The Russian Duma ‘opposition’: no drama out of crisis?

Abstract

Why did the post-2008 economic crisis in Russia fail to become a political crisis before the 2011 parliamentary elections? One key reason is the failure of Russian political parties to become the aggregators of growing popular discontent, particularly the three national-level ‘opposition’ parties, the Liberal Democratic Party, Just Russia, and Communist Party of the Russian Federation. Analysing the rhetoric of these three parties towards the authorities and their anti-crisis programmes shows that the Duma opposition parties do articulate a potentially radical critique of contemporary Russian politics and economy. However, their inability to translate rhetoric into action is best explained by informal ‘rules of the game’ that limit their practical opposition activities to lobbying the Kremlin in private and maintaining public deference to the federal authorities.