Authors

Morvan Lallouet¹;  ¹ University of Kent, UK

Discussion

For the Russian authorities, ‘the 1990s’ have served as a useful myth to establish legitimacy, a myth according to which, under Putin, order and prosperity at home and power abroad prosperity replaced chaos, impoverishment, and national humiliation.
This paper seeks to explore how this critical decade is seen by liberal opponents to the Kremlin. Since the Russian transition to democracy has failed, the causes and responsibilities for this failure have been a matter of wide debate within the opposition. While some consider that Putin is mainly or even only to blame, others will identify causes dating back from the 1990s. These can be institutional (the 1993 ‘super presidential constitution’), personal (Yeltsin’s decision to violently disband the Supreme Soviet), or policymaking related (the privatisations). Accordingly, the critical junctures at which transition was derailed are controversial (the 1993 Constitutional crisis and the 1996 Presidential election being among the most discussed). In other words, what went wrong with Russia? And when?
For the liberal opposition, identifying these causes and responsibilities is not a matter of scholarly enquiry, even though some oppositionists do draw on political science in their debates. It is fraught with difficulties, since several of its leaders and organisations supported the Yeltsin administration, or at least, some of its policies. Further, as generational change takes place, new leaders who have not been in politics in these years have come to the fore, and the ‘mistakes of the reformers’ can serve as a tool in their struggles against the ‘old guard’ of the opposition. Positions in these debates reveal conflicts about the legitimacy of actors opposing Putin and the Kremlin. The 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and the subsequent turn of the Russian political regime in an even more authoritarian direction have led to renewed debates about this decade, stressing once overlooked imperialistic aspects of Russia’s recent history. By studying qualitative sources (memoirs, press sources, social media), this paper will shed light on cleavages that structure the Russian opposition. It will also show current political platforms and strategies are linked to positions about a recent, conflictual past raised to the status of a myth—either positive, negative, or something in between.