An opposition rally was held in Moscow's Pushkin Square after Vladimir Putin's landslide re-election. The press service of the Russian interior ministry said 14,000 people attended the opposition rally. The opposition, however, put the number at 20,000. Russian blogger Alexei Navalny and one of the leaders of the Left Front, Sergei Udaltsov, also attended the rally. "They robbed us," Navalny told the crowd. "We are the power," he said to chants of "Russia without Putin" and "Putin is a thief".
Russian media reported that the rally was approved by the Moscow government in advance, but after the approved time ended, there were still some participants stranded in Pushkin Square. After several warnings, the police began arresting the most active participants and evicting others from the square. British media reported that tensions grew when riot police in helmets moved in to disperse several thousand activists who stayed on the square. In the end, the organizers of the rally were surrounded by police in a corner of the square and arrested. Russian media said police arrested about 250 people, including Navalny and Udaltsov. However, the opposition claimed that 500 to 1,000 participants were arrested.
A subsequent rally by supporters of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) ended peacefully without incident. After his election, Putin called for reconciliation and met with almost all opposition leaders, with the exception of Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, who refused to meet with him.
Putin's United Russia party won 28.06 million votes, about 65% of its 2007 peak, while the CPRF captured 10.66 million votes, a significant improvement over the previous election, when it won only 7.01 million votes due to Putin's "Crimea incident". Of course, the key reasons for the CPRF's electoral improvement are Putin's unpopular pension reform in 2018, the "Crimea incident" failing to mask the impact on the economy brought about by the West’s sanctions, and various allegations of corruption in the regime.
Throughout the development path of the CPRF since its establishment in 1993, it can be seen that it presents a direction of "strong - decline - adjustment - recovery". In the first decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CPRF, built from the wreckage of the Soviet Communist Party, was able to remain the largest party in parliament thanks to its ability to organize and mobilize, as well as popular resentment of the social chaos and wealth gap caused by Boris Yeltsin's shock therapy. Gennady Zyuganov, CPRF's leader, trailed Yeltsin by just three percentage points in the first round of the 1996 presidential election. But after Putin came to power in 2001, the CPRF's socialist program lost its appeal in the face of an economic boom brought on by soaring energy prices. In addition, the CPRF has been subtly suppressed by Putin (for example, Putin's cronies set up the left-wing "A Just Russia — For Truth" in 2006 to thin out the CPRF's vote) and has been plunged into several internal splits. Not only has the party lost influence in parliament, but its grassroots organizational capacity has also continued to erode, with membership plummeting from 500,000 in the early 2000s to a low of 150,000 in 2009.
The weakened CPRF was gradually incorporated into the opposition, a safe outlet for voters to vent their frustration with Putin's regime. For example, in the 2011 Russian legislative election, the CPRF benefited from weak economic growth caused by the financial crisis, but it did not play the role of the largest opposition party; when many leftist groups protested against election fraud and formed the opposition coordination committee, the CPRF turned its back on them.
The CPRF, which has been criticized as a "sham" opposition, is also changing, including downplaying communism and blending it with religion, patriotism, and social democracy in a new form that is more appealing to the general public. For example, it has embraced the Orthodox Church that Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin tried to stifle (Gennady Zyuganov even called Jesus the world's first communist on September 1 this year); it has emphasized Greater Russianism, a mix of rejection of Central Asian migrants and a yearning for a grand Slavic union. Its constant focus on social welfare policies, such as pensions, continues to evoke nostalgia among elder voters for the Soviet cradle-to-grave welfare system and attract large numbers of young left-wing party members.
Putin's pension reform in 2018 gave the CPRF a boost. By then, the glow of Putin's annexation of Crimea in 2014 had faded, and the sluggish economy under sanctions, rampant corruption, and wealth inequality -- according to 2017 data, the top 10% of Russia's richest population hold 78% of the country's wealth, making it the major economy with the widest gap between rich and poor. When Putin raised the retirement age due to a shortfall in state pensions, causing anger in Russia, where life expectancy is shorter than in other major countries, the CPRF, with its emphasis on welfare, became the flag bearer of the opposition.
Even after the demonstration had ceased, the influence of has remained in Russia. According to polling firm Levada Center, nostalgia for the Soviet Union among elders over the age of 55 peaked at 82% last year, and 75% of the country as a whole regards the Soviet Union as the best period in the country's history. All this is good news for the CPRF, so it stands to reason that its election results will improve.
Another interesting development for the CPRF is its "alliance" with dissident Alexei Navalny. Of course, the party's leader, Gennady Zyuganov, as a "loyal opposition," distanced himself from Navalny, whom Putin hates, and denounced him as a "foreign agent" who is "planning on behalf of the U.S. government and multinational corporations to inciting a color revolution to overthrow President Putin". But many in the party, including grassroots members, local leaders, and even some at the top see Navalny, who has shifted to the left-wing in recent years, as an ally. Among those who praised Navalny were Valery Rashkin, the CPRF's first secretary in Moscow, and Sergey Levchenko, the former governor of Irkutsk. In addition, CPRF's local city councilors were detained by security forces during protests in Moscow, Kazan, Saratov, and elsewhere following Navalny's arrest in January.
As the most popular opposition figure in Russia in recent years, Navalny naturally supported the CPRF, the strongest opposition party with similar ideas, in the election without an election machine. Many of Navalny's followers also joined the CPRF as a platform for mainstream political protest. Thanks to Navalny's "smart voting" strategy, the CPRF won 13 of the 43 seats on Moscow's city council in the 2019 local elections (it had previously won only 5 seats). Navalny backed mostly CPRF's candidates in the Russian legislative election, but his influence may not be as strong as expected because his "smart voting" app, which guided the public to vote strategically, was taken offline after the authorities intervened.
Whether Zyuganov likes it or not, the inevitable coalescence of the CPRF with Navalny's supporters is enough to alarm the authorities. At the same time, with the rise of the left-wing ideology of equity and welfare, if the CPRF wants to expand its power and even regain its glory, it needs to take on the responsibility of monitoring, advising, and fighting as a real opposition party, which the Kremlin does not want to see. Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, said: "It's not good for the CPRF to get too many votes because they will have to explain to the presidential palace... They might be forgiven for having 20% of the vote. It will be a step too far if they have 25% or 30% of the vote suddenly".
At present, the CPRF stands at a fork in the road. Will the elder leaders remain loyal and secure stance, or will they be drawn into the resistance of the radical revolutionaries? If the latter gains momentum within the party, how will it respond to the Putin regime's crackdown? The party's future is still on thin ice as more candidates begin to fall through the authorities' election filters, and even its 2018 presidential candidate is barred from running this year.
At least, is that Russia's future prospects are theoretically favorable for the continued development of the CPRF. As the country's economy continues to decline under the Western sanctions and the pandemic, if it fails to change the structural problems that are holding it back, including restructuring the resource-dependent economy, reducing capital and brain drain, combating oligarchs and corruption, and improving the business environment, the long-stagnant economy will continue to fuel a desire for a change in government and left-wing policies will continue to take hold.
In fact, Navalny's shift from neoliberalism in the early 2000s to left-wing credo today shows that he knows that the former has failed to unite a majority and that his Yabloko party is now in the dismal position of not being able to get a single seat. In addition, the authorities are unable to meet the needs of the population due to financial constraints, which will push more people into the arms of the CPRF. Whether the CPRF can seize this historic opportunity will be the key to its future ascendancy to the stage of power.
Far from inaction in the face of opposition challenges, Putin has in fact taken overt and tough political action against the CPRF since September 2021.
In September 2021, Putin began a large-scale arrest of CPRF's leaders, including dozens of key supporters of the CPRF, who were jailed and fined. Putin even seized the headquarter of the CPRF and the CPRF's building in Moscow. Putin also seized the office of Ivan Ivanovich Melnikov, first vice-chairman of the State Duma. Putin's definition of the CPRF as the political opposition and the main political challenger to "Putin the Great" will put China in a bind. If China seeks to develop relations with the CPRF, it will be perceived as an unfriendly move by Putin. If China drops its support for the CPRF, it will not only have to explain itself at home, but also lose a supportive voice for the Communist Party internationally.
Therefore, the future relationship between Russia and China is worth paying close attention to. We still stand by our past conclusion that Russia and the Putin regime are still playing a geopolitical role in determining China's fate at a critical moment.
