Liberalism in Russia

Liberalism emerged in Russia before the Russian Revolution and continued to develop among Constitutional Democrats such as Pavel Milyukov living in exile after 1917.[2] After the fall of communism, several new liberal parties were formed, but only one of them Yabloko (Yabloko – Rosiyskaya Demokraticheskaya Partiya, a member of Liberal International) succeeded in becoming a relevant force. This is a left-of-center liberal party. The Union of Right Forces (Soyuz Pravykh Sil, a member of International Democrat Union) is a right-of-center liberal party. It can also be seen as a democratic conservative market party. In this scheme, the party is not included as liberal, being considered a democratic conservative party, but it can also be called liberal because of its pro-free-market and anti-authoritarianism stances. The so-called Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is not at all "liberal" – it is a nationalist, right-wing, populist party.

• 1993: Diverse new political parties merged into the social liberal Yavlinksii-Boldyrev-Lukin electoral bloc, led by Grigorii Yavlinskii.
• 1994: The party is renamed Yabloko (Yabloko).
• 1995: The party is officially registered.
• 2003: The party is renamed Russian Democratic Party Yabloko (Rosiyskaya Demokraticheskaya Partiya/Российская Демократическая Партия Яблоко).

The Yabloko is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party and Liberal International.

The Democratic Choice of Russia was a centre-right liberal pro-capitalist political party.

The Union of Right Forces was a Russian centre-right liberal opposition political party.

Solidarnost is a liberal democratic political movement founded in 2008 by a number of well-known members of the liberal democratic opposition, including Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov and others from the Yabloko and former Union of Right Forces (which had just merged with two pro-Kremlin parties).

2017 Russian protests, organized by Russia's liberal opposition

People's Freedom Party "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption" is a liberal democratic coalition founded in 2010 by opposition politicians Vladimir Ryzhkov, Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov and Vladimir Milov and their organisations Republican Party of Russia, Solidarnost, Russian People's Democratic Union and Democratic Choice. The RPR-PARNAS is a member of Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party.[1]

In 2012, the coalition merged into the officially registered Russian political party RPR-PARNAS (Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom Party).

The RPR-PARNAS is a centre-right liberal opposition political party and it represented in regional parliament in Yaroslavl Oblast.

Mikhail Speransky is sometimes called the father of Russian liberalism. His ideas were discussed and elaborated by such 19th-century liberal republican radicals as Alexander Herzen, Boris Chicherin, and Konstantin Kavelin. Based on their ideals, various early 20th-century liberal parties evolved, the most important of them being the Constitutional-Democratic Party, headed by Pavel Milyukov.

• 1905: The Liberation Union (Soyuz Osvobozhdeniya) merged with the Union of Zemstvo-Constitutionalists (Soyuz Zemstev-Konstitutsionistov) to form the liberal Constitutional Democratic Party (Konstitutsiono-Demokraticheskaya Partya), formally known as the Party of Popular Freedom (Partiya Narodnoy Svobody), led by Pavel Milyukov.
• 1906: A faction forms the ⇒ Party of Democratic Reform
• October 26 O.S., 1917: The party's newspapers were shut down by the new Soviet regime
• November 28 O.S., 1917: Banned by the Soviet regime, the party went underground
• 1918-1920: Many party leaders were active in the White movement
• 1921-early 1930s: The party continued to function in exile, but slowly disintegrated

• 1905: Conservative liberals formed the Union of October 17 (Soyuz Semnadtsatovo Oktyabrya) and became known as Octobrists.
• 1906: A left wing faction formed the ⇒ Party for Peaceful Renewal, the party develops to be the party of the landlords.
• March 1917: Dissolved after the February Revolution.

• 1905: National liberals established the Moderate Progressive Party (Umereno-Progresivnaya Partiya).
• 1907: Merged into the ⇒ Party for Peaceful Renewal.

• 1906: A moderate faction of the ⇒ Constitutional Democratic Party formed the Party of Democratic Reform (Partiya Demokraticheskikh Reform).
• 1912: Merged into the ⇒ Progressive Party.

• 1906: A left-wing faction of the Octobrists, together with dissidents of the Constitutional Democratic Party and of the Moderate Progressive Party, established the Party of Peaceful Renovation (Partiya Mirnovo Obnovleniya).
• 1912: Merged with the ⇒ Party of Democratic Reform into the Progressist Party (Progresivnaya Partiya), led by Georgy Lvov.
• 1917: Most of the party merged into the ⇒ Constitutional Democratic Party, some continued as the Radical Democratic Party (Radikal'no-Demokraticheskaya Partiya).