December 8, 2003

PUTIN'S VICTORY

by Srdja Trifkovic

President Vladimir Putin's United Russia scored a major victory at the fourth post-Soviet parliamentary election in Russia on Sunday. With just over 37 percent of the vote it became the biggest party by far in the new State Duma (parliament). Thousands of candidates belonging to 23 parties competed for some 110 million votes but only 55.7% of voters cast their ballots, slightly up from the previous elections in 1999 when the response was 53 percent.

In addition to United Russia only three parties have exceeded the 5 percent minimum required for Duma representation: the Communist Party of Russian Federation (KPRF) won 12.7 percent, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) 11.8 percent, and the Rodina (Motherland) bloc 9 percent of the vote. The latter two parties are likely to act as Putin's allies: Zhirinovsky's LDPR had supported the president on all key issues in the old Duma, while the Rodina is widely perceived as a Kremlin-approved group that enjoyed its tacit support in order to undermine the Communists. The potential majority Putin now commands may give him enough votes to change the constitution so he can run for a third presidential term in 2008.

Rodina's success is nevertheless remarkable, considering that this was the first electoral test for a party that came into being only three months ago and consists mainly of former Communists. Its co-leader Sergei Glazyev, an economist, did well by focusing his attacks on the mega-rich and unpopular oligarchs. His demands for an end to their ability to evade taxes were well received by many impoverished Russians on fixed incomes. His co-leader Dmitry Rogozin insisted on the need to protect interests of Russians left outside the country after the collapse of the USSR and advocated a more assertive foreign policy. He says the reason for his party's success was simple: Russians were sick of "poverty, banditry and the violence in the Caucasus."

Such themes resonated with the voters so strongly that the Kremlin became worried that Rodina might do too well in the elections and could become a potential rival, rather than a junior partner to Putin's United Russia. That will not happen for the time being as both Glazyev and Rogozin will seek to consolidate their position and establish themselves as a permanent fixture on the country's political scene. Glazyev in particular is seen as a strong figure with considerable appeal among the disillusioned communist voters.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's populist-nationalist LDPR also did well, doubling its vote from 6 percent in 1999. Zhirinovsky's proven willingness to support Putin's legislative agenda-his fiery rhetoric notwithstanding-was rewarded by the party's increased access to state television. LDPR's extra votes also came mainly from disillusioned communists. Zhirinovsky is unlikely ever to repeat his 1993 success when he won more than one-fifth of the vote, and 12-15% range is his party's likely niche for the foreseeable future.

The main losers are Gennady Zyuganov, the communist leader, and the two parties routinely described as "pro-Western" and "reformist," Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, known by its Russian acronym SPS.

Under Zyuganov's leadership over the last decade the communists have seen a steady erosion of their support. The Party's share of the vote was halved from 24 percent in 1999 and Zyuganov's future as party leader must be in doubt. His accusations that the election was fixed and "had nothing to do with democracy" ring somewhat hollow: While there is no denying that the state media favored United Russia and its de facto allies, this election was by all accounts no less fair than the ones before it and therefore cannot explain the Party's collapse.

The main problem of the Communist Party is that of identity and target audience. Its attempts to re-invent itself as a pro-market party of the democratic Left have failed to attract the middle class while at the same time alienating its core constituency: the industrial workers, the pensioners, the poor, and the Soviet-era nostalgists. The Party is likely to face an internal split that may result in the emergence of a doctrinaire Marxist-Leninist party and a social-democratic one.

Zyuganov has experienced a defeat, but the "pro-Western reformists" have been routed. The SPS (Gaidar, Chubais) and Yabloko (Grigory Yavlinsky) will retain purely symbolic representation in the Duma by winning a few single-mandate districts, which make up one-half of the 450-member chamber. Such a decisive defeat for the parties of oligarchs and liberals was partly due to their inability to forge a formal alliance despite years of negotiations.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) praised the Russian Election Commission "for its professional organization of these elections," but said that media coverage favoring United Russia resulted in apathy from voters who felt the result was a foregone conclusion. "Given that procedures on election day were conducted in a technically correct way, it is even more regrettable that the main impression of the overall electoral process is of regression in the democratization process in Russia," said Bruce George, president of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly.

The losers in Moscow are predictably saying that their defeat heralds Russia's return to Soviet oppressive practices at home and aggressiveness abroad-a theme that is bound to be repeated in much of foreign commentary. Yavlinsky says that Russia was experiencing the rebirth of a single-party system. SPS's Boris Nemtsov was even gloomier: he said that the winning parties would act together to tighten an authoritarian grip on the country and pursue "antagonistic relations" with Russia's neighbors and the West. Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev-long retired from politics but sympathetic to the "pro-Westerners"-also deplored the defeat of "reformist" forces and warned against single-party domination could result in a "Soviet Communist-type situation." SPS's spokeswoman Irina Khakamada went even further by describing Rodina's success as a sign that "the national socialists were coming." (Zhirinovsky's answer to Khakamada was "Calm down and go and give lectures abroad.")

There will be certain changes of policy in Moscow, not of the system itself. Ten years after the first post-Soviet parliamentary election Russia's political spectrum appears more nationalist, less pro-market than in Yeltsin's early years. As the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky indicates, Putin's establishment is also likely to be less forgiving to the tiny oligarch class that has grown rich by squandering the country's resources, especially to those of its members who display political ambitions. On the whole the business community appears pleased with the prospect of continuity and stability, however, and Russia's equity and bond markets have started the week on a bullish note.

Russia is likely to adopt a more assertive foreign policy after Putin's re-election as president next March, but that is only to be expected in the aftermath of NATO's harmful and unnecessary enlargement and in view of the continuing Western ambiguity over Chechnya. The key to a fruitful and mutually beneficial relationship between Russia and the United States is still the liquidation or transformation of NATO. Either as an auxiliary tool of U.S. policy, or as a means of European impact on that policy, an alliance that has outlived its reason for existence should not be revived because of President Bush's current difficulties in Iraq. Its very existence perpetrates the sense of Russia's continued status as an implicit adversary of the United States. In the long term, as we have stated before, a wider paradigm shift in the U.S. foreign policy is needed, based on the creation of a genuine Northern Alliance-that of Russia, Europe, and North America-that would be able to face the many threats (most notably that from militant Islam) our common civilization will experience in this century. This shift should be coupled with either the abolition of NATO or Russia's inclusion in it as an equal and welcome partner.

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