In modern Russian political terminology, the non-system opposition or non-systemic opposition () are oppositional forces which operate outside of the official political establishment. Alternatively, the systemic opposition operates in the form of registered

political parties A political party is an organization that coordinates candidates to compete in a particular area's elections. It is common for the members of a party to hold similar ideas about politics, and parties may promote specific ideological or p ...

.Russian opposition: inside or outside the system?
Grigorii Golosov, September 1, 2011 (retrieved February 8, 2015)"Оппозиция: новая система координат"
Иван Тютрин, Александр Лукьянов, February 24, 2012 (retrieved February 8, 2015) There are two major reasons of the existence of the non-system opposition. First, the Russian Law on Political Parties originally set a high threshold for a political party to be registered, the highest hurdle having been the requirement to acquire at least 45,000 members. Second, a number of activists, such as

Garry Kasparov Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born Garik Kimovich Weinstein on 13 April 1963) is a Russian Grandmaster (chess), chess grandmaster, former World Chess Champion (1985–2000), political activist and writer. His peak FIDE chess Elo rating system, ra ...

and Vladimir Bukovsky, are in principle against registration, saying that the registration itself is a "vassal oath of allegiance to the authorities". The emergence of the non-system political activists (and the introduction of the term) followed the 2003 Duma elections notable for the new extremely restrictive law about political parties. The period of 2004–2012 witnessed waves of mass political actions organized by the opposition movements. The spectrum of political views of the non-system opposition is extremely broad, and attempts to create "suprapolitical" associations, such as The Other Russia, eventually failed. In 2007, Russian politologist argued that the term "non-systemic opposition" reflects neither ideological distance to the

ruling party The ruling party or governing party in a democratic parliamentary or presidential system is the political party or coalition holding a majority of elected positions in a parliament, in the case of parliamentary systems, or holding the executive ...

nor non-acceptance of democratic institutions. The non-systemic opposition refers to opposition parties that are "excluded" from the

political system In political science, a political system means the form of Political organisation, political organization that can be observed, recognised or otherwise declared by a society or state (polity), state. It defines the process for making official gov ...

because they lack both a representation in the structures of state power and contacts with the ruling group. They predominantly use unconventional methods of political struggle, have limited resources, and are particularly active on

social networks A social network is a social structure consisting of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), networks of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of meth ...

. In his opinion, they enjoy little trust among citizens. In 2012, and Aleksandr Lukyanov of the Solidarnost movement wrote that the nonsystem/system dichotomy became outdated; the real dichotomy should be whether a political force is non-conformist or conformist with respect to the Putinist political system. Their arguments are: the radicalization of some "systemic opposition", decreased importance of registration during non-election time, alleviation of hurdles for registration due to Dmitry Medvedev's reforms, and efforts of the current establishment to introduce discord into opposition.

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