Russia occupies an important place in the history of the libertarian movement — it was precisely in opposition to the Russian Bolshevik’s experiment that the founders of libertarianism built their doctrine and their identity based on principles of methodological individualism, free markets and private property. After all, Ayn Rand, the writer who breathed the soul of ethics and politics into the dry calculation of the Austrian school of economics, was born into a family of Russian Jews in St. Petersburg and lived the first 20 years of her life under the name Alisa Rosenbaum. But there were no any libertarian or at least neoliberal movement or school of thought in Russia until the collapse of USSR.
Since one sixth of land became free from soviet socialistic ideological oppression and propaganda in 1990s, a flood of literature from once-banned classical liberal and libertarian authors like Friedrich von Hayek and Ludwig von Mises flowed into the country. First and foremost, the interest in Western economists was linked to the need to build a normally functioning market economy from scratch — and, unfortunately, the former communist party bigwigs failed to cope with this task. At the same time, libertarian theory became an object of interest for former Soviet academics, namely lawyers and founders of the libertarian legal theory of law and state Vladik Nersesyants and Vladimir Chetvernin.
Interest in ideas of freedom gradually grew among the general population in the 2000s and early 2010s, along with the rise of the Russian consumer boom. An absolute bestseller of that time was “Atlas Shrugged”— it was recommended to Vladimir Putin by his former advisor and libertarian economist, Andrei Illarionov, who provided one of the most efficient economic reforms in Russian history. The libertarian entrepreneur Evgeny Chichvarkin even gifted the book to then-President Dmitry Medvedev. Both proponents of freedom are now in forced exile in Western countries, Chichvarkin was deprived of his successful mobile phone retailer Euroset, the largest in Russia, and recently survived an attempted kidnapping by Wagner PMC mercenaries working for the Kremlin while in London.
Another a famous Russian libertarian — the founder of the social network VKontakte and the messenger Telegram Pavel Durov. He was one of the first to openly promote the ideas of decentralization, freedom of speech, and anonymity online through his digital platforms, which refused to cooperate with Russian security forces in handing them correspondence and data of Russian and Ukrainian opposition figures and blocking respective online communities. But for his beliefs, Durov was forced to sacrifice his first commercially successful project, VK, and leave Russia as well. The entrepreneur also claims that in 2018, when Russian government attempted to block Telegram, he may have survived an assassination attempt with a military-grade poison, often used by Russian intelligence agencies against their opponents. A year ago, Durov was arrested in France and was placed under judicial supervision for six months, under pressure to de-anonymize Telegram users and block conservative and EU-sceptical politicians in Romania and Moldova.
In 2008 political activists from several regions (primarily St. Petersburg) founded the Libertarian Party of Russia (LPR). In its program LPR defends the idea of minimal government, which should not interfere in economic and personal lives of people, proposes to expand the right to self-defence and gun ownership, to abolish of conscription, to abolish repressive articles in legislation and censorship, to reduce the state’s activity in the international arena, rejecting any militarism and globalism, and supports extension of self-government of Russian regions and local municipalities.
Due to its oppositional nature, the party was never able to obtain official status, despite repeatedly submitting relevant applications to the Russian Ministry of Justice. In 2012, after the largest rallies in the history of Putin’s Russia for political freedoms, former party chairman Andrei Shalnev even met with President Medvedev and members of his administration to discuss legislative simplification of the registration procedures for political parties. However, the proposals of libertarians and other political forces remained unheeded.
Despite the lack of official registration and other state-imposed obstacles, which hinder electoral participation, members of LPR often receive support from voters by putting themselves forward as independent candidates or by agreement with other registered parties. Thus, in 2009, libertarian Vera Kichanova became an elected member of Municipal Councillor in Moscow; in 2020 Vyacheslav Galinov became the first libertarian delegate in Siberia, having been elected in Kemerovo region; In 2021, libertarian Viktor Vorobyov was elected to the State Council of the Komi Republic, remarkably running as a candidate for the Communist Party of Russia and leading its parliamentary faction. Kichanova was forced to leave the country under the threat of persecution, Galinov and Vorobyov were illegally deprived of their mandates. Additionally, Vorobyov was declared a “foreign agent” — status, which is used by the authorities to discredit political activists and dissidents and prohibit them from participating in public life.
Apart from election campaigns, libertarians supported and organized public protests against election fraud, corruption, political repression, restrictions on civil liberties, and freedom of speech. In the second half of the 2010s, the LPR organized thousands-strong rallies against the Telegram block and increase in the retirement age, for fair and competitive elections and the release of journalist Ivan Golunov, who was detained for anti-corruption investigations, and many others around whole Russia. As a result — Telegram now is available, Golunov was released, thousands of people learned about the existence of libertarianism.
The photo from rally for free Runet in 2018
The educational activities of the LPR members proved to be no less successful. In addition to writing texts and translating books by Western authors and explaining the basics of libertarianism, libertarians held annual popular science conferences, such as the Adam Smith Readings and the Ayn Rand Memorial Conference, which attracted hundreds of listeners and gathered thousands of views on YouTube and became the main mouthpiece of the entire Russian opposition.
In 2017, blogger Mikhail Svetov, who completed his education in the West and returned to Russia to make films, became one of the party’s frontmen, creating a channel SVTV which now has more than 270,000 subscribers. In his videos and lectures, held in all major Russian cities, Mikhail clearly conveyed to Russian youth that freedom is beneficial to everyone, explained why it is important for politicians and political activists to be patriots, how the courts will operate under AnCap, and answered many other questions from the audience regarding the theory and practice of libertarianism. It was Mikhail’s team that organized numerous rallies and public campaigns aimed at protecting freedom in Russia.
Apart from leading figures in Russian politics and culture, Svetov also invited Western speakers to his broadcasts: his studio was visited by Tommy Robinson, a Danish journalist and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute Flemming Rose, President and CEO of the Cato Institute Peter Goettler. In 2019 at Mikhail’s invitation, one of the leading libertarian philosophers, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, spoke to the audience of over 1,500 people in Moscow about the crises of modern liberal democracy. Another luminary of libertarian thought, Walter Block, was also scheduled to speak in 2020, but the lecture was cancelled due to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
The active anti-statist position of libertarians would inevitably attract the attention of the state and its force agencies. In 2017, libertarian blogger and crypto enthusiast Ruslan Sokolovsky received a suspended sentence of three years in prison after filming himself playing smartphone app “Pokémon Go” in an Orthodox church — the prosecution considered Ruslan’s behaviour and his atheistic position an insult to the feelings of believers.
In 2019, student of Higher school of Economics in Moscow Yegor Zhukov, who also promoted libertarian views on YouTube, was investigated for mass riots during protests. Thanks to massive public support, including endorsements from Russian celebrities (for example, the most famous Russian rapper, Oxxxymiron, who also spoke out in favour of Zhukov’s), Yegor was released, but it was prohibited to him to continue his political activities in Russia. In 2020, he was severely beaten by unknown assailants outside his own apartment building, which forced Yegor to emigrate to the United States. At the same time, a crowd of FSB officers with bats beat up libertarians who were camping in the Siberian taiga near Krasnoyarsk.
In 2021, following the arrest of Alexei Navalny (designated an extremist by Russian authorities) and the failed civil society efforts to free him, the repression against libertarians reached its peak. Due to the threat of persecution, almost the entire leadership of the Libertarian Party left Russia, including Mikhail Svetov, who, among other things, was forced to close Russia’s first libertarian club, “New Sincerity”. Many, despite the threat to their safety, decided to remain in the country and served prison sentences ranging from 15 days to six months.
In 2022, after the Kremlin’s special military operation in Ukraine begins, libertarians will once again be hit by a barrage of criminal cases in connection with the LPR’s involvement in organizing pacifist rallies.
The photo from Svetov’s “New Sincerity”
Today, the libertarian movement is in a very depressed state, especially compared to the second half of the 2010s, when the LPR was the second opposition force in the country. Moreover, during the ideological intra-party conflict between more radical anarcho-capitalists and more moderate classical liberals LPR split into two different organizations with the same name and identity but under different leadership.
Nevertheless, Russian libertarians are not giving in to despondency. Large intellectual conferences continue to be organized in Russia, still attracting dozens and hundreds of attendees. Libertarians are among the few who continue to challenge the brutality of the security forces and the Chechen elite, who kidnap, tortured and murder those they dislike as they flee the Chechen Republic. With varying success, libertarians continue to participate in local elections and sometimes even win.
In exile, libertarians have become involved in assisting Russian refugees forced to leave the country due to political persecution or the military mobilization that began in 2022. After leaving Russia, Mikhail Svetov founded the first Russian-language libertarian media outlet, SVTV News, which is influential enough among all Russian political spectrum.
Libertarians’ key goal at this time is preserving the movement’s core and growing its supporters, who will be invaluable when an open political participation becomes possible in Russia again. Russian libertarians are closely monitoring the developments in the libertarian movement worldwide, inspired by the example of the “Argentine Lion” Javier Milei.
We believe that one day, the slogans of freedom will once again resound confidently in our country, and libertarian politicians will lead the movement toward a happy, prosperous and liberated Russia of the future.
Many details were edited out of this text because in Russia, criticizing the government can lead to criminal prosecution, including years of imprisonment. If you want to know more about the Russian politics, life of Russian libertarians and to support fight for Liberty in Eastern Europe, you can follow social media of LPR:
X: https://x.com/lpr_tw
Telegram: https://t.me/libertarian_party
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lprussiaorg
