This suggests that we aren’t witnessing the growing demand for a party of the left, but a more general crisis of the party system. In December 2017, 17 percent of respondents said they wouldn’t vote at all, and that number had increased to 22 percent by August 2018. In the most recent poll, a further 7 percent of those who decided to come to the polls said they would invalidate or spoil their ballots.
Trust ratings for political parties in Russia are also extremely low, occupying the 18 position in a list of 19 institutions—only Russia’s largest companies fare worse in public opinion. Of course, this stems in large part from the fact that the genuine party system has long been dead, and what we currently have is a menu where there is nothing interesting for the voter to choose from. This problem won’t be solved by the government deciding to form new pseudo-parties. It is not new parties or ideologies that people want.
The Russian public wants social justice, but its political enthusiasm is dulled by an absence of political and economic competition and, in particular, a lack of new faces.
People want change. In August 2017, Denis Volkov of the Levada Center and I did some research on people’s readiness for change. Forty-two percent supported radical change, while 41 percent were in favor of gradual change. In May 2018, the Levada Center repeated the same question — “What kind of change do you want?” — to the same pool of respondents across Russia. The number of those wanting radical change had shot up to 57 percent, while only 25 percent of the respondents said they wanted to see incremental change.
A closer look reveals that the “radicals” are very unclear about what they actually want, beyond a general craving for fundamental change. People simply want to escape a Bermuda Triangle of inflation, low earnings, and the risks of unemployment. They would be happy for the banner of change to be held aloft by Putin, former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, or Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov — or Stalin, for that matter.