The repressive Soviet Union was notorious for its long lines of weary people waiting hours to acquire some hard-to-come-by commodity. But in Russia this winter, long lines have become a symbol of protest, with enthused citizens waiting for things that have become vanishingly rare under authoritarian President Vladimir Putin: freedom of expression, competitive elections, the opportunity to influence the future of their country.
"There is an expectation of change, a demand for change," said a middle-aged man waiting in a line in St. Petersburg to submit his signature to support former lawmaker Boris Nadezhdin's bid to challenge Putin in the March 15-17 election, and who asked that his identity be withheld for fear of repercussions for speaking out. "That's why people have come here."
"We came here and were happy to see that there are a lot of like-minded people," a young man in the same line, who also asked that his name be withheld, told RFE/RL's Russian Service. "There is a feeling that all is not lost. That there is a chance we might be given at least some tiny chance to express the opinion of what I think is the majority."
Nadezhdin, 60, is seeking to run for president as the candidate of the small Civic Initiative party. Analysts say the election is being carefully curated by the Kremlin not just to secure a fifth term for Putin but to serve as a convincing show of national unity behind him and his key policies -- a belligerent confrontation with the West and a war against Ukraine, where Russia's full-scale invasion is nearing the two-year mark.
The Kremlin's tight grip on politics, media, law enforcement, and other levers nationwide means Putin is certain to win barring a very big, unexpected development. But the surprising show of support for the little-known Nadezhdin, whose platform says the invasion of Ukraine was a "fatal mistake" and accuses Putin of dragging Russia into the past instead of building a sustainable future, is complicating the Kremlin's more aggressive ambition of boosting the perception of Putin's legitimacy.
He quickly gathered more than double the 100,000 signatures he is required to submit to the Central Election Commission (TsIK) by January 31. The commission, which analysts say is directed by Putin's administration, then has 10 days to verify the signatures and decide whether to register his candidacy.
"This is the problem for the Putin campaign," said political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov. "If an anti-war candidate is registered, he will be against Putin and all the other candidates will…be irrelevant.
"People won't be voting for Nadezhdin…but against Putin, because Putin represents the war," Gallyamov told RFE/RL. "That is why I don't think the Kremlin will register Nadezhdin. The risk is very great."
The TsIK routinely refuses to register would-be opposition candidates on the pretext that they submitted an insufficient number of valid signatures, the entire signature process forming a kind of filter against unwelcome developments.
'Still Early To Tell'
The TsIK expeditiously approved Putin's signatures on January 19 and registered him as an "independent candidate," a designation critics say is ridiculous because he controls the political system and the dominant party, United Russia.
Putin, 71, has held power as president or prime minister since 1999. In 2020, he engineered a raft of constitutional amendments that included a provision enabling him to seek two more presidential terms, meaning he could stay in office until 2036. Over his quarter-century in power, Russian elections have been increasingly strictly controlled, there has been a massive crackdown on dissent, and political opposition has been virtually eliminated since the last election in 2018 and particularly since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
According to Russian media reports, Putin's administration has ordered local officials to produce results showing roughly 80 percent support for Putin -- higher than ever before -- with a turnout of roughly 70 percent. Such a turnout could be difficult to muster, analysts said, if all the approved candidates express support for Putin and his policies. For instance, on January 30, nationalist Sergei Baburin submitted his signatures to the TsIK and immediately withdrew from the race in favor of Putin.
In December, the authorities disqualified journalist Yekaterina Duntsova, who also spoke out against the war and called for a "humane" Russia, citing alleged technical mistakes in her application to register as a would-be candidate. After her disqualification, Duntsova called on supporters to back Nadezhdin and pledged to work for his campaign.
"It is still early to tell whether [Nadezhdin] can be a unifying figure for dissatisfied people, for the opposition," said sociologist Denis Volkov of the Levada Center polling agency. "Maybe something will come of it, but I don't see it yet. That is why I'm surprised to hear people say the Kremlin is afraid. Yes, people are giving their signatures, but far from all those who sign will actually vote for him. Some might vote for him, while others might not vote at all."
A high turnout, Volkov added, should not be a problem for the Kremlin given its concerted campaign of "national-patriotic mobilization and consolidation."
"Putin is constantly on display, and the authorities are taking steps to mobilize all his supporters," he said.
Who Is Nadezhdin?
Born in Soviet Uzbekistan, Nadezhdin moved with his family to Moscow at the age of 3. He is a mathematician by education and worked after university as an engineer.
In 1999, he became a deputy in the State Duma, the lower parliament chamber, with the Union of Right Forces, a party that was headed at the time by Sergei Kiriyenko. Kiriyenko, now one of the top three officials in Putin's administration, plays a significant role in managing domestic politics in Russia and Moscow's operations in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Among other U.S. and European punitive measures, he was sanctioned by the European Union in 2020 over his alleged role in the near-fatal nerve-agent poisoning of now-imprisoned opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.
The Union of Right Forces lost its Duma representation in the 2003 elections, during Putin's first presidential term. In 2008, Nadezhdin joined the political council of the Right Cause party, but he left in 2011, saying he intended to form a new right-of-center party with Putin's former finance minister, Aleksei Kudrin.
In subsequent years, he dallied with several Kremlin-friendly political parties, including the ruling United Russia party. He participated in United Russia's so-called primaries ahead of the Duma elections in 2016 but lost. Later he headed a local election list for the A Just Russia party and headed the party's faction in a district outside Moscow, although he never joined the party.
Nadezhdin regularly appears on Russian state television as something of a token liberal in a rabidly illiberal environment. In an appearance on NTV in September 2022, he criticized the conduct of the war against Ukraine, saying it could not be won using "colonial war methods." Although he has said many times the invasion of Ukraine was a costly mistake for Russia and has called for a cease-fire and negotiations, he has never condemned the war outright or called for the return of Ukrainian territory that Russia has occupied -- positions that would almost certainly bring on criminal prosecution in Putin's Russia.
In 2023, he tried to register to run for the governor of the Moscow region as the candidate of the Civic Initiative party but was denied after failing to obtain the required number of signatures of municipal lawmakers in support of his candidacy.
His proposed platform for the presidential election includes "winding up" the war in Ukraine and "returning everyone home," providing more money and political influence to Russia's regions, restoring the direct election of municipal and regional heads, focusing on domestic issues instead of basing policies on "confrontation with the West," amnesty for "political prisoners," and creating a Russia that "we aren't ashamed to leave to our children."
"Russia has already passed through chaos, and we should not take this road again," he wrote. "I will not forgive myself if I don't do everything I can to stop this and to direct our country onto the path of genuine flourishing, which every Russian citizen deserves."
Nadezhdin's long history of working within the system has inspired speculation that his potential candidacy is a "project" of the Putin administration. Mark Galeotti, an author and analyst of Russian politics, said this seems unlikely.
"I think it is something slightly different," he said on an RFE/RL podcast. "I think it is more that the Kremlin decided to let him go ahead…. It was decided that he was sufficiently respectful of the system and the game. He was sufficiently marginal that they didn't feel they needed to exclude him at an earlier stage."
"However," he added, "I suspect they are now reviewing that decision."
The Prism Of Belarus 2020
In 2020, longtime Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka was seeking a sixth term as head of the repressive country. Although his government cleared the field of all opposition candidates that it felt presented a threat to his authoritarian rule, it allowed the wife of one jailed would-be candidate, Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, to run. An unknown political novice, she proved a formidable candidate who managed to unite the opposition and gain the support of many disaffected Belarusians.
When the government claimed that Lukashenka had won by a landslide, Belarusians who had turned out in great numbers to support Tsikhanouskaya's bid took to the streets again in massive peaceful demonstrations, and for a brief period Lukashenka's government seemed on the verge of toppling.
Lukashenka managed to get the upper hand by violently putting down the protests, imposing an often-brutal crackdown, and forcing Tsikhanouskaya and other opposition leaders to flee the country. But he lost much of what little legitimacy he had maintained at home and abroad.
It is a scenario the Kremlin has no desire to duplicate.
From Putin's point of view, Galeotti suggested, Nadezhdin cannot be allowed to build a "coalition of the fed-up," a force fueled by pent-up discontent with the economy, military mobilization, ethnic and other social tensions that have been exacerbated by the war, the crackdown on dissent, the restriction of basic rights, and other issues.
Nadezhdin has become "something of a lightning rod for people…who are generally just opposed to the regime and frankly don't really care what Nadezhdin stands for or who he is or whatever," Galeotti said.
"That is making him problematic," he added.
The challenge presented by Nadezhdin was intensified on January 28 when he told supporters that if he is not allowed to register as a candidate, he will turn to "Plan B" -- a bid to organize widespread street protests.
"I, for example, purely theoretically, could ask 200,000 people in the country to submit applications for legal protests in 150 cities," he said, emphasizing that any protests would have to be "legal."
For these reasons, Galeotti predicted, the Kremlin will not allow him to run in the election.
"The Belarus example is a sort of cautionary tale," he said, adding that although dissent in Russia seems minimal because of the state's persecution of dissent, Russians have shown historically that "when they have to option to express their disaffection, they are very happy to take it."
"And from that, potentially, could come a political movement," Galeotti said.
For now, Nadezhdin's campaign has gathered more than 200,000 signatures. In the days before the January 31 deadline to submit them to the TsIK, long lines could still be found at his stands in cities across the country.
"If the authorities come for Nadezhdin's people, they will come for me first of all," said Darya Kheikinen, Nadezhdin's coordinator in St. Petersburg, who was arrested "for the first time" at an anti-war protest in March 2022.
"It is a risk that I am taking consciously…. I will not emigrate out of principle. I can't say I have a concrete plan of what I am going to do," she said. "Our government is unpredictable, and planning is useless. But if I leave, I will be powerless. My country is important to me. That is why I am doing this."
