Russia: The left and the anti-Putin opposition

First published in Russian at Rabkor. Translation by Dmitry Pozhidaev for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The anti-capitalist left in Russia failed to organise itself as an independent political force before the start of the “special military operation.”1 For years it was torn between two giants: the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) on one side and the liberal opposition on the other. The CPRF held a “license” to participate in electoral politics, could provide necessary organisational resources, and offered at least some protection from arbitrary repression. But cooperation came at a cost: the party leadership was deeply intertwined with the ruling regime. It saw the guarantee of preserving its position not in mobilising broad social masses, but in behind-the-scenes deals with the Kremlin or regional authorities. As a result, party leaders blocked overly successful protest campaigns by their left-wing allies and were reluctant to allow them to take part in elections.

Cooperation with the liberal opposition carried other costs. Liberals could at times be uncompromising in opposing Putin, but their program was closely tied to the privileges of a narrow elite and alienated the poor majority. Neither their financial resources nor their powerful network of opposition media allowed the liberal opposition to win support beyond the middle class. The only attempt to break out of this mold was Alexei Navalny’s2 “left turn” in 2018–2021, when he began addressing issues of social justice and inequality. This had an effect: Navalny’s popularity grew. But the struggle for broad support faced contradictions. In 2018, the authorities carried out an extremely unpopular pension reform, raising the retirement age. Navalny’s movement tried to lead the mass protests against it, even though its own program explicitly stated the need to raise the retirement age.

By the start of the war, the extra-parliamentary opposition enjoyed the support of 15–20% of citizens. The country’s vast depoliticised majority still viewed it with distrust, primarily because of fear of a “new 1990s,” meaning another wave of neoliberal reforms that had resulted in catastrophic inequality. It was precisely this fear that allowed the regime to maintain the loyalty of Russians and even a measure of public support.

The left who supported Navalny also became hostages of this fear. Some managed to achieve success: with liberal backing, and thanks to the mobilised middle-class electorate, certain leftists won seats in local parliaments. But in doing so, they often lost both their own political identity and the chance to mobilise support from the working classes.

At the outset of the war

At the start of the war, many left-wing politicians dependent on the CPRF either supported it or remained silent and passive. Deputies who openly condemned the start of military actions in Ukraine were expelled from the party and subjected to repression. The extra-parliamentary opposition managed to organise mass protest rallies in major cities. Anti-war leftists, including the coalition Socialists Against the War, actively participated in these protests, but the mobilisation drew almost exclusively on the opposition’s traditional social base: urban youth and the middle class in large cities.

The protests were brutally suppressed. The wave of repression triggered mass emigration of opposition activists: up to one million people left the country in 2022. The core of the anti-Putin protest movement was crushed. Beyond the middle class, the opposition had few supporters, and those it did have were entirely unorganised. This narrow social base played a cruel trick on Putin’s opponents.

New discontent

By destroying the old balance of forces, the war created new contradictions and social conflicts. Forced mobilisation provoked an explosion of anger and brought the regime to the brink of crisis. Even official pollsters recorded a drop in Putin’s approval ratings. In just the first month of mobilisation, there were more than 20 armed incidents across the country. Soldiers beat officers, halted trains transporting them to the front, and deserted their units in an organised fashion. This forced authorities to abandon compulsory mobilisation in favour of a system of recruiting mercenaries — a system that does not allow for a rapid increase in the size of the army or military production. The regime was compelled to accept this “compromise,” since a new wave of mass mobilisation could trigger a deep socio-political crisis.

Even now, the hardships of military life are felt acutely in the trenches. Legally, it is impossible to terminate a military contract before the end of the war, which has led to a growing number of deserters. According to OSINT researchers, by the end of 2024 no fewer than 50,000 soldiers had deserted their units. More than 20,000 people have faced criminal prosecution for these military offenses.

The policy of military Keynesianism, coupled with a shortage of labour, brought tangible benefits to the Russian working class. Wages in industry rose significantly, becoming an important factor in maintaining social stability. But now wage growth has ended, and high inflation is gradually eroding workers’ gains — a development that also threatens to spark a new wave of social conflict.

Across the country, longing for peace and peacetime is growing. Surveys indicate that in May 2025, 61% of citizens favoured an early start to peace negotiations, while only 30% supported continuing hostilities (and that is despite the fact that many anti-war citizens do not participate in such surveys under conditions of censorship and repression, while many others give “socially acceptable” answers). The regime’s inability to conclude peace, even under favorable international conditions, is deepening dissatisfaction with the protracted bloodshed. However, the old opposition is entirely incapable of mobilising this growing discontent.

Anti-war emigration in favour of ‘victory to the end’

Almost all opposition leaders, in the context of the war, have taken the side of the Ukrainian authorities and their Western allies, supporting the program they formulated: a return to the 1991 borders, dismantling of the current political regime in Russia by the victors and their allies, and the payment of reparations by every Russian citizen. “If you are a shareholder of a joint-stock company — that is, a citizen of a country — then even if you disagree with the management, you still bear your responsibility,” said, for example, Vladimir Milov3, a close associate of Navalny and the author of his New Russia economic program.

Most importantly, implementing this program requires escalating the war through unconditional military support for the Ukrainian army — up to and including Russia’s military defeat. “If you want to help democratic Russia, save Ukraine from Putin. That is exactly within your power,” former political prisoner Ilya Yashin4 told the European Parliament on June 5, 2025.

For liberal intellectuals close to FBK5 and Yulia Navalnaya6, Russian soldiers are merely a threat to the “democratic and European” Russia of the future. They are seen not as agents of necessary change, but as “embittered and morally deformed people” who need supervision and re-education. “We will have to make maximum efforts to ensure that people demobilised from the army or dismissed from the ‘security services’ do not form gangs and start creating criminal groups,” historian Tamara Eidelman7 said at a Navalnaya Forum.8

Navalnaya stresses that in the past the opposition relied on support from the US administration, and now it looks to the European Union for help. This fits perfectly into the Russian authorities’ narrative, which portrays opposition figures as part of the military-political machinery of an external enemy. Today’s position of the liberal opposition reinforces this image and pushes Russians toward rallying around the current government.

Navalnaya claims that she represents the “united opposition.” This is an overstatement, but there is some basis for it. Two “United Opposition” Forums have been held in Vilnius, attended by some left-wing politicians as well. “For the left, it certainly makes sense to have a friendly conversation with those to the right of us,” explained Mikhail Lobanov9 about his participation in such a forum. “The activist community is shifting left. By not setting ourselves in opposition to the liberal opposition, we create channels through which activists can migrate leftward.”

For the left, the struggle for influence within the narrow opposition-in-exile milieu may bring access to certain resources and media, but it also greatly isolates the émigré opposition from those who remain in Russia. Domestic support for the opposition has fallen to minimal levels. Polls record growing disillusionment with FBK structures even among emigrants. One of the last opposition politicians still in Russia, Lev Shlosberg10, delivers a bleak diagnosis: “The ‘party of other people’s blood’11 has reached yet another low… Obviously, they hope to return to Russia under the armour of someone else’s tanks. A politician ceases to be a politician of their own country if they start wishing death upon its citizens.”

Cooperation between left-wing émigrés and liberal leaders demoralises their own supporters inside Russia. Many of them are baffled as to why their comrades continue to pin their hopes on an alliance with a bankrupt liberal opposition, repeatedly placing faith in a hypothetical split within the elites and a pact with them — instead of presenting the country with their own face and their own strategy.

Strategy

An alliance with the liberal opposition, now isolated from Russia and transformed into a small faction of the Western “party of war”, is a catastrophic choice for the left. No amount of success in attracting new personnel, resources or media attention can compensate for political death. To fulfill their true mission — becoming the voice of millions of Russians weary of war, repression and inequality — the left needs a clear and compelling strategy. Its outlines can already be sketched.

1. At the forefront must be the demand for an immediate peace, not a military victory (for those condemned to die painfully in the trenches, it hardly matters anymore whether it is the West’s victory or Russia’s). If the ruling class continues to prove incapable of delivering peace to the people, the demand to end fratricidal military actions will become the most powerful catalyst for social mobilization.
2. To defend peace between the brotherly peoples, Russian leftists need allies among Ukrainians. From the bottom up, we can do what politicians cannot — reach an agreement. This is precisely the goal of the Peace from Below campaign12, launched in November 2024 by Russian and Ukrainian left-wing émigrés at the Forum in Cologne.
3. The first step is to mobilise and organise supporters — starting in exile. Today, there are several million Russian and Ukrainian refugees in Europe alone, but only a few hundred of them are members of political organisations or groups. One reason for this is the undemocratic nature of most of these structures’ programs and their increasingly glaring contradiction with the majority’s desire for peace. Our task is not to fight within the narrow world of professional political activists, but to find ways to organise thousands of demobilised people.
4. This will make it possible to fulfill the central mission of political emigration: to become the voice of millions of compatriots who, under repression and censorship, cannot say out loud what they truly think.
5. The armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine is not isolated from the global context. Military violence is spreading rapidly across the world: Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, Syria. Europe is being engulfed by a wave of militarisation. In the United States, the Trump administration is openly seeking to establish authoritarian rule and is even threatening military intervention against such traditional allies as Canada, Mexico, Panama, and Denmark. The place of Russian leftists is not in the back rows of halls where the Western party of war gathers, but among the participants of the anti-war movement. We must join our comrades in the common struggle against the far right, the warmongers and the oligarchic capital that is dragging all countries toward open dictatorship and endless war. Only in this way can we be of real service to our country.

Alexey Sakhnin is a Russian left-wing journalist, activist, and politician, formerly associated with the Left Front movement. He was one of the leaders of the anti-Putin protest movement from 2011 to 2013 and is a member of the Progressive International Council. He has written extensively on Russian politics, social movements, and international affairs, often from a Marxist perspective. Since going into exile due to political persecution, he has contributed to various independent media outlets, such as Jacobin.

Liza Smirnova is a Russian left-wing journalist and activist, known for her reporting and commentary on social justice issues, labor rights, and anti-war movements. She has also been active in exile, participating in international solidarity networks and contributing to independent publications.

• 1

  “Special military operation” is the official term used by the Russian authorities to describe the invasion of Ukraine. Under Russian law, referring to it as a war may be subject to criminal prosecution.

• 2

  Alexei Navalny (1976–2024) was a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He became widely known for his investigations into corruption among Russian officials and his opposition to Vladimir Putin’s regime. Navalny was imprisoned in 2021 and died in custody in February 2024 under circumstances widely regarded by his supporters and international observers as politically motivated.

• 3

  Vladimir Milov is a Russian opposition politician, economist, and former Deputy Minister of Energy of the Russian Federation. A close associate of Alexei Navalny, he was involved in developing Navalny’s “New Russia” (NB) economic program, which outlined market-liberal reforms aimed at restructuring the Russian economy. Milov has lived in exile since 2010 and is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s government. In 2021, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated him a “foreign agent.”

• 4

  Ilya Yashin (b. 1983) is a Russian opposition politician, former municipal councilor in Moscow, and long-time critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime. Known for his activism and public speeches against corruption and authoritarianism, Yashin was designated a “foreign agent” and sentenced in December 2022 to eight and a half years in prison for “spreading false information” about the Russian army, following his condemnation of the war in Ukraine. On August 1, 2024, he was released in the largest prisoner exchange since the Cold War (conducted in Ankara, Turkey), wherein he was exchanged for Russian agents and operatives held in the West. 

• 5

  FBK — the Anti-Corruption Foundation (Fond Borby s Korruptsiei) was founded by Alexei Navalny in 2011 as a non-profit organisation investigating and publicising corruption among high-ranking Russian officials. The Russian authorities designated FBK a “foreign agent” in 2019 and an “extremist organisation” in 2021, effectively banning its activities inside Russia. Many of its leaders now operate from exile.

• 6

  Yulia Navalnaya is the widow of Alexei Navalny and a public figure in the Russian opposition. After her husband’s imprisonment and subsequent death in 2024, she emerged as one of the most prominent leaders of the anti-Putin movement in exile, advocating for international sanctions against the Russian leadership and seeking Western political support for the opposition. In 2025, the Russian authorities designated her both a “terrorist and extremist.”

• 7

  Tamara Eidelman is a Russian historian, educator, and public intellectual, known for her popular history lectures and YouTube channel. A vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s government and the war in Ukraine, she left Russia in 2022 and has since been active in exile, participating in opposition forums and public debates. In 2022, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated her a “foreign agent.”

• 8

  The Yulia Navalnaya Forum, also called “Platform of a Future Russia,” convenes Russian experts and opposition figures in exile to discuss reform and democratic transition plans. The inaugural forum took place on November 8–10, 2024, and the second was held on May 9–11, 2025.

• 9

  Mikhail Lobanov (b. 1984) is a Russian mathematician, trade union activist, and left-wing politician. Formerly a lecturer at Moscow State University, he gained prominence for his opposition to education reforms and advocacy for labor rights. In 2021, he ran as an independent left candidate with CPRF support for the State Duma but was prevented from winning through the use of “smart voting” manipulation and alleged electoral fraud. Lobanov left Russia in 2022 after facing political persecution. In 2023, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated him a “foreign agent.”

• 10

  Lev Shlosberg is a Russian liberal politician, journalist, and human rights activist from the Pskov region. A member of the Yabloko party, he is known for his investigations into local corruption, advocacy for democratic reforms, and opposition to Russian military interventions, including in Ukraine. Shlosberg has faced repeated political persecution, including physical attacks, disqualification from elections, and criminal charges. In 2023, the Russian Ministry of Justice designated him a “foreign agent.”

• 11

  “Party of other people’s blood” – This is a pejorative phrase used in Russian political rhetoric to accuse opponents of supporting war or foreign military intervention at the cost of Russian lives.

• 12

  Peace from Below (Mir snizu) is a grassroots initiative launched in November 2024 by Russian and Ukrainian left-wing activists in exile. It aims to foster dialogue and cooperation between ordinary people on both sides of the conflict, advocating for an immediate end to hostilities and a negotiated peace, in contrast to official political agendas focused on military victory.