Parties represented in the State Duma of the Russian Republic
as of 18 January 2024
Social Democratic Party of Russia (Социал-демократическая партия России, СДПP/SDPR)
72 seats
2019 election result: 15.1%
Founded 1898
Leader: Nadezhda Vladimirovna Popova
Ideology: social democracy, democratic socialism, Marxism (factions)
Orientation: centre-left to left-wing
Russia's oldest political party, the party of Lenin and Martov, has for most of its history hewed considerably closer to the latter's ideological position. Far from its mid-century highs as a party occasionally leading the government, it's now reduced to providing a spoiler for the two major parties, and in fact has more often worked with the Kadets than the Radicals. Nevertheless, there is a strong Social Democratic base in Russia's industrial regions, particularly the Urals, which ensures that the party never suffers too much for its parliamentary compromises.
Radical Democratic Party of Russia (Радикалнo-демократическая партия России, РДПР/RDPR)
14 seats
2019 election result: 5.9%
Founded 1961
Leader: Anatoly Borisovich Voronin
Ideology: social liberalism, social democracy
Orientation: centre-left
The RDPR was originally founded as a vehicle for Social Democrats to circumvent their party's ban after the 1959 military coup, and has basically run on fumes ever since full democracy was restored. Their base is mostly urban middle-class voters who feel the Radicals aren't radical enough, but don't want to move the whole way over to the SDP. Although this makes their rate of voter turnover higher than most other parties (especially in a country with voting habits as tribal as Russia), they have managed to carve out a solid niche for themselves in Petrograd and usually get some backing from the other major cities.
Ecological Movement "The Alternative" (Экологическoe движение «Aльтернатива», Aльт/Alt)
8 seats
2019 election result: 2.1%
Founded 2005
Spokespeople: Rustam Usmanovich Khabibullayev/Valentina Nikolaevna Medvedeva
Ideology: ecologism, left-wing populism, anti-capitalism (factions), social liberalism (factions)
Orientation: centrist to left-wing
Russia came late to the Green Wave, but "The Alternative" has established itself as a player on the country's political scene in the decade or so since it first entered the Duma. Its politics are quite vague and encompass a broad range of opinions, but this is something Russian voters are used to, and while alternative energy and green transition aren't going to be vote winners anywhere east of Nizhny Novgorod, even a country as dependent on oil and heavy industries as Russia has its share of voters who are willing to back new ideas. Unfortunately for the RDPR, a lot of those are their former core voters.
People's Party of Russia (Народная партия России, НПР/NPR)
61 seats
2019 election result: 11.2%
Founded 1923
Leader: Boris Vladimirovich Tarasov
Ideology: agrarianism, populism, social conservatism, statism
Orientation: syncretic (economically centre-left, socially right-wing)
The "other" green party in Russia is really anything but - it was founded as a right-wing offshoot of the Socialist-Revolutionary (SR) movement in the early days of the Republic, and as a result of the land reforms carried out under Stolypin and Tukhachevsky, managed to overtake its originator and survive into the Second Democratic Period. Despite attempts by successive Russian leaders to appeal to rural voters and counteract the influence of the NPR, it remains a solid second-tier party, mainly catering to agrarian regions in the same way the SDP caters to industrial regions. This makes it and the SDP natural allies, and there has been occasional talk of reviving the "worker-peasant front" formula of the 40s and 50s, but this has been stymied by both the growing urban-rural divide and the unusual Russian parliamentary arithmetic.
Russian Radical Party (Российская радикалная партия, РРП/RRP)
177 seats
2019 election result: 31.6%
Founded 1931
Leader: Olga Nikolaevna Tukhachevskaya
Ideology: left-wing nationalism, statism, social liberalism (majority), national liberalism (minority)
Orientation: centre-left to centre-right
The name "Tukhachevsky" divides Russia in half to this day. Mikhail Tukhachevsky had proved himself as one of the Russian Army's best strategists during the Cossack and Basmachi rebellions, and managed to win election as President in 1930, at the tender age of 37. Soon after, inspired by the examples of Italy and Britain, he decided to carry out a self-coup, proroguing the Duma indefinitely and establishing himself as Russia's autocratic ruler. The ensuing "perestroika" ("restructuring") period saw the questions that had haunted the First Democratic Period resolved by force, generally in a centralist, nationalist direction. To the frustration of some of his early backers, however, Tukhachevsky remained a convinced republican and never showed any intention of restoring the Romanovs. On the contrary, he set up the Radical Party as a tool to unify his support networks and enable popular engagement with the régime in a more manageable way than liberal democracy would allow, and even after the "glasnost" ("openness") reforms brought back direct elections for most political offices, both the man and the party survived into the new Second Democratic Period. Tukhachevsky's mysterious death in an aeroplane crash over the Stanovoy Mountains in 1954 did nothing to lessen the myth of the Russian Napoleon, and while the Radicals soon became a party among many in the churning chaos of 1950s Russian politics, they did remain a major player through the military dictatorship and into the Third Democratic Period.
Today, the Radical Party is one of two parties in Russia strong enough to regularly field candidates for President and Prime Minister. As befits a party based around the personality of a strongman who's been dead for more than half a century, it encompasses several conflicting ideologies, but remains committed to a strong state and civic nationalism. The only unifying factor over the decades has been the Tukhachevsky family itself - first his nephew Nikolai, who led the party through much of the military dictatorship, then Nikolai's daughter Olga, who took over in 2005 and became Russia's first female Prime Minister following the 2009 Duma elections. Olga Tukhachevskaya is generally seen as a left-wing figure within the party, and her push to nationalise several failing banks during the 2011-12 financial crisis brought down her first administration when several high-profile Radical leaders called on their supporters to vote against the government. Nevertheless, the 2019 election saw her return to power at the head of a shaky coalition with the Agrarians and the NDPR. The Duma elected then is up for renewal this year, and with the government increasingly unpopular and the centre-left increasingly crowded, will no doubt produce interesting results.
Party of People's Freedom (Партия Народной Свободы, ПАРНАС/PARNAS or, more commonly, Кадеты/Kadets)
149 seats
2019 election result: 27.2%
Founded 1905 (original)/1949 (current)
Leader: Dmitri Vladimirovich Gan
Ideology: market liberalism, liberal conservatism (majority), social liberalism (minority)
Orientation: centrist to centre-right
When Tukhachevsky pursued glasnost and ended the one-party rule of the Radicals in 1949, many of the "old" parties came back out of the woodworks. Aside from the SDP, the quickest to organise and regain its former strength were the Kadets, who had formed the backbone of the liberal opposition in the Tsarist Duma before the World War. With monarchist forces still ignoring parliamentary politics, the old left-wing opposition soon found itself as the new right-wing opposition, and became the party of both the capitalist and feudal upper classes. In spite of this, the party remained committed to republicanism and secularism, and indeed it has largely tended to be more socially liberal and open than the Radicals - helped, perhaps, by their occasional alliance with the SDP, which has been responsible for a lot of the advances in social legislation seen in Russia in recent years, from the decriminalisation of sodomy in 2004 to the criminalisation of spousal rape in 2015, as well as what small advances have been made towards increased minority rights. This also means they're the party of choice for Central Asia, which is still sour on the Radicals due to Tukhachevsky's role in suppressing national movements there in the 20s and 30s. Most recently in power from 2012 to 2019 under Dmitri Gan, their current leader, the Kadets hope to return to power in the Duma elections scheduled for later this year.
National-Orthodox Movement (Народно-православнoе движение, НПД/NPD)
7 seats
2019 election result: 2.7%
Founded 1981
Leader: Igor Tikhonovich Gerasimov
Ideology: national conservatism, political Christianity, regionalism
Orientation: right-wing to far-right
Russia's right-wing milieu has been chronically disorganised since the fall of the Tsars, and this is in large part due to the way the Republic was established. The sudden and violent nature of the Russian Empire's downfall, coupled with the fact that ex-Tsar Nicholas was alive and well in Sorrento, meant that its leading supporters tended to prefer to work against the Republic rather than participate in its electoral politics. This tendency was somewhat reduced after Nicholas' death in 1942, predeceased by his chronically-ill son, but mostly it meant that Russian conservatives instead pinned their hopes on the two other great bastions of autocracy: the Orthodox Church and the military. The latter successfully seized power for a few months in 1959 and again between 1972 and 1986, and since the restoration of democracy, the main form of right-wing involvement in politics has been either through the PARNAS or through local parties founded by former military-era regional leaders.
The NPD, however, is an exception to this rule, since (as the name implies) it's an all-Russian movement that bases its ideology on Orthodox Christianity. Its strongholds are mainly in the countryside surrounding Moscow, the so-called "Golden Ring" from which modern Russia first arose in the Middle Ages, as well as in Russia's northern periphery where the influence of the Church tends to be most strongly felt. While some of its leading figures have been priests, the Church itself does not endorse the NPD, mindful of its relationship with the officially-secular state, and this is reflected in its limited sway even among the faithful.
People's Party in the Kuban (Народная партия на Кубани, НПК/NPK)
5 seats
2019 election result: 0.5%
Founded 1950
Leader: Vasily Tarasovich Kurilenko
Ideology: conservatism, Kuban regionalism
Orientation: right-wing
The NPK is one of the aforementioned local right-wing parties, and the only one to regularly win more than one or two seats in the Duma. The Kuban, on the Black Sea shore in the far southwest of Russia, was home to one of Russia's Cossack hosts, which rebelled in 1918 aiming either to foment an all-Russian counterrevolution to restore the Tsar, or failing that, to establish an independent Kuban Republic in alliance with the Ukrainian Hetmanate. These efforts failed, and the rebellion was finally put down in 1921 following a long and messy campaign that also resulted in Russia losing any claim to the South Caucasus. Following the rebellions, however, while the Cossack hosts themselves were demobilised, the region's social hierarchy was largely left alone - the Cossacks just becoming ordinary landowners - and it would remain a stronghold of right-wing anti-republican sentiment for decades to come. To represent their particular views and interests, the ex-Cossacks of the Kuban formed the NPK during the Second Democratic Period, and it returned to prominence in the Third.
As a regionalist party in an area that has a documented history of separatism from Russia, the NPK occupies a weird space. If, say, the Uzbeks or Bashkirs formed a similar party, it would likely get closed by court order within a year. However, the Cossacks were gradually rehabilitated over the decades, particularly during the military era as they represented one of the most unique Russian military traditions. On top of which both the Kuban Cossacks as a group and the NPK as a movement have tended to be openly apologetic towards the military régime even into the 21st century - it seems as though they are once again firmly part of the Russian nation.
Other right-wing local parties
4 seats
Combined 2019 election result: 1.6%
Leader: various
Ideology: conservatism
Orientation: right-wing
As mentioned, Russia has several small right-wing parties which organise in one or a couple of regions, although as a rule they claim to be "all-Russian" organisations so as to skirt the rules against regionalist parties. In 2019, none got more than a single seat, and they're generally not too relevant to government formation - unless one of the major parties is in an extremely tight situation, which has happened a couple of times during the Third Democratic Period.
Independents and minor parties
3 seats
Combined 2019 election result: 2.1%
Leader: not how this works
Ideology: various
Orientation: various
The current Duma contains three independent deputies: two, in the Bukhara and Semipalatinsk constituencies, represent ethnic minorities, while the third, representing Vyatka, is a local-issues candidate elected to save a local hospital from closure.
