What is leftism to you? What is a liberalism? What are the requirements to being a 'leftist'?

I tend to think of left as from pro-USSR on far-left to just more pro-social security on center-left to left, and right as from pro-free-market/pro-big-business to far-right ethnic nationalists.

On center left are pro-status-quo, but with some social policies "A Just Russia", like more money into free medicine and education. They are social concervative, the author of gay propaganda law was from this party.

On just left are Communist Party of Russian Federation (CPRF). The name is just historical imo, doesn't really reflect what they do. There's still like "the far off goal is communism", but the impression I got, they don't plan to do it through returning to USSR. They organise protests, vote against United Russia rolling back social securities we still have left after collapse of USSR, pro-progressive-tax on the rich. Social concervatives. They were the only systematic party to support the movement against trash incinerators in Kazan (unsuccessfully, but it was appreciated). The party is big however, so there are all kinds. There are democratic socialists and seems like people who are in bed with United Party too and populists too.

On far-left are literal Communists Stalinists who campaign for bringing USSR back "Communists of Russia" party. They separated from CPRF in 2012.

The liberalism has a couple of different, even opposing factions, so it's complicated:

The ruling party (United Russia) are economic liberals, but social concervatives. I would place them at center right. There are a couple of smaller parties that are basically the same.

There's also party Yabloko, who are both economic and social liberals, western style (they are pro western integration too), and to be honest I'm struggling to places them on the left-right spectrum. Maybe center-right too? To the right of the ruling party.

There's "Liberal Democratic Party of Russia" (LDPR), but, despite the name, they're actually autocratic Russian ethno-nationalists, well populists first, so right. The farthest right in the duma, but I would reserve actual far-right label to actual neo-nazis, who are, of course, forbidden.

There are also people who call themselves "liberals", derogatorily named by others as "liberasts" (which could be translated as liberaggots), don't belong to any party, and just whine how bad it is in Russia, without doing anything to improve it, or having any other beliefs. They are mostly found on the internet, but I've seen one in real life, he used to live not far from me. An asshole who parks (illegally) on a sidewalk or a lawn near our apartment building, blocking the way for pedestrians and/or stomping out the greenery, refused to move his car after people repeatedly asked him to do so with words like "for Rushka this is fine" (Rushka - derogatory name for Russia), then whined again about how Russia's a lost cause where people will never reach Europe's level. Then whined again how we are all pro police-state tyrants for reporting it to police, so his car could be towed and he fined. This happened, like a few times. I heard he moved since then to Ukraine (no joke).

/r/AskARussian Thread