerged within the party between the “rights” (who were for gradual socialist reforms and a temporary coalition with liberal-democratic forces) and the “lefts” (who were for the power of the Soviets and the immediate construction of socialism).

The Provisional Government began preparations for elections to the Constituent Assembly and the development of a legislative framework. Suffrage was granted to all citizens of both sexes who had reached the age of 20, and for the first time in world practice, the right to vote was granted to military personnel. The police were replaced by a militia led by urban and zemstvo administrations. Zemstvos began to be introduced throughout Russia; volost zemstvos were introduced (not everywhere, but in 43 provinces that previously had district and provincial zemstvos), and direct, universal, equal, and secret elections of volost and district councilors (glasnye) also took place (provincial ones were elected by district zemstvo assemblies or urban dumas)⁶⁵. An amnesty for political prisoners was announced, and the death penalty (though it was restored at the front), exile, and penal servitude were abolished. The Provisional Government lifted all restrictions stemming from citizens’ belonging to a particular religion or nationality, banned the labor of women and adolescents at night, and prohibited the collection of fines from industrial enterprise workers.

Reforms were also carried out by the Petrograd Soviet — for example, it was the Petrograd Soviet that adopted “Order No. 1”, which abolished one-man command in the army (this reform was extremely unsuccessful and shows that the desire for direct democracy everywhere and anywhere is disastrous; democracy must begin by treading proven paths). On March 10, an agreement was signed between the Petrograd Soviet and the Petrograd Society of Factory and Plant Owners on introducing an 8-hour workday at Petrograd enterprises and organizing factory committees.

In April, the first government crisis occurred — Milyukov sent a note to the Allied powers stating the “all-people’s aspiration to bring the world war to a decisive victory”. The note provoked anti-government protests in Petrograd, which ended with the resignation of Milyukov and Guchkov, and socialists entered the government (alongside Kerensky — Skobelev, Tsereteli, Chernov, and Alexei Peshekhonov; a section of the Mensheviks and SRs, as well as the Bolsheviks, opposed this). In July, a new crisis arose: due to disagreements over certain bills, as well as the timing of elections and the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, the Cadets left the government, and Kerensky became the head of the government. At the same time, at the call of soldiers from the 1st Machine-Gun Regiment, who were under Bolshevik influence, spontaneous anti-government demonstrations began in Petrograd demanding the resignation of the Provisional Government and the transfer of all power to the Soviets. Soon the Bolsheviks took charge of these demonstrations, and their numbers reached 400,000–500,000 people⁶⁶ (meanwhile, the holding of the demonstration had been banned by the Central Executive Committee). The July Days ended with government-loyal troops summoned to Petrograd taking control of the city center, while parts of the demonstrators were disarmed and disbanded. Many Bolsheviks were arrested. However, this was only a trial run by the Bolsheviks; they would shine another time.

The next crisis occurred as a result of the Kornilov affair, when the top military leadership headed by Lavr Kornilov decided that military failures were linked to democratization in general, and that a strong government should be established in the country. Kornilov moved troops toward Petrograd, and the Provisional Government was forced to deploy the forces of the pro-Bolshevik Red Guard against them. Under the influence of propaganda, Kornilov’s troops stopped obeying orders and slipped out of control. These events led to an increase in the influence of the Bolsheviks, who frightened the masses with the prospect of a second Kornilov movement. But other factors also led to the growth of their influence — above all, the sluggishness of the Provisional Government and its mistakes (such as launching an offensive at the front instead of trying to conclude an immediate peace). The Provisional Government made the same mistakes as the tsar — dilatoriness in resolving long-overdue issues, such as the land question.

The era of the Second Hybrid Period was accompanied by the creative work of many cultural figures with democratic views. For example, the famous writer Mikhail Prishvin was the editor of an SR newspaper, and Alexei Remizov and Alexander Grin were also close to the SRs. Konstantin Balmont welcomed the February Revolution and opposed the Bolshevik coup, and Alexei Kuprin and Dmitry Merezhkovsky reacted similarly. Alexei Shchekoldin and Ivan Bunin called themselves social democrats.

Bolshevik dictatorship and the purge of democracy

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks, sensing a favorable situation for seizing power, organized a coup d’état with the help of detachments of soldiers, sailors, and Red Guards, among whom they had long and successfully carried out propaganda. The Provisional Government was overthrown, all its members were arrested, and an authoritarian system was gradually established in the country. In essence, the Bolsheviks committed a betrayal of the democratic movement — after all, the Constituent Assembly gave them the opportunity to participate in elections and win them, but that was not enough for them. They were also supported by the Left SRs, who formed a government together with them as junior partners.

The PSR immediately condemned the October coup and launched the initiative to create the Committee for the Salvation of the Homeland and the Revolution. The Committee urged citizens not to obey the orders of the Bolshevik authorities and supported the strike of employees of central state institutions. Preparations began for anti-Bolshevik uprisings, which served as the prologue to the civil war. Those who said that Russia was not ripe for socialism were right, because the Bolsheviks’ coming to power did not subsequently lead to the building of successful socialism, but rather led to a civil war, and the Bolsheviks did not have overwhelming support among the masses, as the elections to the Constituent Assembly would later show. The Bolsheviks initially supported the idea of the Constituent Assembly, however, when it turned out that the PSR had become the most popular party in the elections, they decided to dissolve it. We examined the history of the Constituent Assembly in more detail in this article.

The Bolsheviks began the process of “Bolshevization of the soviets” (we analyzed it here), liquidated the parliamentary system, began conducting nationalization (which meant the transfer of resources into the hands of the Bolsheviks), and engaged in active propaganda among citizens. By the decree of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR on June 14, 1918, members of the RSDLP, as well as the Right SRs, were excluded from the Soviets of all levels and effectively found themselves in a semi-legal status⁶⁷. However, they did not only act with the whip — in parallel with establishing a dictatorship, they also carried out many progressive reforms: reform of the language, transition to the Julian calendar, legislative establishment of an 8-hour workday, social security reforms, introduction of free education, liquidation of illiteracy, liquidation of social estates and privileges of the nobility, expansion of women’s rights, permission for abortions, measures to eliminate epidemics, opening of new libraries, the country’s withdrawal from World War I, separation of Church and state, and so on. Many of these transformations were met positively by citizens, but the masses greatly underestimated the role and influence of the country’s political system on the well-being of society. It turned out that democracy is more important than a social state and economic policy, because without it, the social state will in the overwhelming majority of cases be short-lived and become unviable, while with a developed democracy, it is possible to carry out those very same social reforms.

But because of the ignorance of this fact by a significant part of the citizens and the Bolsheviks themselves, anti-democratic forces intercepted the initiative in Russia. Left-wing forces opposed the Bolsheviks relatively weakly. The “Union for the Rebirth of Russia” was created, which included Cadets, SRs, Popular Socialists, social democrats from the “Yedinstvo” (Unity) group, and figures of the cooperative movement. Another part of the Cadets organized the “National Center”, which would later also betray democracy and assist in the overthrow of the Ufa Directory and the transfer of power to Alexander Kolchak.

Several democratic governments were created in opposition to the power of the Bolsheviks, which had strengthened in Moscow and Petrograd. They were mainly formed in territories that were later cleared of the Bolsheviks by the Czechoslovak Legion. One of these governments was the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (KOMUCH), organized by the SRs in the Volga region. In Tomsk, the SRs and Siberian regionalists created the Provisional Siberian Government; in Arkhangelsk, those same SRs (together with officers who held right-wing positions) — the Supreme Administration of the Northern Region (later — the Provisional Government of the Northern Region); in the Urals, various forces formed the Ural Provisional Government; and in Central Asia — the Transcaspian Provisional Government. Many of these governments united into the Ufa Directory. In Kazakhstan, the Alash party, in whose program was the demand for turning Russia into a parliamentary federative republic, formed the Alash Autonomy. In the Caucasus, so-called Mountain governments were formed, and in the Kuban — the Kuban People’s Republic. During the anti-Bolshevik Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising of workers, the Prikamye Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Prikamuch) was also formed.

Many of them declared democratic principles and were generally capable of pursuing democratic policies, but it is worth admitting that their policies also contained authoritarian elements. For example, KOMUCH, which declared itself the authority until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly and carried out social reforms (land nationalization, 8-hour workday, limitation of female labor and prohibition of child labor, establishment of unemployment funds, prohibition of mass layoffs⁶⁸), had a partially repressive policy: for instance, the announced mobilization into the People’s Army of KOMUCH was accompanied by repressive measures. One can note several reasons for such a policy (which also became some of the reasons for the future failures of KOMUCH): in particular, the weak control of local authorities (the government “on the ground is not always up to the height of its calling: either it exceeds its power, or it is completely inactive”⁶⁹), the policy of KOMUCH itself, which was one of the first to create repressive departments: state security, which performed punitive functions, and field courts-martial, which “as a rule, passed death sentences”⁷⁰, as well as the personnel composition of the People’s Army, since the officer corps that carried out the mobilization was for the most part monarchist in its views and often did not hide its intentions to restore the former order after the victory over the Bolsheviks⁷¹.

In that same year of 1918, an uprising occurred against the Bolsheviks, which was raised by the “Left SRs” who had previously united with them, caused by disagreements over the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, over the introduction of a food dictatorship, and over the formation of Committees of the Poor, which were ultimately crushed, the “Left SRs” were excluded from government bodies, their squads were disarmed, and the party itself lost its influence⁷². After this, the dictatorship finally became Bolshevik.

At first, the opposition managed to achieve some successes in the civil war. For instance, the uprising of the Czechoslovak Legion (which supported KOMUCH) liquidated Bolshevik power in the Volga region, the Urals, and Siberia, and also cut off the Turkestan Soviet Republic in Central Asia from the RSFSR. The Don Army drove Soviet forces out of the territory of the Don Host Oblast, the Volunteer Army occupied the Kuban; the Volga Army also conducted an offensive. Later, however, the Bolsheviks managed to launch a counteroffensive, and the situation stabilized for a time.

In late 1918 – early 1919, the conservative “White” officer corps seized power: as a result of a coup in Omsk on December 18, 1918, the Ufa Directory was overthrown and Admiral Kolchak came to power. Despite the fact that Kolchak assured that his dictatorship would last until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly⁷³, it must be stated that democracy in Russia suffered a defeat from that moment on. This is confirmed by the fact that Kolchak first issued an order for the arrest of the members of KOMUCH, and after the workers freed them, the workers’ protest was suppressed, and many of the members of KOMUCH were executed by firing squad.

After some military successes in the initial period, Kolchak ultimately suffered crushing defeats from the Red Army and lost the Gold Reserve of the Empire, which had been captured from the Bolsheviks by Vladimir Kappel’s troops under KOMUCH (before that, Kolchak had spent a good amount of funds from it, though quite ineffectively). The entire country fell under the power of the Bolshevik dictatorship.

The last major movements against the Bolshevik dictatorship were the Tambov Rebellion and the Kronstadt Rebellion. The former began in 1920 and was led by the SR Alexander Antonov. The program of his organization — the Union of Toiling Peasantry — contained demands for the introduction of freedom of trade, the creation of a coalition socialist government with the participation of the PSR and the Mensheviks, as well as the convocation of the Constituent Assembly⁷⁴. The Bolsheviks brutally suppressed this uprising; artillery, armored units, airplanes, and chemical shells were used in the suppression. They employed the tactics of military occupation of insurgent areas, subsequent destruction of the farms and houses of the uprising participants and their families, the taking of hostages, and executions⁷⁵. In 1921, the protesters in Kronstadt, consisting mainly of sailors and the garrison, adopted a resolution demanding the re-election of the Soviets, freedom of activity for socialist parties, the abolition of the institute of commissars, and the restoration of freedom of trade. The Bolsheviks brutally suppressed this protest as well — by the summer of 1921, over 2,100 people had been sentenced to death (not counting those executed without trial), and over 6,400 people had been sentenced to various prison terms⁷⁶.

If the Izhevsk-Votkinsk uprising can conditionally be called a rebellion of workers, then the Antonov Rebellion was a rebellion of peasants, and Kronstadt — a rebellion of the military (sailors). Thus, practically all the most significant and large social groups rebelled, and the Bolsheviks received a clear signal — without changes, the communist regime would only face collapse. Under these conditions, Lenin’s government made some concessions — namely, the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP). Citizens received almost everything one could wish for, with the exception of democracy — a social state and a functioning mixed economy. However, history has shown once again that whoever sacrifices democracy for economic well-being eventually loses both over time.

With this, democratic protests in Russia ended, and the majority of democrats (as, indeed, right-wing authoritarians and non-Bolshevik left-radicals) were forced to emigrate abroad. We have already written an article about representatives of the Russian socialist movement in emigration. After the fall of democracy in Russia, the only place where some vestiges of democratism remained was the Bolshevik party itself. Right up to the end of the 1920s, collective leadership (consisting of members of the Politburo) and intra-party opposition were maintained within it. The most well-known groups were the “Left” Opposition (after the alliance with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev — the “United” Opposition), which included personalities such as Trotsky and Yevgeny Preobrazhensky, and the “Right” Opposition, which included Nikolai Bukharin, Alexei Rykov, and Mikhail Tomsky.

From time to time, other factions also arose, such as the “Workers’ Opposition” or the “Democratic Centralists” (Decists). In the “Draft Platform of the Bolshevik-Leninists (Opposition)” for the XV Congress of the VKP(b), Trotsky and his supporters complained that “the upper echelons of the provincial committees, provincial executive committees, provincial trade union councils, and so on are effectively irremovable”⁷⁹, and put forward demands for “fighting the irremovability of secretaries”⁸⁰ and “establishing a maximum term for holding secretarial and other positions”⁸¹. They also demanded access for the intra-party opposition to the party press, but by that time, there was no one left who could stand up for them and offer support. Therefore, it is logical that by the end of the 1920s, when Joseph Stalin’s coup d’état occurred, which we wrote about in more detail here, the opposition within the Bolshevik party was purged, and a totalitarian dictatorship was established in the country.

In the grip of the stalinist dictatorship

In the dark times of fierce Stalinist reaction, only true daredevils could dare to engage in oppositional activities. In the 1930s, apart from various kinds of spontaneous uprisings, one can only note the attempt to create the “Union of Marxists-Leninists” under the leadership of Martemyan Ryutin, who advocated for the convocation of an extraordinary party congress, the removal of the General Secretary, a change in leadership personnel, re-election of the Soviets, the dissolution of forcibly created collective farms, and a purge of the judicial apparatus and the OGPU⁸². Ryutin was later executed by firing squad, and tortured beforehand. Other attempts to create any kind of organization, such as the All-Union Democratic Party (a youth anti-Stalinist organization), were extremely small in number. Culture was also under strict ideological surveillance. It was permitted for the former Socialist Revolutionary Pavel Bazhov to write, but only after he had joined the RCP(b) and served in the Cheka.

The only thing that could be done successfully under conditions of Stalinist totalitarianism was to flee abroad and describe one’s experience of living in a totalitarian state there. This is what was done by the former Stalinist secretary Boris Bajanov (who later helped Finland in its confrontation with the USSR), Fyodor Raskolnikov, Alexander Orlov, Alexander Barmine (who later managed the “Voice of America” radio station), Walter Krivitsky, Ignace Reiss, Georgy Agabekov, and others. Many of them were later killed by Stalinist contract killers. The most successful was the experience of Victor Kravchenko, about whom we wrote an article — he managed to win a court case in Paris against the Stalinists, who were supported by the USSR, and the advance of Stalinism in Europe stopped there.

Late USSR

Some free thought in the country became possible only after the death of Stalin. After a short period of collective leadership, connected with the fact that Stalin did not name a direct successor, as a result of internal infighting, Stalin’s supporters identified the strongest player in palace intrigues — this turned out to be Nikita Khrushchev. Realizing that he would hardly be able to suppress any opposition in the same way as Stalin, who had gradually earned himself the reputation of the country’s fierce gendarme, Khrushchev made some concessions, which would be called the “Thaw”. A portion of Stalin’s repressions was condemned, the cult of personality (an important component of the totalitarian regime) was debunked, and a provision on the collectivity of leadership as an indispensable condition for the activity of party organizations was included in the new party charter⁸³; some literary works, the publication of which had previously been impossible to imagine, began to be published. However, all this did not mean democratization — for example, Khrushchev brutally suppressed a workers’ protest in Novocherkassk, the CPSU condemned the editorial policy of the magazine “Novy Mir”, accused the writer Vladimir Dudintsev of “slander against the Soviet system”, and so on. With the coming to power of Leonid Brezhnev, the suppression of democracy continued, albeit not as actively as in the Stalinist era.

During the Khrushchev period, the dissident movement began to germinate, and the first small groups appeared — such as the Lev Krasnopevtsev circle, the All-National Social-Christian Union for the Liberation of the People, and the circle of young socialists (which included personalities such as Pavel Kudyukin, Boris Kagarlitsky, and Andrei Fadin). A functioning underground party also appeared — the National United Party of Armenia. Samizdat and tamizdat began to be published and distributed (these are works uncensored by the Soviet authorities; samizdat was unofficial and created in the form of typewriting, photocopies, or manuscripts, while tamizdat refers to banned publications secretly brought in from abroad⁸⁴), including periodicals such as the bulletin “Chronicle of Current Events” and the magazine “Syntax”. Many of the dissidents belonged to the generation of the “Sixtiers”. Later, the “Sixtiers” played a leading role in the democratic movement⁸⁵. A human rights movement was also born in the country. The Initiative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR, the Committee for Human Rights in the USSR, and the Moscow Helsinki Group were founded⁸⁶. Interestingly, as early as 1983, a Leningrad group of economists from the Engineering and Economics Institute began to form, which included Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chubais, who would later promote market reforms in the economy and democratic ones in politics, not altogether successfully.

Andrei Sakharov, who held views on the borders of social democracy and democratic socialism, became one of the leaders of the democratic movement in the USSR. During this period, Mikhail Voslensky also published his most important work, “Nomenklatura”, which exposed the Soviet system. Other well-known figures of the dissident underground were active — Vladimir Bukovsky, Tatyana Velikanova, Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Roy Medvedev, Valeria Novodvorskaya, Alexander Podrabinek, Sergei Kovalev, and others. Later, the statists would launch a large-scale smear campaign against most of them in their media. Many also include Alexander Solzhenitsyn here, however, the question remains open as to whether he can be classified as a democratic figure — for instance, he proposed recognizing an authoritarian system as necessary for Russia⁸⁷. Nevertheless, despite this, some of his works positively influenced the democratic movement. It is also unclear whether Valery Sablin, the officer who led a mutiny on the ship “Storozhevoy”, can be attributed to the democratic movement.

The democratic culture of that period is mainly represented by the Sixtiers. These are the poet and musician Alexander Galich, the poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the writer Vasily Aksyonov, the writers the Strugatsky brothers, the poet Vladimir Voinovich, and the writer Vladimir Dudintsev.

The third hybrid regime

By 1985, a whole complex of problems had accumulated in the Soviet Union, which could not be solved within the framework of a planned economy and authoritarianism for several decades (we wrote about these problems here). The new General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev, faced a choice — either to try to stifle any will of the citizens to improve their situation (and face the risk of an uprising that he might not have been able to suppress), or to carry out radical reforms. Gorbachev chose the second path. “We cannot go on living like this” — a key phrase dropped by the new General Secretary in a conversation with his wife, Raisa Maksimovna Gorbacheva, became a general rule for all opposing sides in the CPSU Central Committee for the first period of Perestroika⁸⁸. In 1985, both reformers and conservatives had a common understanding and agreement on the need for change, that one could not go on living like this and the country had to undergo reforms for the sake of self-preservation.

In an interview with Vadim Medvedev, a brief explanation is given as to why the democratization of society began: “The genesis of Perestroika began with Gorbachev becoming General Secretary. Gradually, the conclusion was reached that the ideological sphere needed to be democratized, that freedom of speech enshrined in the Constitution must be implemented in practice, and that reality and people’s moods must be accepted as they are. It is another matter that conclusions must be drawn from them, and fundamental, explanatory work must be carried out. Even before Perestroika, attention was paid to these problems, starting with the departure of the Brezhnev era, and even during the Brezhnev era it was developing. And with Gorbachev’s accession to supreme power in the party and the state, a new, realistic view of what was happening in the country was required, on the harsh methods of managing ideology, culture, economy, and all other spheres of activity”⁸⁹.

From 1985 to 1986, the measures taken by Gorbachev’s team should be viewed in the context of authoritarian modernization. Attempts to change the state of affairs using old recipes (administrative and directive regulations) did not ensure an improvement in the lives of the Soviet population. Core problems remained, and it was doubtful that they could be resolved without a public, that is, democratic consensus. Many of these problems were censored or kept under lock and key; Soviet people were aware of the severity of the situation and awaited changes, but, firstly, they could not articulate their socio-political demands, secondly, they lacked access to the Soviet public sphere, and thirdly, a vague understanding of the problems did not provide an objective perception of Soviet reality. This was an obvious dead end.

Early trials demonstrated that authoritarian modernization was ineffective. A wave of man-made disasters swept across the country. The sinking of the steamship “Admiral Nakhimov”, the nuclear accident in the nuclear submarine fleet in Chazhma Bay, and finally, the nuclear catastrophe at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant indicated the weakness of the policy of Glasnost. It had to be expanded, because hushing up problems cost both the Soviet population and the ruling elite far too dearly.

In 1986, the implementation of a new policy began, better known under the slogan “Perestroika”. Individual labor activity⁹⁰ and the organization of cooperatives⁹¹ were permitted. A new stage of the policy of Glasnost was initiated: freedom of speech, freedom of the press (new newspapers began to be published without absolute censorship by state bodies), the opening of literature previously kept in “special depositories” to the general public⁹², open access to foreign literature and part of the archives, a new wave of rehabilitations of victims of repression⁹³, the amnesty of many dissidents, the most famous being Andrei Sakharov⁹⁴, and the cessation of jamming broadcasts by foreign radio stations⁹⁵. It became possible to create informal organizations and associations, troops were withdrawn from Afghanistan and later from Eastern Europe, and the Cold War was brought to an end⁹⁶.

The state nomenclature practiced both covert and overt resistance to reforms, sometimes taking on the character of sabotage⁹⁷. The 1985 consensus aimed at changing the country was shaken. Speeches of discontent were heard more and more often from the mouths of conservatives. Thus, at one of the Politburo meetings, Yegor Ligachev, considered the leader of the conservative wing until 1990, stated: “The adversary is also preparing for the 70th anniversary of October. And we are getting a 70th anniversary of repentance — it is portrayed as if everything was black and worthless. Scientific discussions, new textbooks, new works are needed. But under the leadership of the Central Committee, because otherwise there will be overzealous extremes. And this has already begun”⁹⁸.

In response, Gorbachev intensified the process of personnel renewal in the party apparatus: by early 1987, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee had been renewed by 70%, the Central Committee by 40%, the composition of city and district committee secretaries by 70%, and regional committee secretaries by 60%⁹⁹. In general, the sabotage and subversive activities of the statists were among the reasons for the failure of the reforms (along with their late start, insufficient political literacy of society, and the insufficient success of the reforms themselves).

An independent press and its first prominent representatives appeared in the country — Vladislav Listyev¹⁰¹, Leonid Parfyonov¹⁰², Vladimir Mukusev¹⁰³, and Artyom Borovik¹⁰⁴. At the same time, democratic politicians independent of Gorbachev began to emerge. The economist Grigory Yavlinsky, who had previously been placed in a special clinic for writing a scientific paper in which he predicted an economic crisis, was released (he would later play a prominent role in the democratic movement).

In the summer of 1987, the transfer of all state enterprises to self-repayment and self-financing, as well as the expansion of their independence, was announced. In industry, instead of a plan, a state order was introduced for a portion of the produced goods, with the enterprise allowed to sell the remaining part independently. All enterprises were granted greater freedom in managing their profits, the right to enter foreign markets themselves, and to carry out joint activities with foreign partners. Labor collectives were given the right to elect self-management bodies (enterprise councils) and directors at meetings, and to lease their own enterprises from the state. In addition, the development of the private sector in the service industry and agriculture was envisaged. Collective farmers were given the opportunity to develop collective and family contracts, obtain land on long-term (up to 50 years) leases, and sell their products independently at free market prices.

In 1988, the first opposition political party in the USSR that openly declared itself appeared — the Democratic Union, which included Valeria Novodvorskaya and Sergey Grigoryants (who would systematically demand lustration in the 1990s)¹⁰⁵. The main statutory task of the party was the struggle against the totalitarian system, and the party also set the goal of a non-violent transition to parliamentary democracy¹⁰⁶. In 1989, the first relatively free elections of people’s deputies in the country took place¹⁰⁷. The first legal parliamentary opposition in the USSR was formed — the Inter-Regional Deputies Group¹⁰⁸. In 1990, power in the country passed from the CPSU to the Congress of People’s Deputies — the first analogue of a parliament in Soviet history, elected on an alternative basis in relatively democratic elections. Gorbachev did not always promote reforms and often tried to restrain the democratic movement. For example, he allowed the January 1991 events in Riga and Vilnius, when Russian troops suppressed civil demonstrations¹⁰⁹.

In 1990, Yavlinsky wrote his program “400 Days of Trust” (later known as “500 Days”), but there was a refusal to implement it at a time when, perhaps, it was still possible to avoid the Gaidar-Chubais “shock therapy” that was implemented later. Boris Yeltsin, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, expressed a desire to implement Yavlinsky’s program. The problem, however, was that Yavlinsky’s “500 Days” had been designed for the USSR, not for Russia. Therefore, the economist demanded time to develop a new program, and it was ready in a month and a half. According to Yavlinsky himself, world-renowned economists, including János Kornai, argued that he had written the best program for the transition to a market economy¹¹⁰. However, Yeltsin did not intend to implement its points in practice, and Yavlinsky staged a protest and left the government.

The Congress of People’s Deputies gave a start in political life to a considerable number of democratic figures — for example, Galina Starovoitova, Ruslan Khasbulatov, and Boris Nemtsov (the future mayor of Nizhny Novgorod) were elected there. It was here that the first legal opposition appeared — a democratic faction known in history as the Inter-Regional Deputies Group. Its goal was “the transformation of the political regime in the USSR from totalitarian to democratic”, and it included such figures as Boris Yeltsin, Andrei Sakharov, Telman Gdlyan, Gavriil Popov, and so on. Anatoly Sobchak, little known at the time and the future mayor of Saint Petersburg, also joined. In addition, the deputy bloc “Democratic Russia” was founded there, whose well-known members included Lev Ponomarev, Galina Starovoitova, Vladimir Ryzhkov, and Boris Vishnevsky.

Later, other parties began to form. On the right, these were the right-liberal RPR-PARNAS¹¹¹ (in the future known as PARNAS)¹¹² and the conservative Democratic Party of Russia¹¹³. One of the leaders of the DPR was the world-famous world chess champion Garry Kasparov¹¹⁴. On the left, the Social Democratic Party of Russia was created, which, however, was not remembered for anything special, other than being bogged down in splits and divisions into various factions¹¹⁵. One of the party’s leaders, Pavel Kudyukin, however, managed to hold the position of Deputy Minister of Labor and Employment of the Population in the government of 1991-1993¹¹⁶.

Various kinds of democratic public organizations appeared. For example, these include the historical-educational, human rights, and charitable society “Memorial”, founded in 1989¹¹⁷. On March 23, 1990, the first constituent congress of the republican trade unions of the RSFSR took place, which proclaimed independence from the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions (AUCCTU) and the rejection of the ideas of Marxism-Leninism, with the creation of the “Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia” (FNPR). In the early 90s, the FNPR was involved in organizing protests, but gradually it was deprived of a number of rights and subordinated to the government. Also worth noting are such prominent organizations as the Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia (founded in 1989), the Independent Psychiatric Association (1989), the “Right of Mother” Foundation (1989), and the Glasnost Defense Foundation (1991).

In 1991, statist reactionaries from the GKChP made an attempt to seize power and turn Perestroika back, but failed and managed only to ensure that the processes for preserving the USSR launched earlier by Gorbachev (the referendum on preserving the USSR, during which the majority voted “for”; however, that same referendum also decided on, for example, the election of the President of the RSFSR, which fit extremely poorly with the concept of preserving the USSR) were interrupted, and the union republics, in response to the putch, declared their independence¹¹⁸, while Yeltsin suspended the activities of the CPSU on the territory of the RSFSR. Yeltsin led the resistance to the GKChP (with the help of those security structures that were under his control); by his decrees, the creation of the GKChP was classified as an attempted coup d’état, and on August 22, 1991, the activities of the Committee were terminated. Thus, the statists contributed greatly to the strengthening of one of their main enemies — Yeltsin, who was supported by mass protests against the GKChP (on August 20, a rally of 400,000 people gathered near the White House)¹¹⁹. Civil society put up a powerful rebuff to the statists and won.

Now Yeltsin, rather than Gorbachev, came to be considered the most influential leader of the democratic forces. For progressive forces, Gorbachev turned out to be too indecisive, while for reactionary forces he was already an enemy. The first significant growth in Yeltsin’s popularity took place after his speech at the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU, when he criticized the party nomenclature and spoke out in favor of introducing direct and secret elections for the General Secretary of the CPSU, limiting the time spent in this position (no more than two terms), and introducing an age limit (no older than 65)¹²⁰. This was that very speech, after which the speech of the statist Yegor Ligachev would follow, reduced by contemporaries to the thesis “Boris, you are wrong”. For the first time, a party forum was broadcast on radio and television¹²¹. In June 1991, even before the August events, Yeltsin was elected President of the RSFSR. In essence, this was a plebiscite on Yeltsin — whether to vote for him or not, since the “crying Bolshevik”¹²² Nikolai Ryzhkov was not regarded by the masses as a worthy competitor.

Against the backdrop of Yeltsin’s growing popularity, the 5th Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR took place. The deputies were enticed by the paternalistic figure of the “strong leader” Yeltsin and expanded the powers of the President of the RSFSR, granting him the right to form a “cabinet of reforms”, independently resolve personnel issues in the executive branch system, head the government for a year and issue decrees having the force of law, suspend acts of the heads of the executive branch of the republics within the RSFSR if they contradicted the Constitution and laws of the RSFSR, and, starting in January 1992, embark on radical economic reform. On November 6, 1991, Yeltsin formed and headed the Government of the RSFSR. Russia began its path toward a super-presidential republic. Yeltsin’s team decided to nominate former communist Alexander Rutskoi as a candidate for vice president — as some members of his team recall, “to get the communist votes”¹²³, and, in all likelihood, to demonstrate a readiness for consensus. This foolish mistake by Yeltsin (after all, Galina Starovoitova or Gavriil Popov could have been chosen)¹²⁴ would later become one of the factors that led to the parliamentary crisis.

In Belovezhskaya Pushcha, agreements were concluded that marked the collapse of the USSR. Yavlinsky (who shortly before this had agreed to become Deputy Prime Minister) thought at the time that his Agreement on Economic Cooperation would be implemented, the goal of which was to preserve a single economic space among all republics of the USSR, a single free trade zone, a single currency (the ruble), a banking union where representatives of all republics would sit, and open borders¹²⁵. That is, the USSR was to be transformed into an equivalent of today’s European Union. Yavlinsky once again left the government in protest.

After Yeltsin formed the government, market reforms had to be carried out. No one except Gaidar wanted to do this¹²⁶, especially considering that they had to be done in such a way that Yeltsin would agree to them. The beginning of the constitutional crisis was the refusal of the people’s deputies to approve Gaidar’s candidacy for the post of Prime Minister on December 10, 1992. Over time, the opposition organized into the anti-presidential bloc “Russian Unity”, which advocated for stripping Yeltsin of emergency powers and dismissing Gaidar. On March 20, 1993, Yeltsin made an attempt to suspend the legislative activity of the parliament and the Supreme Soviet by announcing on television a decree establishing a “special order of administration of the country”¹²⁷. At the 9th Extraordinary Congress of People’s Deputies (March 26–29, 1993), the conflict led to an attempt to remove the president from office (impeachment), but Yeltsin’s opponents failed to gain a qualified majority of votes (falling short by a few).

At Yeltsin’s suggestion, a referendum was held on April 25, 1993 — essentially on confidence in the president and the Congress of People’s Deputies, in which the majority of citizens supported the president. More than 67% voted for re-elections of people’s deputies and about 50% against early presidential elections. The Constitutional Court, nonetheless, stated that the decision on this issue was of a constitutional nature and had to be adopted by a majority of the total number of voters, thereby introducing uncertainty into the public perception of the referendum results¹²⁸.

Four days later, on April 29, 1993, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation issued a resolution “On Completing Work on the Draft Constitution of the Russian Federation”, in which we see a fairly clear program of action proposed by the legislative branch. This program provided for coordinating the draft with the President of the Russian Federation, although the final decision remained with the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation. By October 10, 1993, it was intended to complete the article-by-article review of the draft of the new Constitution of the Russian Federation, and it was to be published no later than October 15. On November 17, 1993, the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation was to convene to review and adopt the new Constitution of the Russian Federation¹²⁹. In turn, on May 20, 1993, Yeltsin issued a Decree “On Convening the Constitutional Assembly and Completing the Preparation of the Draft Constitution of the Russian Federation”¹³⁰, after which a draft of the country’s constitution was prepared.

By a decree dated September 21, 1993, Yeltsin ordered the interruption of the legislative, administrative, and supervisory functions carried out by the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation and the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, not to convene the Congress of People’s Deputies, and also to terminate the powers of the People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation and, until the start of the work of the new bicameral parliament — the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation — to be guided by presidential decrees and government resolutions, based on the results of the referendum¹³¹.

In response, the people’s deputies offered resistance, refused to obey Yeltsin’s decree, and declared that he had committed a coup d’état. The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation concluded that Yeltsin’s decree did not comply with many articles of the Constitution of the Russian Federation and served as grounds for removing the president from office or implementing other special mechanisms of his liability in accordance with many articles of the Constitution, including 121.10 or 121.6 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation¹³². On September 22, at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation, a resolution was adopted “On Terminating the Powers of the President of the Russian Federation B. N. Yeltsin”¹³³ and on the temporary transfer of presidential powers to Vice President Alexander Rutskoi¹³⁴. Supporters of the Supreme Soviet began to seize buildings, in particular the mayor’s office on Novy Arbat. In response, Yeltsin’s supporters began preparing an assault on the parliament. On October 4, the shelling began, and the defenders opened return fire. The “Alpha” and “Vympel” units were ordered to storm the House of Soviets; “Vympel” refused to carry out the order, and “Alpha” managed to persuade the defenders of the Supreme Soviet to surrender. As a result, the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Russian Federation were dissolved, the post of vice president was abolished, and the activities of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation were suspended. Soon, a new constitution for the country was adopted, which strengthened presidential power; in particular, before its adoption, Yeltsin personally specified the following in it: the president acquired the right to preside at meetings of the government and was also able to issue presidential decrees without restrictions (previously, decrees were linked directly to the execution of powers vested in him by the Constitution and federal laws)¹³⁵.

Which side was more democratic — Yeltsin or the Supreme Soviet? It is not easy to answer, as such essentially fascist organizations as Alexander Barkashov’s RNE (many of its regional branches were closed by courts for extremism¹³⁶) came to the defense of the Supreme Soviet, as did Stalinists from Viktor Anpilov’s “Working Russia”¹³⁷, and Rutskoi was a conservative populist with rather revanchist views and dictatorial leanings¹³⁸ (he would later become the leader of a right-wing conservative-nationalist organization — the social-patriotic movement “Derzhava”)¹³⁹. Nevertheless, the Supreme Soviet was also represented by people of relatively democratic views, such as Ruslan Khasbulatov and Oleg Rumyantsev, and the draft Constitution compiled by the Supreme Soviet was not as super-presidential¹⁴⁰. The situation was truly complex, since, firstly, in April 1992, the 6th Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia refused three times to ratify the Belovezh Accords and to exclude references to the Constitution and laws of the USSR from the text of the Constitution of the RSFSR¹⁴¹. Coupled with the fact that the republics were already firmly set on secession, this threatened war and a repetition of the Yugoslav scenario. Secondly, the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation took place during the era of the RSFSR, and it is hard to consider them fully democratic — the overwhelming majority of deputies represented the CPSU party. Thirdly, if Yeltsin, in the All-Russian referendum of April 25, 1993, even called for voting in favor of re-elections of the president¹⁴² (i.e., himself), and it was, consequently, possible to come to an agreement with him on organizing re-elections for both the president and the parliament, the Supreme Soviet did not wish to negotiate on this. All these factors allow us to say that between the Scylla of Yeltsin and the Charybdis of the Supreme Soviet, democrats had to make a choice in favor of the former.

After 1993, a significant number of new political parties were created for the parliamentary elections, mainly of a right-liberal orientation. One of the best known is Democratic Choice of Russia (initially the “Choice of Russia” electoral bloc)¹⁴³, a party that supported Yeltsin and whose chairman was Gaidar. Later, the party would merge into the right-liberal “Union of Right Forces” bloc. Also on the right were radical supporters of market reforms — the Liberal Democratic Union of December 12¹⁴⁴. The center was represented by the “Our Home — Russia” party chaired by Viktor Chernomyrdin¹⁴⁵, the “Regions of Russia” parliamentary group, and the small Party of Russian Unity and Accord¹⁴⁶. All centrist parties expressed the interests of the nomenclature and declared democratic values only as long as Yeltsin was president of the country. After his departure, the centrist parties somehow merged into “United Russia” and became Vladimir Putin’s tool on the path to dictatorial power. Around the same time, under Yavlinsky’s leadership, a party was created that would occupy a social-liberal niche in the future — namely, the Yabloko party. It can likely be considered the most adequate of the influential democratic forces of that time. During this period, democratic public organizations also continued to emerge, such as the “For Human Rights” public political movement and the Center for Media Rights Defense.

The parties were likely formed mostly with the help of Yeltsin’s team and in accordance with its tastes. But these tastes proved to be extremely narrow. People did not trust the liberals associated with the reforms of the early 1990s, so it is not surprising that the democratic forces lost to the statists. If one compares the Yeltsin spectrum with the traditional democratic spectrum of parties in Europe — democratic socialists, social democrats, social liberals, neoliberals, greens, and moderate conservatives (Christian democrats) — the complete colorlessness and dullness of the Yeltsin bloc is evident. Unfortunately, neither Yeltsin nor the broad masses of the country’s citizens possessed the political will to develop non-nomenclature parties. Yavlinsky’s party alone was clearly not enough.

Despite the fact that a relatively high level of press freedom was ensured in the 1990s under Yeltsin¹⁴⁷ and real multipartyism existed, a super-presidential system of government took shape, in which the parliament was merely an insignificant appendage of presidential power. At the same time, radical and authoritarian organizations were not banned, lustration of the Communist Party was not carried out, and the 1990s became a podium for communist and right-wing revanchists. In 1994, the First Chechen War began. Yeltsin’s line of “preserving the country’s territorial integrity and its geopolitical significance” led to the appointment of individuals like Vladimir Putin to important posts, who fit these tasks. At the end of 1999, Yeltsin resigned as president, temporarily transferring his powers to Putin.

In the grip of Putin

In 2000, Yeltsin’s “successor”, former FSB officer Vladimir Putin, was supported by many, including some democrats, in the presidential elections. As with Rutskoi, many democrats felt it would be a good idea to reach a consensus with the statists, completely forgetting that making deals with them is like signing a contract with a wolf to guard the sheep. Some of the most sophisticated democrats warned as early as 1999 that a person from the FSB cannot be trusted with fragile democracy. Putin won the presidential election in 2000. That same year, the “Kursk” submarine sank — Putin refused to accept foreign aid in rescuing the submarine; the decision to accept aid was made only several days later, when the crew was already dead¹⁴⁸. As they say, this decision was dictated by a reluctance to show military equipment to individuals associated with NATO countries; that is, the secrecy of military equipment was placed above the lives of the people who served the country, and the statists from the general staff, fighters against “the West”, incited Putin to make this decision. During a live CNN broadcast, when asked what happened to the submarine, he answered with a smirk: “it sank”.

After this incident, Putin’s main concern became the destruction of press independent of the state in the country (which actively criticized Putin) — even before this, the seizure of the NTV television channel from the “Media-Most” media holding had begun, the owner of which, Vladimir Gusinsky, went to the Butyrka prison; later, the main shareholder of ORT, Boris Berezovsky, stated that a high-ranking official had given him an ultimatum — to transfer his entire block of shares to the state or go after Gusinsky¹⁴⁹. Over time, Putin took control of the lion’s share of the independent press in the country, managing it through the state. Many rejoiced at the time at the seizure of property from the hated oligarchs, poorly understanding that a dictatorship is even stronger, and therefore even more frightening than scattered large capitalists.

Property seizures followed the press. After shielding the majority of citizens from the opportunity to hear what was happening in the country, Putin chose the next target among the oligarchs — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, from whom the “YUKOS” company was taken away. One of the reasons mentioned in the press was the support of opposition parties by YUKOS shareholders — such as the CPRF or Yabloko¹⁵⁰. Later, a significant portion of the company’s shares ended up in the possession of the “Rosneft” company, one of the leaders of which, as if by complete coincidence, turned out to be Putin’s old friend Igor Sechin. After this, the redistribution of property in Russia in favor of Putin’s henchmen continued (“Magnit”, “Euroset”, “VKontakte”, and so on). In general, a separate article is needed on the raider seizures carried out by Putin’s security officials.

Along with the seizure of the press and property, a reduction of already limited political freedoms was carried out. As early as August 5, 2000, Putin signed a new law “On the Procedure for Forming the Federation Council of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation”, according to which the heads of regions and legislative assemblies in the Federation Council were replaced by “professional” senators¹⁵¹. That same year, the president divided Russia into 7 districts, for each of which he appointed his own “governor general”¹⁵². Putin was also able to profit from the terrorist attack in Beslan, after which he announced the introduction of a system for appointing heads of subjects of the Russian Federation instead of the previously existing popular election. In addition, already in the 2003 parliamentary elections, mass falsifications began to be observed¹⁵³. Falsifications were also used in the 2004 presidential elections, which was confirmed even by the Central Election Committee¹⁵⁴. Also, in the early 2000s, the creation of the “party of power” — “United Russia” — began, which over time suppressed all other parties and obtained the overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats. Parallel to this, other work was underway to facilitate the seizure and retention of power — raising the percentage barrier to 7% for a party to enter the State Duma, the ban on electoral blocs, and so on. Many opposition journalists were killed or died under strange circumstances (Anna Politkovskaya, Artem Borovik, Yuri Shchekochikhin, and so on). After Putin left the presidency in 2008, civil society calmed down slightly (the elections of regional heads, which would be canceled again after Putin’s future return, were even returned). His close associate Dmitry Medvedev became president temporarily, and he did not carry out such an active offensive against democratic institutions.

At the same time, at the beginning of the Putin period, some democrats still remained in power — for example, Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as Chairman of the Government, under whom the number of poor people in the country decreased from 42 million in 2000 to 25 million in 2004¹⁵⁵ (however, after the cancellation of the elections for regional heads, Kasyanov went to Putin and stated that he was ending his interaction with him¹⁵⁶; Putin’s media immediately began accusing Kasyanov of corruption and labeled him “Misha Two Percent”). Also, for example, Igor Artemyev, a member of the Yabloko party, was the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service for a long time, and until 2003, Nemtsov was the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma.

One of the smithies of opposition cadres in the early 2000s turned out to be the Yabloko party itself. It included many well-known figures of the democratic movement — Alexei Navalny, Ilya Yashin, Lev Shlosberg, Sergei Mitrokhin, and Nikolai Kavkazsky. However, it was decided at the time to exclude Navalny and Yashin from the party, and Yashin, together with Nemtsov, Kasparov, Bukovsky, and Lev Ponomarev, took part in creating the “Solidarity” movement, which, in general, was close to Yabloko on the political spectrum. At that time, a number of less leftist liberal movements were also appearing — first of all, the Party of December 5, one of the founders of which was Roman Dobrokhotov, who is also the founder of The Insider publication. There was also the right-liberal “Democratic Choice” party, led by Vladimir Milov.

On the left, more or less democratic organizations began to appear. The “Left Front” can be considered one in part, which, despite the fact that it included a large number of Stalinists, would support general civil protests in the future, and its leader, Sergei Udaltsov, would also become one of the protest leaders for a time. Ilya Ponomarev was a very important person in the movement. The Russian Socialist Movement was also founded from the Trotskyist organizations “Vpered” (Forward) and “SotsSopr”, which would later begin a movement toward recognizing the importance of parliamentary democracy.

In 2011, a “United Russia” congress took place, where it was announced that it would not be Medvedev, but Putin, who would run for the 2012 presidential elections. At the same time, the latter stated that they had agreed on this with Medvedev 4 years before the announcement of this decision¹⁵⁷. This decision, coupled with the results of the State Duma elections in 2011 (which were held with mass falsifications, as were the presidential ones), led to mass protests against Putin’s power¹⁵⁸. According to some data, the rally on Sakharov Avenue gathered about 100,000 people¹⁵⁹. The most prominent leaders of the protests that continued in 2011-2013 were likely Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov, and Boris Nemtsov. During the protests, new figures also gained prominence, such as Maxim Katz. By that time, Alexei Navalny was already well-known as the author of many investigations into corruption in Russia, the founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, the “RosPil” and “RosYama” projects, and many others. Among the relatively well-known figures of the democratic movement, one can note Ilya Varlamov (who by that time was already blogging with photos of Russian cities on LiveJournal). In the course of the protests, the Opposition Coordination Council was also founded, about whose mistakes we have already written here.

Among the public organizations, in addition to Navalny’s projects organized during the period of the post-Yeltsin Third Hybrid Regime, one can note the Golos movement, the Committee Against Torture, the Moscow Helsinki Group, the Blue Buckets society, OVD-Info, the Trade Union of Journalists and Media Workers, the Teacher trade union, the Russian LGBT Network, the Rus Sitting fund, and the SOVA Center for Information and Analysis. Even later, the Courier trade union would appear. In general, we will not focus this article on a complete list of democracy advocates in modern Russia; we will examine them in a separate article.

After the dispersal of rallies (and the subsequent “Bolotnaya Case”), we can speak of the final death of the Third Hybrid Regime in Russia. The “foreign agents law” was adopted, Roskomnadzor was created, the gubernatorial elections that had returned during the Medvedev “thaw” were canceled, and so on. Under the Third Hybrid Regime, there was, on the whole, an increase in the standard of living in Russia — a comparison of 1985 and 2012 on a great many points would be in favor of the latter. After the return of authoritarianism, difficulties with further growth began.

Conclusions

The democratic movement in Russia has made mistakes from time to time. It has made many mistakes. And it has repeated them. Therefore, the task of this article is not only to understand that there is something good in the history of our country but also to compile a list of the most severe and frequent mistakes made by Russia’s democrats in the past so that we can avoid them in the future.

The first mistake is flirting with nationalism and patriotism. The Provisional Government’s attempts to play with patriotism during the First World War (the Kerensky Offensive, the lack of a resolute course toward peace negotiations) were dictated not by an adequate perception of reality but by patriotic fervor, and had catastrophic consequences, contributing to the discrediting of the Provisional Government and playing into the hands of the Bolsheviks. This mistake is well known to social democrats, as in 1914 a group of right-wing social democrats in Germany managed to gain a majority and vote for war credits, guided by considerations of patriotism and nationalism. In the 1990s, Boris Yeltsin began to play with patriotism, thereby contributing to the future revanchism of the statists.

The second mistake is blocs with authoritarians. We must remember the experience of the Kadets and Socialist Revolutionaries who, having united with Kolchak, received from him the suppression of the Komuch and the execution of part of its members. We must remember the mistake of the Mensheviks who, by cooperating with the Bolsheviks, received persecution of their party from them. Democrats must act within the framework of a broad democratic coalition, and there is no place for authoritarians in this coalition — they must be decisively pushed out of it.

Mistake number three is freedom for authoritarians and statists. The lack of a ban on the Bolsheviks and other radical forces during the period of the Second Hybrid Regime ended in a Bolshevik dictatorship. The lack of a ban on authoritarians and their propaganda during the period of the Third Hybrid Regime ended in the establishment of an authoritarian statist regime. At the same time, in the Baltic republics (where communist parties were banned; these are now democratic parliamentary republics), this did not happen; the experience of banning the Nazi and communist parties in the FRG also led to the successful development of democracy. Russian democrats are constantly led by the demagoguery of authoritarians who say, “What kind of democracy is this if you ban us?” however, this is just verbal juggling — democracy does not need authoritarian parties; it needs many strong democratic parties of various directions.

The fourth mistake is the search for compromises with statists. Yeltsin approved Rutskoi as Chairman of the Supreme Soviet in order to find a compromise with the statists; this resulted in an acute crisis and deaths. One should not look for compromises with statists, one should not negotiate with them, one should not seek consensus with them (all this should be done exclusively with other democrats; one should only seek consensus with those who agree to pursue it). Their movement and ideology must be liquidated completely while remaining within the framework of respecting basic human rights. Perhaps we should combine this mistake here with a similar one — looking for truth in populism. There is no truth in populism; we examined this in a separate article.

Mistake number five is not having a broad spectrum of political movements. We must act within the framework of a broad coalition of democrats, which will include not only liberals but also social democrats, democratic socialists, and Christian democrats. We must develop parties independent of the government, and as many such parties as possible. During the period of the Third Hybrid Regime, liberals in the democratic movement closed themselves off, ignoring left-wing democrats, or even contemptuously criticizing “lefties”, showing that they were no better than the statists to them. The result is quite logical — rather broad masses of citizens who felt sympathy for left-wing ideas ignored the protests of 2011–2013, and the liberals who remained almost alone did not attract many people to these protests and were easily crushed by the regime. Different branches of the democratic movement should support each other, rather than wasting strength and time on criticizing them. Only after the establishment of full-fledged democracy will it be possible to engage in competition among ourselves within the framework of democratic institutions.

The sixth mistake lies in the underestimation of information work. Using the history of the democratic movement in Russia as an example, we saw above that it often began or received a powerful impulse precisely as a result of enlightenment — the Decembrist societies, “going to the people”, the “banquet campaign”, and so on. And, on the other hand, it was precisely the active, intensified information work of the statists, who won the battle on the information field in the 1990s in a landslide, that allowed them to gain power (to a large extent, it rests on propaganda today). The democratic movement must have a much stronger information machine than the statists. Investing in organizational and protest activities before the information struggle is fine-tuned is unproductive; it is a waste of resources.

Mistake number seven is flirting with direct democracy. Thus, the Soviets did not become the form that led to democracy — on the contrary, their existence hindered the Provisional Government and later led to the Bolshevik dictatorship. Usually, those political forces that advocate for direct democracy do so in order to destroy the parliament, which can hinder them on the path to absolute power and dictatorship (it is enough to recall Muammar Gaddafi with his “direct popular democracy”). In reality, it is parliamentary democracy that is the highest form of democracy — stable, viable, and capable of implementing improvements in the standard of living.

The eighth mistake is the stubborn refusal to choose the “lesser of two evils”. One must support those ministers who carry out democratic reforms, rather than declaring that the entire government is evil, or harrying these few ministers, as happened with Kasyanov. One cannot refuse offers to join the government. We remember the experience of the group of “liberal democrats” under Alexander II, the experience of the “Progressive Bloc”, who operated within the system and prepared reform options that then began to be implemented. And we remember the experience of those liberal leaders who refused to join Witte’s government. They wanted everything at once, but this is an infantile, not a mature, point of view. As a result, Witte was left without support — he was criticized by both statists and democrats — and soon decided to switch to suppressing protests. The democratic movement lost a potentially strong ally. There are people in the elites who are not ideal democrats but who are ready to cooperate. Actively attacking these people for their shortcomings and refusing their temporary support (until the transition to the next stage of democratic development, until the defeat of the statists), especially when there are avowed reactionaries in the elites — this is not just stupidity, it is criminal stupidity.

The ninth mistake is to hesitate when society is ready for more. Gorbachev’s mistake was that he tried to slow down the reforms that had begun under his watch. Therefore, the historical process “spat him out”, and instead of becoming the leader of the democratic movement, he is remembered for his failures. From this, by the way, arises the already mentioned fourth mistake.

The tenth mistake is the incorrect prioritization regarding armed methods of struggle. For example, it is almost impossible to recall cases where revolutionary terror in the form of murdering government representatives led to the advancement of democracy. However, there are plenty of opposite cases — for example, the assassination of Alexander II led to the period of reaction under Alexander III, and the assassination attempt on Vladimir Lenin led only to the unleashing of the Red Terror. As for armed uprisings, the situation here is different. They did not always lead to positive results (an example being the Razin rebellion), but we have also seen a large number of examples where an uprising was the only way to reach an authoritarian government so that it would finally recognize the need for democratization (the Pugachev rebellion, the revolution of 1905–1907, the Antonov uprising, and so on). The conclusion from this is that a revolutionary wing of democracy is still necessary (while it is fundamentally important that it sets the task of establishing a parliamentary democracy, not authoritarianism).

The eleventh mistake — too few parties and organizations, and they are small! Democrats need to join parties and organizations, even if they do not completely satisfy them, because the alternative is much more frightening. If there are no numerous and influential organizations, we will again find ourselves facing a choice between two great evils — like the one between Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet. And in order for there to be parties, it is necessary to organize enlightenment, to stimulate people to voluntarily join parties, to get interested in politics. This is a big job, and it is linked to the sixth mistake.

As we can see, there are many mistakes. It is not simple to balance in such a way as to avoid repeating all of them. But it is necessary to try. It is necessary to clearly formulate one’s demands — the strike of 1905 had them and was able to obtain the October Manifesto. Demands — feasible and maximal — must always be ready. The history of the democratic movement in Russia does not end there. It revived after Stalinist totalitarianism, which means it cannot be destroyed. And the time for democracy in Russia will yet come. And this time, it will have to avoid its mistakes.

We thank Gennady Reshevsky, Adam Kvizok, and Artem Kuznetsov for their help in writing this article.

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