Authors

Discussion

In electoral authoritarian regimes, opposition parties often attempt to build coalitions across ideological borders to jointly challenge the authoritarian incumbent. Under Russia’s hegemonic authoritarianism, the leadership of the tolerated opposition parties is firmly integrated in the regime via informal arrangements and does not engage in coalition work. However, as viable alternatives were successively banned and forced into exile, the Russian Communist Party (CPRF) has acquired a cross-ideological electoral base. This paper explores the pathway of the CPRF towards the last remaining haven for dissenting voters, a process that is sometimes tolerated by the leadership and sometimes carried out against its active resistance. Based on the party’s online communication, the paper first demonstrates the that CPRF the has not changed in rhetoric and program compared to its beginnings in the 1990s as an unreformed Soviet-nostalgic and nationalistic party. In fact, after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the CPRF voiced the most aggressive anti-Ukrainian rhetoric of all parties in the Duma. In a second step, I use surveys from the mid-1990s through 2023 to demonstrate the transformation of the party’s electorate that contradicts this programmatic stability. While in the 1990s, the positions in the electorate on the economy and foreign policy were congruent with the party’s orientation, many voters’ views in the 2020s run counter to the leadership’s. After the Russian invasion, the party even absorbed a substantial share of those who in surveys position themselves against the war. Based on these results, I argue that parties which, from a top-down perspective, function as regime pillars can be hijacked from below in the absence of more convincing opposition forces. I close with a discussion of ways to extend these findings into comparative research designs.