The People's Freedom Party (Russian: Партия народной свободы, romanized: Partiya narodnoy svobody), often known by its short form PARNAS (Russian: ПАРНАС), and formerly the Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom Party, and initially Republican Party of Russia, was a liberal-democratic political party in Russia. It was one of the first opposition parties founded in the final years of the Soviet Union.
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 5 May 2012.
The party was dissolved by Russia's Supreme Court on 25 May 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.
Contents
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. Nikolay Lysenko, Stepan Sulakshin and Vyacheslav Shostakovsky were elected as the three co-chairman. The Republican Party joined the Democratic Russia bloc, an umbrella organisation of pro-democracy movements. The Republican Party was close to the Social Democratic Party of Russia, which was founded earlier in 1990. The two parties shared similar program and there were attempts to merge. The Republican Party's program has been characterised as liberal and pragmatic; similarly to the Social Democratic Party, however, the Republican Party had internal factions: ranging from social democracy to social liberal to liberal conservative.
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 Yuri Luzhkov's Otechestvo bloc, whereas a number of the regional organisations of the Republican Party cooperated with small liberal parties like Right Cause or Sergey Kiriyenko's New Force etc.
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. 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 coalition "The Other Russia". In 2010, Boris Nemtsov – one of president Putin's fiercest critics – set up the People's Freedom Party along with former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, former Member of Parliament Vladimir Ryzhkov and Vladimir Milov, which then formed a liberal coalition with the RPR entitled "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption". The People's Freedom Party worked on the base of Republican Party, and the two parties eventually merged in 2012.
In 2011, the party's dissolution was held to be unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. 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. 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.
Member of Parliament for the A Just Russia party Gennady Gudkov discussed planning rallies against Vladimir Putin with RPR party leader Vladimir Ryzhkov during 2011. The Federal Security Service was closely monitoring Gudkov and secretly videotaped his discussions with Ryzhkov, which the FSB then released to the public to discredit him as a radical attempting to undermine the governing administration. The Russian parliament subsequently voted to expel Gudkov for his open criticism of Putin, the first such expulsion since 1995.
Merger, recent history and dissolution (2012–2023)
The Ministry of Justice recognized the merger of the Republican Party and the People's Freedom Party (RPR–PARNAS) on 2 August 2012, after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the party should be restored in May of that year, and it supported the 2011–13 Russian protests, although since then the party has been mostly on the decline in influence among opposition circles.
In August 2012 Boris Nemtsov attacked President Putin, saying he had used his power to acquire for his personal use palaces, yachts, planes and other property that really belonged to the state. Nemtsov said that Putin had been taking state property for a long time, and said he "thinks it all belongs to him.".
During 2012 RPR-PARNAS participated in regional elections in Barnaul, winning 1 seat, and Saratov Oblast, Tuva, winning 2 seats.
Between 2011 and 2013, a series of protests had swept across Russia against electoral fraud after the 2011 Russian legislative election, and RPR-PARNAS had involved itself in the Moscow protest movement. Using its recently regained official party status, the party nominated a key leader of the protests and opposition figure Alexei Navalny for the September 2013 Moscow mayoral election, eliminating the need for Navalny to collect a huge number of signatures to be able to run. Navalny was president Vladimir Putin's top critic, and analysts agreed that he had specifically been released from imprisonment and allowed to run in the Kremlin-controlled election to give it a false sense of legitimacy. The pro-Putin candidate, Sergey Sobyanin of United Russia, even ordered the authorities to allow opposing parties to run against him, and personally requested that the Moscow municipal authorities helped Navalny collect the required number of signatures to run. Despite this, during the campaign Navalny got only a quarter as many TV mentions as his United Russia rival, mostly in the context of corruption charges against him.
In July Navalny was only polling around 8% and Sobyanin 78%. 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. 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.
Ideology
The ideology of the RPR-PARNAS was liberalism, federalism and human rights. 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.
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.
The party considered the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea illegal and vowed to return control of Crimea back to Ukraine; as such, PARNAS did not campaign in Crimea in the 2016 Russian parliamentary elections. According to its 2015 election platform, it stated that it wanted Russia to become a partner of NATO and the European Union, as well as to end military interventions in other countries.
Significance to the Russian opposition
In Russia, political opposition during Putin's presidency tends to be more visible through protest than in legislatures and executive offices. The main three 'opposition' parties in parliament, often referred to as the 'systemic opposition', do not represent a serious threat to the government and dominant ruling party United Russia. The Communist Party has declined in strength since the 1990s and also supports United Russia on various issues, while the far-right LDPR and socialist A Just Russia — Patriots — For Truth parties, both believed to be government creations, largely support President Putin and the government. Most of the major parties fully support the president, and only the liberal Yabloko and PARNAS parties strongly condemn Putin's policies. Thus, the most prominent democratic opposition parties in Russia have been Yabloko and PARNAS. Experts consider these parties to be the two political forces that are true opposition parties, and they were the only two parties out of the 14 that competed in the 2016 legislative election that could be considered as such.
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.
Yabloko and PARNAS are generally more politicized than the 'systemic opposition', leading campaigns against electoral fraud and corruption while voicing support for civil rights. Both frequently demand the release of political prisoners, media freedoms, and changes in political regulations, and have advocated direct elections of mayors and opposed oppressive legislation such as laws and restrictions on public meetings.
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.
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)