A new study by Lenta.ru, Mash, and political scientist Alexei Chesnakov has examined how election practices and concepts evolved across Russian history, tracing their development from medieval town assemblies to modern presidential campaigns. Correspondent Dmitry Popov prepared the material for publication under creative producer Alexander Nepogodin as part of the project titled By Concepts: The Russian Political Dictionary.
Political scientist Alexei Chesnakov, who heads the scientific council of the Center for Political Conjunction, stated that elections serve as a mechanism of political self-organization that coordinates social interests and maintains state stability. He noted that elections legitimize power, provide representation for social groups, create space for political competition, allow citizens to evaluate officials, and involve the public in shaping national policy.
Origins of Russian Electoral Terminology
The modern Russian word for elections, vybory, derives from the Old East Slavic root brat and the Proto-Slavic root bher, which originally meant to carry, bring, or bear. Over time, the term expanded to include selecting, harvesting, receiving, and concluding a marriage union. Related terms include izbranie for election, izbranny for the chosen, and sobor for an assembly of representatives.
In his 1893 dictionary of the Old Russian language, Izmail Sreznevsky documented an early use of the verb vybrati in a 1388 charter from Grand Duke Vytautas of Lithuania. However, forms using the prefix iz-, such as izbrati and izbor, were far more common in early texts. The verb izbrati appeared in 11th-century writings to describe choosing objects and in the 12th-century Life of Feodosiy of the Caves to denote electing officials, while a 13th-century Novgorod chronicle recorded Grand Prince Yaroslav selecting men from Torzhok. The plural noun vybory became attached specifically to politics in the late 18th century through noble elections before entering broader public debate in the 19th century.
Voting Practices in Medieval City Republics
Electoral practices in early Rus began with open citizen assemblies known as the veche in medieval city republics. The Tale of Bygone Years recorded the calling of Varangian princes Rurik, Sineus, and Truvor in 862, which represented a formal agreement to accept governance rather than a modern vote.
The Novgorod veche, first recorded in 1015, functioned as the supreme authority in the republic. After the expulsion of Prince Vsevolod Mstislavich in 1136, Novgorodians elected their executive mayor, known as the posadnik, their military militia leader, known as the tysyatsky, and their ruling prince. The city was divided into the Sophia and Market sides, which comprised five district ends named Lyudin, Nerevsky, Slavensky, Zagorodsky, and Plotnitsky. Each end and street elected its own elders, while a council of noble lords framed assembly agendas.
Decisions at the veche required consensus and were often reached through acclamation by shouting on the central square, which sometimes descended into physical fights. To maintain order, candidate lists were narrowed or decided by casting lots. For the selection of an archbishop, three candidate monk-priests were chosen before drawing lots to select the winner, a process recorded in 15th-century chronicle compilations. A 1477 Pskov charter to Tsar Ivan III similarly recorded governance by posadniks, boyars, merchants, and the general population. Pre-Mongol Novgorod also invited princes like Alexander Nevsky under contractual agreements called ryad, permitting elected governance alongside military leadership.
Zemsky Sobors and Dynastic Succession
As the Russian state centralized in the 16th and 17th centuries, tsars convened Zemsky Sobors to deliberate on major legislative and foreign policy matters, such as Ivan IV's 1550 Law Code and the 1653 incorporation of the Zaporozhian Host. Delegates included boyars, service nobility, and wealthy townspeople elected from rural districts. American historian Paul Bushkovitch noted that Russian monarchical succession relied on public designation through wills and co-regency ceremonies alongside hereditary principles.
Zemsky Sobors elected three tsars: Boris Godunov, Vasily Shuysky, and Mikhail Romanov. Following invitation charters sent by Princes Dmitry Pozharsky and Dmitry Trubetskoy in 1613, more than 800 delegates gathered in Moscow. They considered candidates from noble houses such as the Golitsyns, Trubetskoys, Vorotynskys, and Shuyskys, alongside foreign princes including Wladyslaw of Poland and Karl Philip of Sweden, before choosing 16-year-old Mikhail Romanov. Historian Lev Cherepnin described the event as a genuine choice among competing candidates, while historian Mikhail Krom noted that such assemblies functioned primarily during domestic crises before fading after the final assembly in 1684. Local communities simultaneously elected peasant starosty, guba elders, and church hierarchs.
Electoral Systems under the Imperial Monarchy
Tsar Peter I introduced elected municipal bodies called ratushas, composed of burgomasters and ratmans chosen by wealthy merchants. A central ratusha in Moscow featured 12 elected burgomasters and a president, later replaced by the St. Petersburg Main Magistracy. Historian Yevgeny Anisimov noted that citizens viewed magistrate service as a heavy tax-collecting burden rather than a democratic privilege. Peter I also formalized the monarch's power to select a royal successor, while imperial dynastic marriages with German and Danish houses served diplomatic strategy.
Empress Catherine II convened a Legislative Commission in 1767 with elected representatives from the nobility, townspeople, Cossacks, and state peasants who brought voter instructions, though the body disbanded during the Russo-Turkish War. Under Catherine II's 1785 Charter to the Nobility, nobles gained the right to elect provincial marshals and court assessors using secret balloting with balls. Cultural scholar Yuri Lotman wrote that these elections created a school of public life that affirmed noble honor.
Regional Sejms and Local Self-Government
Regional assemblies existed on the imperial periphery. In the Kingdom of Poland, established in 1815, a two-chamber Sejm included 64 appointed senators and 128 deputies elected by noble assemblies and town councils. Around 100,000 landowners, tenants, and teachers out of 2.7 million residents held voting rights, representing roughly 3.7 percent of the population. The Sejm met four times before its abolition following the 1830 uprising. In the Grand Duchy of Finland, the Diet convened at Porvoo in 1809 and was restored by Tsar Alexander II in 1863, before the 1906 Parliament Act established a unicameral body with universal suffrage that granted women full voting rights.
During the 1860s, Tsar Alexander II introduced multi-stage zemstvo and municipal elections, expanding participation to townspeople and peasants while establishing elected justices of the peace. The 1870 City Statute mandated secret voting for municipal officials. Following Alexander II's assassination, Ober-Procurator Konstantin Pobedonostsev criticized elections as arbitrary party tactics, leading to a rollout of restrictive counter-reforms under Tsar Alexander III.
The State Duma and the Constituent Assembly
Although jurist Mikhail Speransky proposed a property-based system of dumas in 1809, Russia did not establish its first national parliament until Tsar Nicholas II created the State Duma during the 1905 Revolution. Electoral rules excluded women, men under age 25, military personnel, students, and nomadic ethnic groups. The monarch dissolved the first two Duma convocations after short sessions before modifying electoral laws to secure loyal majorities. In February 1917, the Duma refused a dissolution order and formed the Provisional Government.
In November 1917, Russia conducted elections for the All-Russian Constituent Assembly across 81 multi-member districts under universal, direct, equal, and secret suffrage without property or gender restrictions. Out of 767 elected deputies, the Socialist Revolutionary Party led by Viktor Chernov won 324 seats with 37.6 percent of the vote, while the Bolsheviks secured 183 seats and the Constitutional Democrats won 16 seats. The Assembly met for a single day in January 1918, declaring Russia a federal democratic republic and abolishing private land ownership before Bolshevik forces forcibly dispersed it.
Voting Systems in the Soviet Union
The Soviet state replaced parliamentary democracy with a network of councils known as Soviets. Revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin rejected bourgeois elections as a deception of workers, and open voting replaced secret ballots. Voting rights were stripped from disenfranchised classes, known as lishentsy, including former nobles, private merchants, clergy, tsarist police, and wealthy peasants, while urban worker votes weighed heavier than peasant votes.
Although the 1936 Soviet Constitution proclaimed universal suffrage and secret ballots, elections functioned as single-candidate rituals managed by the Communist Party. A 1937 Politburo resolution affirmed universal voting rights, yet voters received ballots with one pre-approved candidate, turning election days into festive public events with music and refreshments.
Electoral competition returned during Perestroika with the March 1989 elections for the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. The 2,250-member body included 292 non-party deputies and gave rise to an opposition faction called the Inter-Regional Deputies Group, led by Andrei Sakharov, Boris Yeltsin, Anatoly Sobchak, and Gavriil Popov. The Congress elected the Supreme Soviet and managed state reform until September 5, 1991, when deputies voted to dissolve the body following the national sovereignty movement.
Elections in the Modern Russian Federation
Article 3 of the 1993 Russian Constitution established free elections and referendums as the supreme direct expression of popular power. Early post-Soviet elections featured intense party competition, exemplified by the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia winning 23 percent of the vote and 64 seats in the 1993 Duma elections. During the 1996 presidential campaign, incumbent Boris Yeltsin utilized heavy corporate funding and public rallies to defeat Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. Prominent leaders like Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Gennady Zyuganov, and Grigory Yavlinsky established lasting party identities, with Zhirinovsky famously declaring he would participate in elections even from beyond the grave.
Modern Russian voters elect the president every six years, State Duma deputies every five years, as well as regional governors and local council members. Direct gubernatorial elections were abolished in 2004 in favor of regional parliamentary approval before being restored in 2012. Russia instituted a single voting day in 2006 and later expanded polling across multiple days. President Vladimir Putin described the 2024 presidential election as a vital step in shaping the nation's future development.
Philosophical Interpretations and Historical Sources
Russian philosophical thought long viewed elections through contrasting lenses. Moscow State University professor Vasily Vanchugov noted that 19th-century imperial authorities viewed autocracy as the primary norm and feared electoral processes would induce state chaos. Nineteenth-century Decembrists Pavel Pestel and Nikita Muravyov drew on the Novgorod republic to design balanced electoral structures, while Alexander Herzen identified self-governing principles in the traditional peasant commune.
Conservative thinker Mikhail Katkov praised Alexander II era municipal elections for uniting high officials, artisans, boyar descendants, and merchants in common local governance. Monarchist writer Ivan Solonevich argued in 1951 that the Muscovite state was an elective monarchy chosen for eternity rather than short terms. Liberal philosopher Boris Chicherin suggested that imperial authorities could utilize representative assemblies to maintain state stability.
Political philosopher Boris Mezhuev concluded that Russian political culture treats elections not as abstract voting, but as a distinct local event of community unity. To explore the topic further, political scientist Alexei Chesnakov recommended key historical texts, including Lev Cherepnin's 1978 study of Zemsky Sobors, Alexander Kupriyanov's 2017 book on provincial elections, historical documents on the Imperial Duma, Valery Fedorov's volume on electoral behavior, and Oleg Matveychev's study of political strategy.
