Waiting for a Window: Do reform projects for post-Putin Russia make sense today?

Waiting for a window

Thus far, the segment of Russian society that left the country following the outbreak of war has not succeeded in creating the structures of a united political opposition, or even a permanent opposition forum. At the same time, a significant portion of its intellectual efforts has been concentrated on discussing ‘post-Putin Russia’. 

As a result, attention has shifted away from questions of mobilisation and consolidation of the Russian democratic, anti-war, and anti-Putin movement, and towards the question of how to act at the moment when, due to unknown circumstances, the regime 'drops power' and a 'window of opportunity' opens.

According to Re:Russia's estimates, there are currently at least six independent projects working in one way or another on reform programmes intended to be launched on day X. Very recently, the Expert Forum convened by Yulia Navalnaya in Vilnius published a report on its work. This, however, is more a summary or set of notes from previous discussions than a fully developed conceptual or argumentative document. Two other projects recently presented to the public are the Transit project under the auspices of the Free Russia Foundation and the report '100 Days After Putin. A Package of Solutions for a Transitional Government’, by the Memorial Human Rights Centre.

It is also worth mentioning two 'individual' contributions: the political programme-manifesto in the form of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's book ’How to Kill a Dragon’, as well as the ’constitutional project' by Artemy Magun, Evgeny Roshchin and Grigory Yudin. Although Khodorkovsky's book, written while in exile and published in 2023, is not a wartime project and does not stem from a 'day X' ideology, it offers a deep and detailed discussion of all stages of the 'revolutionary path'. The constitutional project, despite its formal title, is more a political-philosophical essay describing a utopia of 'new constitutionalism' and a new socio-political order than a concrete expert or political programme. An almost academic yet highly significant contribution to this discussion has also been made by Grigory Golosov’s book Political Regimes and Transformations.

Under the banner of parliamentarism

At present, the Transit project represents the most extensive and multifaceted collective effort to formulate a programme for post-Putin transformation. The Free Russia Foundation’s website hosts twelve reports and memoranda of varying depth on the subject, covering a wide range of aspects of the 'transit': principles of democratising the political system, restoration of the rule of law, economic and political decentralisation, foreign policy, and more. Among the authors are Vladimir Milov, Sergei Guriev, Irina Busygina, Abbas Gallyamov, Nikolai Petrov, Vasily Zharkov, and others.

The project’s initial and flagship document was the report by Fyodor Krasheninnikov and Vladimir Milov, ‘A Normal Russia of the Future: Yes, We Can,’ published in October 2023. Unlike subsequent reports and memoranda under the Transit umbrella, this document most closely resembles a political manifesto. It concisely outlines the political and legislative contours of a desired democratic post-Putin Russia. To a significant extent, it draws on Alexei Navalny’s 2017 presidential programme, as the authors themselves acknowledge.

Milov and Krasheninnikov argue that modern Russia possesses substantial democratic potential, and that the issue of democratic state design will return to the agenda once the regime weakens under economic and political pressure. While they echo the widely accepted principles for restoring democratic order – checks and balances, limiting and holding executive power accountable, enhancing the role of parliament and political parties in forming government, and ensuring judicial independence – their programme is considerably more radical than Navalny’s on one central point. 'The transition to parliamentary democracy must be formally declared as the goal of political reform,' they state. Moreover, parliamentarism is to become a foundational organising principle of the new state.

The authors propose a decisive break with both the American presidential model and the French semi-presidential system, instead drawing inspiration from West Germany. They advocate replacing the executive vertical with a system of parliaments functioning at all levels, which in turn would elect city managers, heads of regional governments, and the head of the federal government. In this arrangement, municipal government, write Milov and Krasheninnikov, should become the most widespread and foundational tier, serving as both the backbone of governance and a training ground for future leaders. Municipalities would form their own law enforcement bodies and have the authority to hold referenda, including on which federal subject they wish to belong to. Based on this logic, the authors propose beginning the reconstruction of state institutions with nationwide local elections. These locally elected bodies would then delegate certain powers upwards but would remain the original source of legitimacy, thereby shaping the architecture of federal authority.

It is worth noting that parliamentarism is also named as the 'preferred form of governance' in the summary from Yulia Navalnaya’s forum. Khodorkovsky, too, has long advocated for parliamentarism as a necessary constitutional choice since the 2010s. In his book, he argues that although such a transition would shock the political system, it is a necessary antidote to the 'innate autocratic instincts of Russian political culture.' Thus, one could say that the idea of a parliamentary republic has become a kind of consensus point within the Russian opposition, and the war, along with the radicalisation of Putin’s autocracy, has only strengthened the position of the 'parliamentarians'.

The logic of revolution and the logic of expertise

The Milov–Krasheninnikov report stands out as a political document due to its revolutionary radicalism. 'Action must be swift and decisive, destroying not just the old institutions of power but the very foundations on which they stood, and the very principles by which the mechanisms of power functioned in Putin’s Russia,' they write. The programme calls for the dissolution of the FSB and the army, to be replaced with newly created armed forces, as well as the implementation of a strict lustration process. The authors’ radicalism is driven by the logic of 'correcting the mistakes' of the 1990s, which created a 'loose institutional foundation' that failed to prevent the usurpation of power in the Putin era.

‘What is not changed or repealed immediately, or within the first few months, is likely to become a rallying point for all forces of anti-democratic backlash or a lever in their hands’, Milov and Krasheninnikov warn. In the shortest possible time, it is necessary to install the most ‘correct’ institutional design that will make any repeat of authoritarian usurpation impossible. The revolutionary transformation plan rests on the assumption that the reformist coalition will have access to a limited ‘window of opportunity’, restricted in duration but not in the radicalism of the measures it can pursue.

Other sections of the Transit project are more expert-analytical in nature, though some still attempt to describe an 'optimal' design for various components of the democratic system. The most analytically rigorous and, in that sense, the most distanced from the political manifesto of Krasheninnikov and Milov, is the work ‘A Great Devolution for Russia’ by Irina Busygina and Mikhail Filippov. They explore various scenarios for transferring and redistributing power to municipal and regional authorities, as well as from the president to parliament. They term this two-directional shift – devolution. First, they note that any given model has not only advantages but also inherent limitations. Second, they emphasise that codifying a particular system design in law does not in itself guarantee the success of reform if its elements lack sufficient political support in society.

They also highlight the impossibility of installing all components of political reform simultaneously. Indeed, they argue that 'until new political parties are established and successful electoral coalitions linking regional and local politicians across the vertical (regions, major cities, municipalities) are formed, changes to the principles of federalism and local governance should be avoided.' This position, which directly contradicts the proposals of Krasheninnikov and Milov, is grounded in the belief that parliamentary strength and autonomy across levels of governance (without compromising unity) rely on strong parties that connect these levels. Such parties are essential to give substance to the proposed institutional design. This is, however, another iteration of the perennial chicken-and-egg dilemma in democratic transformation: effective elections are impossible without established parties, while party formation is unachievable without electoral experience.

The work of Busygina and Filippov is an example of an expert approach that does not purport to offer a programme of action for a revolutionary coalition, but instead allows for a clearer view of the political assumptions behind such programmes, especially those based on the logic of rapid power 'seizure' and swift entrenchment.

100 days of transitional justice

The second initiative to present its work to the public is the report 100 Days After Putin: A Transitional Government’s Policy Package, published under the auspices of the Memorial Human Rights Centre. The distinguishing feature of this project is its almost exclusively legal character. The report was authored by a group of Russian legal scholars based at various universities across Europe; one of them, Nikolai Bobrinsky, co-authored the report Between Revenge and Oblivion: A Concept of Transitional Justice for Russia, published back in 2020. The new report significantly builds on the logic of transitional justice, adapting it to emerging conditions. 'We do not assess the likelihood of various scenarios of political transformation during the transitional period,' the authors write in their introduction, 'but rather set out legally permissible or necessary courses of action for the new authorities.'

Like the authors of the previous report, they are convinced that 'the window of opportunity to change the system will be very brief: measured in weeks or even days. Therefore, ready-made decisions and documents must be prepared in advance of the transition.' The report presents a structured programme of legal action, arranged into four distinct 'policy packages'.

The first package is devoted to working out constitutional scenarios that would enable the democratisation process to begin. A well-known problem here is that, under the Russian Constitution, the termination of the president’s powers triggers a presidential election process lasting 100 days. However, in order for those elections to be conducted democratically, and for the new president to assume office with powers reduced from today’s dictatorial levels, changes to legislation and the current version of the Constitution are necessary. At the same time, in order to amend the Constitution and the laws, the Federal Assembly must be involved; although this, too, will require re-election. The authors of the report attempt to piece together this puzzle in several ways but acknowledge that it is unlikely a fully legal and internally consistent solution can be found. As a result, they do not rule out a scenario involving a 'state of emergency' and the convening of a Constitutional Assembly to effectively 'refound the state.'

The second package, ‘Democratisation’, addresses the cleansing of legislation from its 'authoritarian overlay' – provisions that restrict fundamental freedoms, access to elections, and the fairness and competitiveness of the electoral process. This section is structured into two conceptual blocks: a programme for dismantling repressive and restrictive norms (liberalisation), and a revision of electoral and political party legislation. It is essential to create conditions in which a wide range of political forces, reflecting the full diversity of public opinion, can participate in elections. In practical terms, this section appears to be the most substantial, as it may serve as a blueprint for regime liberalisation once the conditions arise in Russia, or as a list of demands from a democratic coalition.

The third package, ‘Transitional Justice,’ comprises several components. First, it involves restoring the rights of victims of political repression (the authors prefer the broader and more resonant term 'state terror') and compensating them for harm suffered. Second, it proposes the cleansing of the law enforcement system. This process, which the authors describe as 'restoring trust in the judiciary and law enforcement,' includes the abolition of repressive agencies (such as the FSB, Roskomnadzor, and anti-extremist divisions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), banning their employees from holding public office for five to fifteen years, appointing new heads of law enforcement bodies, and lustrating those involved in 'state terror', including the entire Constitutional Court (for having effectively legitimised the war), the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and the Prosecutor General. Interestingly, the authors suggest that this purge could be carried out by an acting president using the expanded powers granted by the 2020 constitutional amendments, which allow the president to dismiss the Prosecutor General and heads of courts without Federation Council approval.

The authors support a ‘tough lustration’ process, i.e. prohibiting individuals from holding 'protected' positions for 5 to 15 years, with the possibility of early reinstatement for those who have genuinely reformed. They also propose a limited personnel reform of the judiciary and the investigation and prosecution of systemic criminality, that is, crimes committed by the former regime, their architects and enforcers. One notable omission from this section is the issue of torture, which currently permeates the Federal Penitentiary Service, the law enforcement bodies, and, to some extent, the armed forces. Torture has become a routine feature of Putin's repressive state apparatus, evidently encouraged from the top and used informally to supplement official punishment. If the logic of purging the enforcement system and restoring justice is to be taken seriously, torture must become a separate subject of scrutiny, both as grounds for lustration and prosecution, and as a basis for restoring victims’ rights.

The final package concerns the peaceful settlement in Ukraine, its international legal dimensions, and the legal consequences involved. On the one hand, the authors assert that 'Russia’s war against Ukraine constitutes an act of aggression and violates the prohibition on the use of force in international relations', and therefore 'the de-occupation of Ukrainian territory is Russia’s obligation.' On the other hand, they acknowledge that full resolution of territorial disputes may be postponed and that UN peacekeepers might be deployed in de-occupied areas. Russia should also recognise its political responsibility for the 'crime of aggression', pay reparations to Ukraine, and establish a ‘Truth Commission’ to investigate crimes committed and those responsible.

The authors recognise two models for holding perpetrators accountable: through international justice and through national mechanisms. They argue that Russia should accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and cooperate fully with it. At the same time, Russia must fill gaps in its domestic legislation in order to create a legal framework for prosecuting war criminals at the national level.

Catching the window of opportunity: the opposition's programme at a crossroads

The ‘100 Days’ project currently appears to be a kind of legal utopia. Its detachment from political realities understandably provokes a certain irritation—particularly among opposition-minded individuals within Russia. This is no accident.

Its legal intransigence, which demands the unequivocal condemnation of military aggression, the recognition of expanded responsibility for it, and the application of strict lustration and transitional justice measures, undoubtedly complicates dialogue with those Russian citizens who waver between loyalty to the current regime and condemnation of the war and harsh forms of political dictatorship. 

From this perspective, such projects risk alienating the ‘undecided’ members of the public through their radicalism. At the same time, the uncompromising political and legal consistency of the ‘100 Days’ project represents a necessary starting point for ideas about justice, crime and responsibility.

Historical experience shows that the gap between utopian proposals and reality can shrink far more rapidly than contemporaries expect. In the long term, the existence of such a reference point often becomes a crucial formative core of democratic narratives and their moral capital. The declarations by Soviet dissident human rights activists in the 1970s, insisting on the unconditional primacy of human rights in the midst of entrenched communist totalitarianism, sounded even more utopian at the time. Yet within a decade or so, those declarations became a cornerstone of the doctrine of democratic transformation, which gained widespread support. Notably, however, it was not the dissidents themselves who drove those transformations, but rather representatives of the elite and the integrated counter-elite of the former regime.

At the same time, a curious common feature of the Krasheninnikov–Milov project and the ‘100 Days’ project is their shared conviction that the 'window of opportunity' will be extremely narrow. Consequently, the political reforms to be introduced must be rapid and as 'comprehensive' (i.e. radical) as possible. This repeated assertion reveals an unspoken understanding on the part of the authors that resistance to the proposed changes and rejection of them will be widespread. Thus, they suggest cramming as many new norms and principles as possible into the brief window. However, this logic partly mirrors the rationale used by Russian reformers in the early 1990s, who argued that launching privatisation swiftly was more important than perfecting its design or building consensus around it. At the time, their arguments seemed no less reasonable than those of today’s authors. Yet, as subsequent events showed, the tactical success of 'speed' did not translate into strategic success. Rather, it led to the entrenchment of a 'distorted institution of property' rather than to the 'irreversibility of privatisation.'

Although the current widespread enthusiasm for post-Putin Russia projects may partly serve as a psychological antidote to despair, and cannot substitute for efforts to structure a broad political coalition, it nonetheless plays an important role in exploring the crossroads of a possible opposition political programme and the shared 'vision of the future' that must underpin it. In particular, it brings into focus one of the key dilemmas of such a programme: whether to pursue radical change, which narrows the potential support base and increases the risk of deforming new institutions, or to opt for moderation, which broadens support but introduces its own risks of incompleteness, compromise, and reversibility of reforms.