People's Freedom Party (Russia)
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People's Freedom Party Партия народной свободы Partiya narodnoy svobody | |
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CPSU | |
Headquarters | Moscow |
Youth wing | People's Democratic Union of Youth Youth committee of Solidarity |
Membership (2011) | 46,158 |
Ideology | Republicanism Liberalism Conservative liberalism Federalism Atlanticism Anti-communism Pro-Europeanism |
Political position | Centre-right |
National affiliation | Free Russia Forum |
European affiliation | Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party |
Colours | Dark violet Before 2012: Orange |
Slogan | "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption" (Russian: "За Россию без произвола и коррупции")[1] |
Seats in the State Duma[2] | 0 / 450 |
Seats in the Regional Parliaments | 0 / 3,980 |
Website | |
parnasparty | |
The People's Freedom Party (
In 2007, it was denied re-registration and declared to be dissolved by the Russian Supreme Court. It was only after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the denial of registration was unlawful that it could restore its official registration in May 2012.
The party was dissolved by Russia's Supreme Court on May 25, 2023 because it did not have the required number of branches and due to claims filed against existing branches by the Federal Taxation Service and the Ministry of Justice.[6][7]
History
Formation and early developments (1990–2006)
The Republican Party of Russia was founded in 1990 by members of the Democratic Platform of the CPSU who had become disillusioned with the party's unwillingness to reform. The foundation of the new party took place in November 1990.
The RPR and the SDP formed a united faction (Объединенная депутатская группа РПРФ/СДПР) in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies (later, they fused with similar groups to form the faction 'Left Centre', which was pro-reform but more moderate than groups like the 'Radical Democrats', which advocated radical economic reforms). In contrast to the social democrats, the Republicans participated in the Movement of Democratic Reforms that was formed in summer, 1991 and included mostly liberal-minded former nomenklatura members (Alexander Yakovlev, Gavriil Popov et al.). The Republican Party initially supported both Yegor Gaidar's economic reforms and Boris Yeltsin in his conflict with the Supreme Soviet; later, some of the leaders turned more critical of Yeltsin. The Republican Party left the Democratic Russia bloc in October, 1993 due to disagreements with the bloc's policies.
Altogether, the party members won 12 seats in the newly elected parliament of 1993: 5 republicans within the Yabloko bloc and 7 from Democratic Choice of Russia. In the 1995 legislative election, the party ran within the Pamfilova – Gurev – N.Lysenko bloc, which failed to cross the 5% barrier. Lysenko and Ella Pamfilova won seat through majoritarian district.
At the end of 1998, Nikolay Lysenko, retaining the post of RP chairman, joined
In 1999, Lysenko won a parliament seat in a majoritarian district. In 2002, the party was reorganized into the Republican Party of Russia.[8]
The party was described as the 'torchbearer' of liberal anti-Kremlin opposition during Vladimir Putin's reign in the early 2000s.[9]
In 2006,
Dissolution and re-establishment (2007–2011)
In 2007, the Russian Supreme Court ruled the party to be dissolved, according to Ryzhkov because of the opposition to the government.[why?] In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights ruled out the refusal to register the party was unlawful. Since 5 May 2012, the Justice Ministry has restored the state registration of the Republican Party of Russia.
In 2006–2010, the RPR was a member of the opposition
In 2011, the party's dissolution was held to be unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights.[10] In June 2011 the party applied for re-registration, but the authorities blocked this on the grounds of "the inconsistency in the party's charter and other documents filed for the official registration", a decision Nemtsov and Kasyanov said was politically motivated and that meant the party could not participate in the 2011 Russian legislative election.[11] However, in January 2012, following the entry into force of the ECtHR's judgment, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation quashed its 2007 decision to dissolve the party.[12]
Merger, recent history and dissolution (2012–2023)
The
In August 2012 Boris Nemtsov attacked President Putin, saying he had used his power to acquire for his personal use palaces,
During 2012 RPR-PARNAS participated in regional elections in Barnaul, winning 1 seat, and Saratov Oblast, Tuva, winning 2 seats.
2013 electoral successes
Time | Sobyanin | Navalny | Ref |
---|---|---|---|
29 August–2 September | 60.1% | 21.9% | [15] |
22–28 August | 63.9% | 19.8% | [16] |
15–21 August | 62.5% | 20.3% | [17] |
8–14 August | 63.5% | 19.9% | [18] |
1–7 August | 74.6% | 15.0% | [18] |
25–31 July | 76.2% | 16.7% | [19] |
18–24 July | 76.6% | 15.7% | [20] |
11–16 July | 76.2% | 14.4% | [21] |
4–10 July | 78.5% | 10.7% | [21] |
27 June–3 July | 77.9% | 10.8% | [21] |
Between 2011 and 2013,
In July Navalny was only polling around 8% and Sobyanin 78%.[23] However, Navalny rapidly gained support at the expense of Sobyanin and did surprisingly well in the election, winning 27% of the vote and nearly forcing a run off against Sobyanin who, according to official results, only managed to win just over 50% of the votes.[22][27][24] Navalny and his supporters maintained that the authorities had altered the results just enough to allow Sobyanin to cross the 50% threshold and avoid a runoff, which would have been a dramatic setback for the establishment.[24]
In the aftermath of the election, Navalny was offered a position as the fourth co-chairman of RPR-PARNAS alongside Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov.[28]
Despite the authorities banning the party from participating in some regions in the 2013 regional elections – likely for political reasons – RPR-PARNAS managed to achieve another electoral success in the autumn of 2013 when co-leader Nemtsov successfully managed to win a seat on the
In the concurrent September 2013 gubernatorial elections, all of the party's candidates were disqualified from running by the authorities.[30]
It was in 2013 that Nemtsov also published a report on the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics which were planned to be held in Sochi, Russia. He provided evidence there had been massive embezzlement by government officials, asserting that it amounted to about 50-60 percent of the stated final cost of the sporting event.[9]
Assassination of co-leader Nemtsov
One of the party's co-leaders at this time was
In the aftermath of the assassination, Kasyanov stated that he also feared for his life, noting that he was receiving death threats from
Nemtsov's murder deprived RPR-PARNAS of one of its most influential figures and meant he was unable to complete his term as an elected member of the Yaroslavl regional parliament, the party's last remaining seat. However, because of the 5-year mandate Nemtsov won in 2013, the party would retain control of the seat until 2018.[22]
Democratic Coalition formed for elections
In July 2015, the party congress voted to shorten the party's name to just People's Freedom Party (PARNAS).
Poisoning of Kara-Murza
Three months after Nemtsov was assassinated another leading figure in the party, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was nearly killed after being poisoned.[37] Kara-Murza had been elected to the federal council of the party in June 2012, and was also elected to the Russian Opposition Coordination Council in October 2012.[38][39] While in a meeting, Kara-Murza fell severely ill and began vomiting violently, eventually losing consciousness and falling into a coma.[37] He was taken to hospital and spent a week in the coma.[37] When he woke up he was told by doctors he had been poisoned by an unknown substance, and tests subsequently found high levels of heavy metals in his blood.[37][40]
Kara-Murza's poisoning was widely believed to be politically motivated.[41] Kara-Murza had been a close friend of Nemtsov, and there was a history of the Russian security services poisoning opponents of the Kremlin, such as Alexander Litvinenko and Anna Politkovskaya.[42] Kara-Murza would be poisoned again in February 2017, again causing him to fall into a coma, but he also survived this attack.[41]
In 2021, it was discovered that Kara-Murza had been trailed before his poisonings by the same Federal Security Service unit that poisoned the most prominent Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2020.[43] Navalny had previously been RPR-PARNAS's candidate for mayor in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and worked closely with the party.
After his recovery, Kara-Murza went on to be elected deputy leader of RPR-PARNAS in July.[44]
Democratic Coalition and sabotaged 2016 legislative election campaign
Ultimately, the primary that was held to create the candidate list that would run for the coalition in the elections ended up breaking down, for multiple reasons. One key reason was the publication of a sex tape involving Mikhail Kasyanov and another PARNAS member, which caused Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin to call for Kasyanov to take part in the primaries himself rather than be permitted to be automatically placed on the candidate list (Kasyanov's position on the party ticket was part of the agreement in forming the coalition). State-run TV channel NTV also released a secretly-recorded video of Kasyanov criticising his coalition partners in private.[45] Members of the "December 5" party proposed to hold a vote to decide whether the reserved spots on the party ticket should exist or not, and while the others supported the idea, PARNAS vetoed it.[46] When Kasyanov refused to take part in the primaries they pulled their support, effectively ending the coalition. Yashin and several of his supporters also left the party.[22]
PARNAS went on to hold its own primary but this was disrupted when hackers posted the personal information of voters who took part in it online. Unexpectedly,
In December 2016 deputy party leader Kara-Murza left PARNAS because of Maltsev's role in the party.[50]
2017 Moscow municipal election
During the 2017 Moscow municipal election, PARNAS partnered with the liberal party Yabloko in a coalition called 'United Democrats' to get candidates elected to local councils of deputies in municipal districts of Moscow. Specifically, PARNAS only gained two out of 1,502 seats up for election, but the coalition as a whole obtained over 260 seats.[51]
2018 presidential election
In October 2017, Kasyanov proposed that the liberal opposition candidates intending to run for the
Contentious loss of last seat
In September 2018 regional elections were held in which the party's only seat in a legislature, the
2023 dissolution
The party was dissolved by Russia's Supreme Court on May 25, 2023 because it did not have the required number of branches and due to claims filed against existing branches by the Federal Taxation Service and the Ministry of Justice.[6][7] The Supreme Court cited the absence of the party’s offices in at least half of the 83 federal subjects of Russia as the primary reason.[54] The Ministry of Justice claimed that the party’s number of branches had dropped from 47 to 40 since the start of 2023.[54] PARNAS claimed the party still had 44 offices and that it could not have offices in the four annexed territories of Ukraine by Russia on 30 September 2022 (who are internationally recognized as a part of Ukraine[55]), since (PARNAS alleged) those regions did not yet have full-fledged executive authorities.[54]
Ideology
The ideology of the RPR-PARNAS was liberalism, federalism and human rights.[citation needed] In his interview, Kasyanov said "there is no higher value for the government than human rights." He defined ideological stance of PRP-PARNAS as right-of-center liberalism.[56]
The main principles of the PARNAS party program included securing the individual rights of Russian citizens and equality of all before law, and that the government should be democratic, controlled by the public and should serve the interest of the people. The party condemned the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917 and the existence of the Soviet Union, which it considered tyrannical, and modeled itself after the Constitutional Democratic Party that existed during the late Russian Empire. It also promised to declassify all KGB and other Soviet documents as part of a "decommunization" program and ban all promotion of the communist regime. For Russia's form of government it proposed to create a parliamentary republic and increase local self-governance. In addition, PARNAS wanted to reform the judiciary to be truly independent, remove government control over the mass media, and promote small business and entrepreneurs over oligarchs.[57]
The party considered the
Significance to the Russian opposition
In Russia,
When in 2012 new laws were introduced which allowed the formation of new parties, several new opposition parties sprang up, but RPR-PARNAS held an advantage over these other parties as it was led by several long-standing leaders of anti-Putin opposition such as Nemtsov and Kasyanov. This gave the party particular prominence.[29]
Yabloko and PARNAS are generally more politicized than the 'systemic opposition', leading campaigns against
Amongst all parties, Yabloko and PARNAS have had the highest percentage of ballot-access denials by authorities, despite their overall limited number of attempts to register candidates.[64]
Leaders
- Co-chairs
- Mikhail Kasyanov (2012–2023)
- Vladimir Ryzhkov (2006–2014)
- Boris Nemtsov (2012 – until his assassination on 27 February 2015)
- Federal Political Council of RPR-PARNAS
Bureau:
- Mikhail Kasyanov
- Boris Nemtsov (until his assassination on 27 February 2015)
- Ilya Yashin (until 16 December 2016)
- Valentina Melnikova (former co-chair of the party)
- Sergey Aleksashenko
- Konstantin Merzlikin
- Vadim Prokhorov
- Alexander Berstenev
Others:
- Igor Stasovskiy
- Vladimir Vladimirovich Kara-Murza(until 16 December 2016)
- Vyacheslav Maltsev (until 2017)
Electoral results
Legislative elections
Election | Party leader | Performance | Rank | Government | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Votes | % | ± pp | Seats | +/– | ||||
1993 | Run into the Yabloko and Choice of Russia lists | 12 / 450
|
New | 6th | Opposition | |||
1995 | Ella Pamfilova | 1,106,812 | 1.69% |
New | 2 / 450
|
10 | 12th | Opposition |
1999 | Only constituencies | 1 / 450
|
1 | 15th | Opposition | |||
2003 | Did not contest | |||||||
2007 | ||||||||
2011 | Party was part of For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption coalition that boycotted the elections | |||||||
2016 | Mikhail Kasyanov | 384,675 | 0.73% |
0.73 | 0 / 450
|
0 | 11th | Extra-parliamentary |
See also
References
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External links
- Official website
- St Petersburg branch of RPR-PARNAS
- The website of Vladimir Ryzhkov
- The 2011 website of the Republican Party (Internet Archive)
- About the party
- Partinform
- Articles