Forces from the right and left did make attempts to create opposition coalitions in some European countries in the post-war years. They were known as "monstrous" opposition alliances and did not last long. However, Russia's opposition forces want to buck the trend, as they are planning a lasting coexistence. They staged their first step together this fall, organizing rallies against President Vladimir Putin's reforms in 16 cities throughout Russia, including in Moscow and St Petersburg. They intend to organize even larger events in the future.
Political parties seek power. Therefore, other political parities, especially if they are at the opposite end of the political spectrum, are their main rivals. However, the ruling party is not the main opponent of the political parties in opposition in modern-day Russia; their main rival and foe is the state. This is a Russian specific. The last 100 years in Russia's political history allow one to talk about a certain tendency: the state only has to tolerate political liberalism when it is weak and incapable of addressing new challenges. This is when political parties and movements appear en masse in Russia. After a series of crises the state begins regaining strength. The state adopts a new political style and begins employing new government methods, and political passions abate. Political pluralism gradually recedes and the number of parties declines dramatically.
Russia's modern political cycle started with the 1905 bourgeois revolution that put constitutional limits on monarchy and declared political freedoms for a nation without rights. This is also when Russia's first national parliament, the State Duma, was elected. The political parties that joined in the race for Duma mandates included the Constitutional Democrats, the Octobrists, the Black Hundreds, the right- and left-wing revolutionary socialists, Plekhanov's Mensheviks, or the Social Democrats, and later on the Bolsheviks led by Vladimir Lenin. There were also other parties and groups whose influence on the course of history was less significant.
After the 1917 October revolution, the Communist Party was the only influential political force in Russia. In the beginning, when the Bolsheviks were only looking for their way in history, their party boasted inner democracy, and along with the centrist majority, there existed the right- and left-wing oppositions. However, the centrist majority of the party headed by Josef Stalin won in the 1930s. This victory put an end to internal political activities in Russia. The Communist Party under Stalin did not hold congresses for 13 years, between 1939 and 1952, which was a period that should have been its heyday. This fact surprises foreign scholars a great deal. However, there is nothing surprising about it, as the regime did not need the ruling party. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev returned the Communist Party to the foreground again in the late 1950s and took advantage of its political capabilities. He understood that Stalin's model of government was no longer effective and it only hindered the country's development. Khrushchev could not rely on the conservative state machine and he chose the Communist Party to help him pursue his reforms. At a closed session of a party congress, Khrushchev gave a report about the acts of repression perpetrated under Stalin and his personality cult. The report was later published in newspapers throughout the world. The Communist Party was the only possible rostrum for launching democratic changes at the time.
After Khrushchev, the Communist Party became increasingly prominent. It drastically consolidated its influence but, in parallel, it began to merge rapidly with the state apparatus. When Gorbachev came to power in 1985 and declared his commitment to reforms, the stagnated party was an integral part of the state. Therefore, it was time for the Russian political cycle, with its new political parties and boiling political passions, to enter a new phase.
And it did. In the late 1980s-early 1990s, hundreds of parties emerged in Russia along with other political organizations. In December 1993, 40 parties and associations took part in the State Duma elections. Extremely weak and on the brink of collapse, the Russian state was searching for an identity and could not do without political liberalization. However, the time for searching is now over.
The strategy of societal and state development has been identified for many years to come owing to, among other things, the heated and open debates between parties of the past decade. Now that Russian society has understood its goals, i.e., security, welfare growth and international authority, it objectively needs consolidation, and this is what centrist Mr. Putin is pursuing with his reform of the state vertical. Therefore, the kaleidoscope of political parties, which is already bleak, with only four factions with clearly formulated state views sitting in the Duma, is hardly likely to please Russians with any new colors.
Swept by the political cycle, political activity of the opposition in Russia is abating. But how far will this go? "The rightist-leftist opposition" that tried its potential this fall fears above all that, like in the 1930s, the process will reach its logical end, i.e., it will lead to the complete disappearance of both the right- and left-wingers from the Russian political scene.
However, there are some factors that are highly likely to prevent such developments. The main one is the desire of the state, which now realizes its dependence on political fluctuations, to secure crisis-free development. In other words, the state is the main politician in today's Russia, and it is interested in preserving all parts of the political spectrum to avoid unlimited liberalization that is generally fraught for Russia with serious upheavals and even the country's collapse.
After all, history should teach us some lessons.
