The Opposition Paradox: Putin has more opponents in Russia than it seems, but they lack a common public agenda

More than it seems

The so-called presidential election, in which Putin received 87% of the vote, did not turn out the triumph that had been expected. The idea that official voting results in Russia are falsified has ceased to be a subject of controversy and is now generally accepted. Meanwhile, those who are against the war and the dictatorship managed to take advantage of the 'election' to make their position known. One of the ruler’s challengers, Vladyslav Davankov spoke out, albeit in vague terms, in favour of ending the war with Ukraine. Therefore, voting for Davankov, along with spoiling ballots, became a way for Russians to protest. There was even an opportunity to do it publicly — thanks to the ‘Noon against Putin’ campaign. At 12:00 on 17 March, silent queues formed outside many polling stations in Russia’s megacities.

There were significantly more opponents of the war than the regime recognises. Reports from individual independent observers who attended some polling stations have spoken of widespread fraud. But there are also results that give an indication of what the real balance of votes might have been. For example, at a fairly typical polling station in St Petersburg, 74% of voters voted for Putin, including those who were explicitly instructed to do so by their superiors, while 20% voted against him (either by supporting Davankov or spoiling their ballot).

This example and some other data indicates that, even now, an opposition minority of approximately 10-20% remains in Russia. In an ExtremeScan poll conducted on election day, the overall share of anti-war voters (pro-Davankov + those who spoiled ballots) is estimated at 19% (though the calculation was based not only on direct answers, but also on an analysis of interviews interrupted by respondents). 

This is not the only potential opposition in today's Russia. A Russian Field survey conducted in early February records an equally large layer of militarists and imperialists. The reason for their dissatisfaction with the regime is that it is not waging war aggressively enough. However, this group lacks solidarity skills, and thus far it has merged with the conformist majority of Russians in its obedience to the autocrat.

While the regime does not literally reproduce the Soviet system, it is clearly acquiring totalitarian features. Its open opponents are exiled or arrested. Criticism of the ruler or the army is criminalised. Participation in ideological rituals has become compulsory for tens of millions of Russians, from schoolchildren and students to state employees and people in show business.

Public denunciations have become commonplace. Expressions of solidarity with those persecuted by the state, as well as attempts to maintain professional or organisational autonomy, are aggressively suppressed. Under these conditions, that 10-20% who took the risk of expressing their rejection of the Putin system by voting against Putin should be seen as a considerable segment of the population.

But at present, no one — and especially those who consider themselves in opposition to the regime — knows how to convert these oppositional feelings into any kind of action inside Russia. There is not even a generally accepted understanding of what that action might be. And this lack of understanding, bordering on bewilderment, is especially visible now among the anti-Putin activists who have been squeezed out of Russia.

Electoral fixation of the opposition

Even in the run-up to the ‘presidential election’, the position of many oppositional activists looked illogical, if not downright strange. One example was the call for Russian citizens in free countries to take part in this ritual — as if they had no other way to express solidarity with like-minded people in Russia and the successful political experience of Alexei Navalny and other oppositional activists at the end 2010s had been forgotten.

Prominent exiles who turned out to vote at Russian consulates, having called on Western governments before and after the vote to recognise the election as illegitimate, looked baffling.

Perhaps because of doubts about the meaningfulness of such actions, only a small share of anti-Putin Russians living abroad followed these calls. Outside Russia, only 90,000 people voted for Davankov or spoiled their ballots, i.e. no more than 10-15% of those who left Russia after its attack on Ukraine. 

Meanwhile, the recommendation of Alexei Navalny’s supporters to download a smartphone app that would randomly select any of Putin’s three dummy challengers went completely unheeded. After their leader died (or most likely was killed) in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle on 16 February, the appeal rang hollow and did not inspire ordinary voters.

It does not seem to occur to anti-Putin activists that elections are just one of the regime’s many political instruments. But the opposition’s lack of a positive agenda and fixation on elections are nothing new — they have roots in the pre-Putin era. And it would be unfair to blame only the activists themselves for this.

In the memory of Russians alive today, power changed hands only once through elections, and even then it was on a de facto basis, not de jure: in June 1991, Boris Yeltsin was freely elected president of Russia, then still part of the Soviet Union, while the head of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, as a result of Yeltsin’s election turned into figure No. 2. All subsequent votes were rather manipulated and never led to a change at the top. Such were the presidential elections of 1996, when the incumbent president Yeltsin won against the Communist Zyuganov. Zyuganov and his party were neither democrats nor liberals, and if he had won, Putin's current policies would have been implemented much earlier.But in 1996, what was fundamentally important was the predetermination of the election’s outcome. The irremovability of the supreme power became the rule. 

Regional elections – to elect governors or local legislatures – were still competitive for several years, but that too came to an end. For example, back then Zyuganov's fellow party members were often made 'opposition' governors through competitive elections, which, however, always turned out to be the last elections with a predetermined outcome. And the previously elected representatives of the people either stayed in office until they were completely worn out or were replaced by appointees of the Kremlin, with the next election only formalising that replacement.

All this seemingly should have pushed liberal and democratic critics of the regime to look for other forms of action. Even though by the end of the 1990s elections promised them only moral but not real success, it was then that a fixation on elections took hold among this milieu. The political history of the Russian opposition has since become a story of unsuccessful participation in successive elections with the obligatory (and also always unsuccessful) contestation of their results.

Manipulative elections and public agenda

There are two factors that, in my view, explain this desire to participate in elections no matter what – a 'generational' one and a 'national' one.

Oppositional activists still largely consist of representatives of the democratic wave of the late 1980s and those who experienced its degeneration in the early 1990s. Having experienced the crisis of these years, they became fearful of the masses, who they saw as conservative, pro-imperial and seemingly incapable of accepting the 'correct' ideas. From this fear flowed the idea that 'the people' should be manipulated. 

Therefore, the kind of elections that have emerged in Russia are quite natural to them, if not in terms of results, then in terms of style. In addition, the leadership of these parties and groups in the 1990s and 2000s, when they were still more or less systemic, was filled with self-confident young people who generally had the skills as electoral PR specialists, rather than public politicians.

It is less clear why the anti-Putinists of the most recent make, who have real experience of civic activism and seemingly have no fear of 'the people', also profess the same cult of elections. Though not all of them and not always.

The second and apparently more important reason for the fixation on elections was and remains the weakness of signals received from below. Russian society is not structured – there are no organic organisations expressing local interests, while these collective interests themselves are poorly understood by people

For that reason, there is virtually no long-term agenda – social, regional, separatist, environmental (no matter the strength of individual flare ups). Accordingly, most oppositionists do not have one either. Popular protests over accumulated problems are sometimes very intense, but they are always local and rarely last long.

Moral victories, but not political ones

Several variants of opposition 'electoral' politics were tested throughout the first, pre-war, period of Putin's rule. By the end of it, everything had been tried.

The opposition did not really try to contest the presidential elections in 2000, 2004 and 2008. Meanwhile, gubernatorial elections were cancelled in 2004 under the pretext of fighting terrorism. Critics of the regime therefore focused on local elections and campaigns to elect representatives at all levels. These efforts yielded a certain number of seats, but never gave critics of the regime a majority anywhere.

The opposition turned into an annex to the Kremlin’s political machine. As a reaction to this, since 2005, there have been 'dissent marches' - demonstrations organised by non-systemic or less systemic groups, which culminated in 2011-2013. 

The mass, albeit rather naive, protests against fraud in the parliamentary elections (the victims of fraud were parties that were impeccably Kremlin-approved and completely loyal to the regime) shook the country and forced the authorities to retreat a little.

The 2012 presidential election was the least manipulated in the Putin era (the ruler won 63.6% of the vote). In addition, gubernatorial elections were restored, but with restrictions designed to weed out candidates who were not controlled by the Kremlin. The culmination of this period was the Moscow mayoral election of 2013, in which Alexei Navalny received 27% of the vote.

This series of moral victories by the opposition was not reinforced by any real successes, however. In all 'electoral' conflicts without exception, the authorities got their own way. And the so-called systemic parliamentary parties, in defence of which Muscovites took to the streets, got rid of individual opposition-minded deputies and began to churn out repressive laws at such a pace that their recent defenders nicknamed the Duma 'the mad printer'.

Nevertheless, until the end of 2013, the regime continued to lose popularity which proved very painful for it. Attempts by the authorities to go on the ideological offensive had long been unsuccessful. But the annexation of Crimea, followed by the first invasion of eastern Ukraine, transformed Russia in a matter of weeks. A wave of great-power jubilation washed everything away, including the opposition’s momentum.

Few anti-Putin activists dared to go against this wave. Still, almost all of them began to prepare for the next 'single day of voting’, that is, for the elections at various levels, which the regime has now merged and held annually on one Sunday in September.

To quote my article from the summer of 2014: ‘Imagine that a group of actors was called to perform a play. They go on stage, recite familiar monologues and unexpectedly discover that there are no spectators. The hall is empty. But not entirely. Some people are hurriedly replacing the old entourage and turning the place into a club for militaristic/patriotic song and dance. The entrance is already crowded with patrons of the new establishment. It’s awkward for everyone, but especially for the artists. What should they do? Leave and slam the door? Finish the play? If the 2014 elections have any kind of plot, it is this... Russian public opinion is now completely immersed in passions over the split with Ukraine. This means that if the elections were not a sham, then the war in eastern Ukraine would become the key issue. It is clear where the majority is. But if at least some of the candidates who call themselves critics of the system openly entered the campaign with a position opposed to the official one, this would prevent the elections from turning into a Soviet-style festival of obedience. However, oppositional activists, with just a few exceptions, have turned out entirely incapable of doing that. They had long been accustomed to worrying about other things – complying with the constantly changing electoral rules, diligently following the increasingly intricate steps that were prescribed from above – and little by little they learned to see the meaning of their existence in adapting to the boss’s latest demand…’

Navalny's Experience and the Regime's Reaction

It appeared that opposition activity in Russia had been extinguished. However, three years later, it became evident that this was not forever. Alexei Navalny’s unique political talent allowed him to see how to wake up oppositional sentiments without getting into an argument with the Kremlin over the Ukraine issue, which was its trump card. In 2017, as soon as the imperial stupor had slightly dissipated, Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation began organising mass rallies and marches, coinciding with successive anti-corruption exposés.

The most famous of the 150-some investigations, about 'Putin's palace’, garnered an unprecedented 131 million views, but was released in early 2021 when the regime had already shed all restraints and was rapidly moving towards a major war, isolation, and unabashed repression. However, prior to this, Russia witnessed a brief surge of mass opposition, the most meaningful in all the decades of Russia’s post-Soviet autocracy.

In the autumn of 2018, Sergei Furgal was elected governor of the Khabarovsk Krai, having been nominated as a dummy candidate and unexpectedly defeating the region's incumbent, who everyone was fed up with. Almost immediately after this, Navalny launched the 'Smart Voting' project, hoping to make such victories widespread and overturn the entire system of state-controlled elections. He was putting forward one initiative after another, and some turned out to be viable.

Amid the obvious dissatisfaction at the grassroots, Navalny’s plans not to focus only on elections, but also to expand the agenda, create strongholds locally, rely on a wide circle of supporters, formulate at least a rough social policy – this was clearly a more serious threat to the regime than the usual oppositional activities.

That is precisely why the autocracy cast off all restraints. In the summer of 2020, Furgal, who had become a popular governor, was removed and arrested, while a little later the first attempt was made to assassinate Navalny. The rules for interacting with Putin’s system that had been established over two decades immediately went out the door.

The authorities now responded to peaceful protests with wholesale repression, while all oppositional organisations were destroyed and, after 24 February, 2022, anti-Putin activists had to choose between emigration and prison. Antiwar Russians were left without structures, without a local agenda and, since 16 February, 2024, without a generally recognised leader.

Agenda of History, restructuring of Russia, and practices of solidarity

The democratic opposition has now been set back not only by the totalitarian mutation of the regime, but also by its own long-time inability to formulate a meaningful strategy. Instead, it has once again immersed itself in electoral frenzy. This clearly does not correspond to reality. Opposition sentiments in Russia have not died out and could intensify. But playing with the regime on its own turf and by its own rules is a futile endeavour both within Russia and from outside.

A fundamentally new agenda will emerge. But the path to it cannot be short. Legalism as an opposition strategy had run its course as early as 2020. Since then, it has lost its meaning, not only in its reliance on 'elections', but also in hopes of achieving anything in state courts and oversight bodies or playing on the contradictions within the power machine. The regime has shown society its totalitarian face, and one must reckon with this fact.

If we exclude military coups such as that of Prigozhin and other varieties of top-level coups, there is no reason to expect the imminent collapse of the regime. The opposition activists exiled from Russia do not know what appeal to make to the country. But what is even more unfortunate is that the country itself is not ready to listen to any appeals at this time. The sentiments among those in Russia who do not accept the Putin system can only be described as a paralysis of will.

References to such old practices as underground or dissident activities are very rare, and this is not accidental. Modern surveillance techniques easily detect underground activists, and the regime deals much more harshly with dissidents than during the Brezhnev era.

But the main reason lies deeper. Despite their comparative numerical strength within Russia, people who condemn what is happening are divided and intimidated. Moreover, as a rule, they avoid showing solidarity with like-minded individuals, even the simplest forms, such as corporate solidarity.

Those who are persecuted cannot count on collective protection from colleagues or advocacy from the institution where they worked. Justifications for collaboration with the regime in persecuting dissenters, such as saying that they are 'saving the school', 'saving the university', 'saving the theatre', and so on, are widely accepted and convincing for some victims. This speaks to the depth of the crisis. Without solidarity, without a willingness to sacrifice something and 'not save' something, any form of civic activity is impossible. What specific forms it will take cannot be predicted, but its revival can only happen along this path.

However, intellectuals remaining in Russia often console each other with supposedly politically scientific arguments that civil activity is not needed right now. After all, autocrats are displaced from above, or they eventually die on their own. And only then will some 'window of opportunity' open up. But if society remains silent at that moment, as it does now, then the 'window' will only open for characters like that of Prigozhin.

Let us hope that Russian society will awaken before the regime collapses. It is precisely at this stage that a new opposition agenda will naturally emerge, and it will need ideas. In such cases, the supplier of ideas often becomes opposition activists who are abroad.

For example, the key idea for current Polish politics of acceptance of the Polish-Ukrainian borders, dictated by Stalin after World War II, and the strategic alliance with Ukraine against Russia, emerged in discussions among Polish political emigres as far back as the 1960s.

Anti-Putin Russians will either do what they have avoided doing until now and formulate principles for building a new Russia, or they will step aside, yielding their place to the next group of opposition activists. 

There is no need for any specially constructed unity of opposition forces for this. The myth of the necessity of organisational unity among oppositionists is one of the most harmful and resilient political myths in Russia. The only regard in which Bolshevik-Leninists deserve any imitation is their absence of a cult of 'unity', which led them to victory.

Today's Russian opposition does not need to unite, but instead needs to find meaningful alternatives to the regime, that is, to do what it and its predecessors have consistently avoided. What, for example, was the political justification for the opposition's failure to put forward its own pension system projects in 2018, when the authorities were pushing through an anti-social 'pension reform'? Or for tolerating the power vertical, the existence of which makes any self-government illusory?

Regardless of the desires and agendas of individuals or groups, there is an agenda of history. And this agenda includes the restructuring and reformation of Russia. Including, possibly, the secession of some territories. Someday this will happen. You can either not think about it and live according to the state calendar — from one 'election' to another — and consider these predetermined defeats as a fight against Putinism. Or you can not do what you are used to, but rather what is demanded at a particular time.