The presidential regime in Russia has put an end to opposition parties, both on the left and on the right. There is no room for them in the new system of non-alternative power. It goes without saying that the president and his minions do not need them. Moreover, the electorate does not need these parties, since voting for parties that are unable to come to power is always disappointing.

The regime easily liquidated the right and left opposition in Russia only because they had always been unviable and doomed to an early death. Their real function was to help the regime grow stronger and then die.

In the regime’s establishment, the right parties played the main, active role. But the present ‘party of power’ is in no way right. It is just a party of power, as the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) was, despite the fact that it did have leftist roots in the distant past. This party is an evolutionary result of the democratic movement which won in 1991, like the CPSU was the direct successor to the Russian Socialist Democratic Workers’ Party (Bolsheviks). The incumbent Russian president was appointed successor by the leader of the democrats who came to power in 1991 – this succession is even more direct than that between Lenin and Stalin.

Of course, the party has transformed completely after being in power for almost 13 years. Interestingly, the present right oppositional party does not ‘recognize’ it. This situation is reminiscent of the many Bolsheviks who remained loyal to ‘Lenin’s precepts,’ but who later were driven to the sidelines of political life. They eventually formed the ‘Trotsky-Bukharin opposition’ and did not recognize Stalin’s party as their own. However, the transformation of the present ‘party of power’ began as soon as it came to power in 1991, like the Bolshevik party began to change in 1917.

The heroes of the 1917 socialist revolution who were forced out of the party spoke about its ‘transformation.’ They talked about Thermidor and Bonapartism, but they never realized that the way to Stalin and their own way to death began with the seizure of power by a revolutionary minority and with the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly. In the same way, the Right, which now find themselves in the opposition, do not realize that the path to the Putin regime began in 1991 when their party seized power without the nation’s consent. The Belovezha Forest agreements on the Soviet Union’s breakup (no matter whether it was possible or necessary to try to preserve the Soviet Union) in 1991 were precisely such a seizure of power behind the nation’s back. Two years later, in 1993, the party of ‘democrats’ reached a point of no return in its transformation when it shelled the rebellious government members who were holed up in the parliament building. At this point, it had burned all of its bridges.

In actuality, Putin has done nothing special – he has just removed the scaffolding from the already built building and added some finishing touches to it. As for the building itself, it was Yeltsin as opposed to Putin who was responsible for its construction, as well as all those who applauded each stage of the construction project but who went into opposition when they saw the building without its scaffolding. Now they spend much time reminiscing about the wonderful times when they had begun the construction of a bright future with so much enthusiasm. The present right opposition is a party of nostalgia for 1991 which has failed to understand anything, just like the Trotskyites were a party of nostalgia for 1917 who did not understand anything.

The Right took an active part in the construction of the incumbent regime, while the Left, who bitterly hated them, gave them their assistance. If the Right are a party of nostalgia for 1991, the Left are a party of nostalgia for the Stalin-Brezhnev past. Whereas the present Right opposition has never understood how the Putin regime emerged and why they have found themselves on the sidelines, the present Left fail to understand why the Soviet system collapsed and why the Soviet Union broke up.

The present Communists’ role in building the incumbent regime was creating an obviously unrealistic and unacceptable alternative to the past, something like a monarchic alternative in the 1920s. (“Stalin is bad, but still this is not a return to czarism,” was the attitude. “Yeltsin and Putin are bad, but still this is better than the Communists.”) In this way, they, too, helped create the regime of non-alternative power which the ‘democrats’ were actively in the process of building. And now, when the government is increasingly acquiring a traditionalist, Soviet nature, the left opposition is losing its bearings, in much the same way as in Stalin’s times when the opposition of nostalgia for the monarchy began to lose its bearings.

In those times, the Bolsheviks who remained loyal to the ideals of 1917 met in the GULAG with the monarchists who remained loyal to the czar. Today, when customs are not that brutal, the personal fate of ‘true democrats’ and ‘true Communists’ may not be as gloomy, but from a political point of view it is the same.

Both oppositional camps have contributed to the construction of the present regime, and now, like “the Moor [who] has done his duty,” they can go. Both camps belong to the past and have no future. They are unable to accomplish the main task facing this country: going over to democracy, that is, enabling the Russian people – who have never elected their governments – to start electing them, as is done elsewhere in the civilized world.
But this problem will have to be addressed sooner or later. And the death of the present oppositional camps does not postpone a solution – on the contrary, it brings it nearer. This is because dying oppositional groups make room for new political forces that will be more adequate to the task.
However, such forces are not yet seen on the horizon. The contours of new opposition are nowhere to be seen. Yet, generally speaking, we can guess what form it will take, proceeding from the task it will have to address.

This must be neither left nor right opposition per se, but precisely democratic opposition. It must be led by people who will understand well that a normal society must comprise both the Right and the Left, cosmopolitans and patriots; that democracy does not mean a victory of some people over others, rather, it means that all of the actors play according to common rules of the game. This means that even a very unpleasant, yet democratically elected, parliament must not be dissolved. To put it bluntly, even a very hungry person must not eat his neighbor.

To come to power, this opposition must be very strong and, naturally, be a party of a majority. However, this must not be just a majority, but an overwhelming and serried majority. Although one can hardly imagine the present regime annulling elections and going over to undisguised authoritarianism, it is obvious that when this regime senses a real threat, it will not stop at such a trifle as the large-scale rigging of general elections. It would be naive to expect that the first rotation of power can be implemented simply by winning 51 percent of votes and receiving power on a silver platter. To come to power, a new democratic movement must be strong enough to paralyze the regime’s resistance, like the Shevardnadze regime was paralyzed in Georgia.

Obviously, forming such opposition and implementing Russia’s first rotation of power is an immensely difficult task. The incumbent regime in Russia is very strong, and we are now at the zero point of a cycle, when the former opposition has already disappeared and new oppositional forces have yet to be formed. The formation of new opposition cannot be achieved by the next elections in 2008 – this is a task for future decades, for the next generation.
But even when this momentous event arrives, the first rotation of power will still not be a final transition to a stable democracy. The opposition’s first victory will be only the beginning. One must wait until the winners themselves lose elections and admit their defeat in a calm manner, and until those who defeated the winners go from the political scene, as well.

Only after the completion of several such rotations will the rules of the game be adopted by the entire society; at that point, no one will think of violating them. So the decades that divide us from the victory of the yet unborn opposition must be followed by at least one more which will be needed to achieve a stable democracy.

We are now only at the beginning of this very long and very difficult journey. The first step requires that we understand what kind of a journey it is going to be and that it will have to be made because we simply have no alternative.