People's Freedom Party


The People's Freedom Party founded as the Republican Party of Russia – People's Freedom, is a liberal-democratic and one of the oldest political parties in Russia.
In 2007, it was denied re-registration and declared to be dissolved by the Russian Supreme Court. It was only after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the denial of registration was unlawful that it could restore its official registration in May 2012.
The party is led by Mikhail Kasyanov and is an associate member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party.

History

Formation and early developments (1990–2007)

The Republican Party of Russia was founded in 1990 by members of the Democratic Platform of the CPSU who had become disillusioned with the party's unwillingness to reform. The foundation of the new party took place in November 1990. Nikolay Lysenko, Stepan Sulakshin and Vyacheslav Shostakovsky were elected as the three co-chairman. The Republican Party joined the Democratic Russia bloc, an umbrella organisation of pro-democracy movements. The Republican Party was close to the Social Democratic Party of Russia, that was founded earlier in 1990. The two parties shared similar program and there were attempts to merge. The Republican Party's program has been characterised as liberal and ; similarly to the Social Democratic Party, however, the Republican Party had internal factions: ranging from social democracy to social liberal to liberal conservative.
The RPR and the SDP formed a united faction in the Russian Congress of People's Deputies. In contrast to the social democrats, the Republicans participated in the Movement of Democratic Reforms that was formed in summer, 1991 and included mostly liberal-minded former nomeklatura members. The Republican Party initially supported both Yegor Gaidar's economic reforms and Boris Yeltsin in his conflict with the Supreme Soviet; later, some of the leaders turned more critical of Yeltsin. The Republican Party left the Democratic Russia bloc in October, 1993 due to disagreements with the bloc's policies.
The party members won altogether 12 seats in the newly elected parliament in 1993: 5 republicans within the Yabloko bloc and 7 from Democratic Choice of Russia. In the 1995 legislative election, party ran within the Pamfilova — Gurev — N.Lysenko bloc, that failed to cross the 5% barrier. Lysenko and Ella Pamfilova won seat through majoritarian district.
At the end of 1998, Nikolay Lysenko, retaining the post of RP chairman, joined Yuri Luzhkov's Otechestvo bloc, whereas a number of the regional organisations of the Republican Party cooperated with small liberal parties like Right Cause or Sergey Kiriyenko's New Force etc.
In 1999, Lysenko won a parliament seat in a majoritarian district. In 2002, the party was reorganized into the Republican Party of Russia.

Dissolution and re-establishment (2007–2011)

In 2007, the Russian Supreme Court ruled the party to be dissolved, according to Ryzhkov because of the opposition to the government. In 2011 the European Court of Human Rights ruled out the refusal to register the party was unlawful. Since 5 May 2012, the Justice Ministry has restored the state registration of the Republican Party of Russia.
In 2006–2010, the RPR was a member of coalition "The Other Russia". Since 2010 it is a member of the liberal coalition "For Russia without Lawlessness and Corruption" and a member of non-registered People's Freedom Party based on this coalition. People's Freedom Party will continue to work on the base of Republican Party and it may be renamed.
In 2011, party's dissolution was held to be unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights. In January 2012, following the entry into force of the ECtHR’s judgment, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation quashed its 2007 decision to dissolve the party.

Merger and recent elections (2011–present)

The Ministry of Justice recognized the merger of the Republican Party and the People's Freedom Party on 2 August 2012, after the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the party should be restored in May of that year, and it supported the 2011–13 Russian protests, although since then the party has been mostly on the decline in influence among opposition circles.
In 2012 the RPR-PARNAS participated in regional elections in Barnaul, Saratov Oblast, Tuva.

Democratic Coalition and 2016 elections

In July 2015, the party congress voted to shorten the party's name to just People's Freedom Party. In April 2015 a number of opposition parties formed a unified Democratic Coalition to take part in the 2016 legislative election, as well as the 2015 regional elections as a test. This included PARNAS, as well as Progress Party of Alexei Navalny, the Democratic Choice party of Vladimir Milov, as well as several others. The unregistered movements needed to band with PARNAS as they were rejected from the right to take part in elections as the necessary signatures they collected were deemed invalid, while PARNAS was officially registered as Boris Nemtsov held a seat in the Yaroslavl Oblast Duma. In 2015, the coalition focused on four regions where their candidates were accepted by the Central Election Commission—Novosibirsk, Kaluga, Kostroma, and Magadan. They were only able to run in the Kostroma region in the end, where they scored 2.28% of the vote, not enough to obtain a seat in the regional legislature.
However, the primary that was held to create the candidates list that would run for the coalition in the elections ended up breaking down, for multiple reasons. One of the main ones was the publication of a sex tape involving Mikhail Kasyanov and another PARNAS member, at which point Alexei Navalny and Ilya Yashin wanted Kasyanov to take part in the primaries himself also rather than automatically be on the candidate list. Members of the "December 5" party proposed to hold a vote to decide whether the reserved spots on the party ticket should exist or not, and while the others supported the idea, PARNAS vetoed it. When he refused to do so they pulled their support, effectively ending the coalition. PARNAS went on to hold a primary but it was disrupted when hackers posted the personal information of voters who took part in it online. The candidate leading in the primary was Vyacheslav Maltsev, whose views were described as ultranationalistic, but the hacked information revealed that many of the voting accounts had the same passwords, suggesting that someone had been using bots to inflate the votes of select candidates. Kasyanov refused to step down after the debacle and stood in the 2016 elections, in which he gained 0.7% of the vote and not a single seat in the 7th State Duma.

2017 Moscow municipal election

During the 2017 Moscow municipal election, PARNAS partnered with the liberal party Yabloko in a coalition called 'United Democrats' to get candidates elected to local councils of deputies in municipal districts of Moscow. Specifically, PARNAS only gained two out of 1,502 seats up for election, but the coalition as a whole obtained over 260 seats.

2018 presidential election

In October 2017, Kasyanov proposed that the liberal opposition candidates intending to run for the presidency in 2018—including Grigory Yavlinsky, Alexei Navalny, and Kseniya Sobchak—form a coalition and field a single candidate in order to increase their chances. In early December PARNAS revealed that this coalition was never formed and announced that they supported the three opposition candidates, so the party did not have any of its own candidates run for the presidency.

Ideology

The ideology of the RPR-PARNAS is liberalism, federalism and human rights. In his interview, Kasyanov said "there is no higher value for the government than human rights." He defined ideological stance of PRP-PARNAS as right-of-center liberalism.
Among the main principles of the PARNAS party program are securing the individual rights of Russian citizens and equality of all before law, and that the government should be democratic, controlled by the public and should serve the interest of the people. The party condemns the Bolsheviks who seized power in 1917 and the existence of the Soviet Union, which it considers tyrannical, and models itself after the Constitutional Democratic Party that existed during the late Russian Empire. It also promises to declassify all KGB and other Soviet documents as part of a "decommunization" program and ban all promotion of the communist regime. For Russia's form of government it proposes to create a parliamentary republic and increase local self-governance. In addition, PARNAS wants to reform the judiciary to be truly independent, remove government control over the mass media, and promote small business and entrepreneurs over oligarchs.
The party considers the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea illegal and has vowed to return control of Crimea back to Ukraine, hence PARNAS did not campaign in Crimea in the 2016 Russian parliamentary elections. According to its 2015 election platform, it stated that it wants Russia to become a partner of NATO and the European Union, as well as to end military interventions in other countries.

Leaders

; Co-chairs
; Federal Political Council of RPR-PARNAS
Bureau:
Others: