A Just Russia

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A Just Russia, also translated as "Fair Russia", is a social-democratic nationalist party that is one of Russia's four parties currently represented in the parliament (State Duma). A member of A Just Russia is an "Eser." The party, part of the "systemic opposition" in Russia, is considered to be pro-Kremlin.

But are they Just?[edit]

It was created by a merger of the Russian Party of Pensioners for Social Justice and the Russian Party for Life. It is nominally social-democratic and claims to be conservative, but it lies like every other Russian political party. It is left-wing but still nationalistic. This is the Russian Green Party, as the Green party merged with it in 2008. It makes up ~11% of the electorate.

In the 5th State Duma (2007-2011), they had a whopping 38 seats out of 450, 2 less than the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. In the 2011 election, they came ahead of the LDPR and now hold 64 seats, the third largest of the four parties represented in the Duma, behind United Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.

Before 2011 this party supported Vladimir Putin and was often considered opposition in name only. This changed in 2011 when their leader Sergey Mironov fell with Putin and was deposed as the head of the Federation Council, the Russian upper house. As a result of the "anyone but United Russia" election tactic in the December 2011 election, the party nearly doubled its representation in the Duma, perceived as the least of four evils.

Other notable figures in A Just Russia include Oksana Dmitriyeva, a competent economist who often saved United Russia's half-baked financial reforms from complete failure, and Gennady Gudkov, a vocal opponent of fraud at the 2011 election and supporter of protest rallies that have been ongoing in Russia since the election finished.