Liberale og liberalism i Russland etter Sovjet: Å skape bilder og håndtere myter

Arr – idéhistorisk tidsskrift. 2017. No. 3-4. P. 19–27.

Malinova O. Y.

In spite of the fact that the liberalism had a significant history in Russia in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries its coming back to political practice during perestroika and after the collapse of the USSR should be considered as essentially new stage. At that time the traditions of pre-revolutionary liberalism were essentially “forgotten”, and those who was eager to stand under the liberal banner had to reinvent it almost from scratch. After a short triumph in the very beginning of the 1990s and modest electoral success in mid-1990s liberalism has given up its positions as a political force. Since 2003 the liberal parties has lost representation in the State Duma (a lower chamber of the Russian parliament) which brought their marginalization. In mid-2010s, in the context of crisis in Russia’s relationship with the West caused by annexation of Crimea and war in Donbass the liberals became stigmatized as “pro-Western” and “anti-national” political force which made the revival of liberalism highly problematic. 

Keywords: symbolic politics, liberalism in Russia, political discourse