The Russian opposition in 2005-2008 was a jumble of liberal politicians, young activists of every political stripe, and old-guard human rights defenders. Several of the politicians were exiles from the Putin regime, including his former prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, and economic advisor Andrei Illarionov. There was Boris Nemtsov, Yeltsin’s former first deputy prime minister, and Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the last surviving independent members of the Duma. Georgy Satarov was a former Yeltsin aide who had helped devise the new Russian constitution. It was a fairly high-powered group, except for the fact that they had absolutely no power at all.
In a more distant orbit there were the “respectable” politicians of the Yeltsin era attempting to cling to relevance in government as the political world crumbled beneath their feet. These individuals, such as former presidential candidates Irina Khakamada and Grigory Yavlinsky, founder of Yabloko, attempted to protest from within while staying on passable terms with Putin. Eventually they realized Putin had no use for them, even as loyal opposition. Some gave up and joined in Putin’s democracy charade for a paycheck while others left politics altogether. A few joined us, the “radical” or “external” opposition.
The human rights cadre included the venerable Ludmila Alekseeva, a founding member of the Moscow Helsinki Group and one of the few Soviet dissidents still active. Lev Ponomaryov was one of the founders of Memorial, one of the first Russian human rights organizations. The “young guns” included Sergei Udaltsov, chairman of the Vanguard of Red Youth, and Ilya Yashin, a charismatic youth activist on the liberal side. A few years later, former Yabloko activist Alexei Navalny would become the most prominent of us all thanks to his sharply penned and well-researched anti-corruption investigations finding a huge audience online.
Then there were the “disloyal nationalists,” the radicals, mostly young, in groups like writer Eduard Limonov’s National Bolshevik Party, which wasn’t as scary as the name sounds by the 2000s but was still more than enough to scare off the respectable liberal opposition. But they were willing to march against Putin for free speech and fair elections, and that was all that mattered to me.
Along with the politicians, organizers, and activists, there was substantial intellectual firepower in the wings among the countless Russian writers, journalists, and intellectuals disillusioned by Russia’s return to the dark ages. There were big-hearted lawyers who put in long hours of work defending protesters and activists from spurious charges for little or no pay. Political directors and staffers of a dozen or more opposition groups, including my own United Civil Front, organized protests, training seminars, and communications for little reward and often at great personal risk.
And suddenly there I was, dropped into the middle of it all. I felt at home with the liberals like Nemtsov and Illarionov, who shared my ideology of free markets and close alignment with Europe, but I also realized that opposing Putin had little to do with ideology by that point. It mattered little what policies you supported when there was no chance at all you would ever have the chance to enact those policies. The debates among opposition candidates were a like a group of starving people with no money arguing about what to order at a fancy restaurant.
I was already doing what I could on the international front, speaking at foreign parliaments and writing editorials to encourage Western leaders to increase pressure on Putin over his anti-democratic ways. In Russia, I hoped to use my lack of political affiliation as an advantage by bridging the gaps between the disparate opposition movements so we could unite to solve the only problem that really mattered: ending Putin and Putinism as soon as possible.
Before my retirement from chess I had helped form the Free Choice 2008 Committee and the All-Russian Civic Congress in 2004. I had been observing the dissatisfaction of the activists on every side. They were tired of dancing to Putin’s tune while watching their party leaders cut deals for paltry handouts. The Civic Congress was conceived as a unifying platform, but it fell short when forces from both sides of the political spectrum were unable to leave behind the Yeltsin-era civil war mentality and work alongside their traditional ideological adversaries.
In 2005, I formed my own small social action group, the United Civil Front, so that I would have a base of operations and an address. Then I went to work looking for strategic targets on the calendar where the opposition could make the most of our limited resources. It was important to have clear targets so we would have a feeling of purpose and hope. When I first entered the Russian political arena full time I had the feeling of sitting down to a chess game in progress, with my side facing checkmate in every variation. I realized that our first task as an opposition force was simply to survive, to get out our message that we existed, that we opposed the Putin regime, and that we were fighting. With every television station and major newspaper under state control it was a very difficult task, as you might imagine.
The opposition was in disarray, but the one thing we all had in common was the knowledge that democracy was our only salvation. By 2006, liberals, human rights activists, even the Communists—they all agreed that given a choice in a fair election the Russian people would reject Putin’s attempt to turn our country back into a totalitarian state. It didn’t matter that afterward we would be sitting on opposite sides of the floor. First, we needed to rescue our democracy.
This mixing of opposition groups also had several positive side effects. The leftists and those still mourning the Soviet Union came to recognize the importance of liberal democracy and political freedom now that they’d been cut out of the picture. The liberals, which in Russia refers to those like me who favor free markets and an open, Western-leaning society, learned to accept the need for the social and economic stability programs touted by the left. Unity not only stiffened the opposition to the Putin government, but has also clarified and advanced the specific goals of our member groups. This isn’t to say it was all one big happy family, but at least we were together.
To have a real impact, I felt it was necessary to unite on the core issue: you were either working with the Kremlin or dedicated to dismantling the regime. It was clear by then that there was no way to change anything from the inside. In a way, the key step was taking a page out of the Kremlin’s book: a nonideological movement. Forces from across the political spectrum came together. In the summer of 2006 we had enough momentum to go on the offensive, hosting The Other Russia Conference in Moscow in advance of the July G8 meeting in St. Petersburg.
The conference brought activists from all over Russia to share ideas and support. We also invited the international media and speakers from all over the world who were not afraid to speak strongly for democracy in the shadow of the Kremlin. My Civic Congress co-chairs and I wrote countless letters of invitation, calling in favors and twisting arms when necessary. Eventually many prominent figures contributed statements of support, although few G8 administrations had the courage to openly endorse us. We chose the name, The Other Russia Conference, to tell the world that the stable, democratic Russia Putin presented was not reality.