Paul Colston takes a look at Russia’s general election campaign as it reaches its final days. December 7 will see the country vote for a new State Duma and the United Party, strongly allied with President Putin, is tipped to sweep its list of favoured figures into the comfy Duma seats in record numbers.

(photo) M. Khodorkovsky: "From
bankrolling Yabloko and the SPS to business breakfast
at the Matriosskaya Marriott".


As Western political commentators and Russia-watchers search in vain for election themes familiar to them such as ideology, economic and social policies and programmes for government, Russia’s leading political parties entered the final days of the campaign with the outcome more or less predetermined and scripted in the Kremlin.
The consolidation of state control over the media and a new nomenklatura emerging around the central glue-pot of power that is the United Russia party, means that the new parliament that takes shape after the December 7 poll is likely to resemble a CPSU plenum more than a liberal democracy.

United Russia – the party of power that even distains campaigning on TV (partly because it would appear to have so many electronic media outlets already in its pocket) – appears set to dominate with a percentage of the poll widely predicted at 30%-plus. Its artificially created ally, Glaziev’s Homeland bloc, has been given a leg up to clear the 5% barrier. Zyuganov and his dogged band of Communists (with several leading businessmen having ‘secured’ places high on the party list) should end up in second place at a few points plus or minus 20%, while Zhirinovsky is still railing away at all and sundry, playing his frightening role of court jester to perfection and stealing valuable votes to be sold later, no doubt, back to the highest bidder. A recent outburst against a respected army figure (General Shpak) could lose him some last minute votes among the patriots, however.
Nemtsov and Chubais’s Union of Right Forces (SPS) and Grigory Yavlinsky’s Yabloko are now struggling to distance themselves from (and cope without) Khodorkovsky’s money and, having failed to unite will struggle to clear, separately, the 5% barrier to parliamentary representation. The egos of the two leaders could end up larger than the seats their Deputies gain in the new parliament.

Western observers can’t fathom out why the SPS and Yabloko, supposed parties of the small businessman and entrepreneur, are not doing better. They fail to understand the deep mistrust of many Russians who associate their leaders with the robber privatisations of the early nineties. Those businessmen, moreover, that are pragmatic, know that United Russia is likely to offer better protection and will have far more clout within the bureaucracy and legislative process in any case. Politics is all about power in Russia.

The TV coverage has been very weak with Channel One barely mentioning the fact that a general election is happening at all. United Russia has been receiving around three times as many mentions in national news reports as the Communists in second place. SPS and Yabloko barely figure on any national TV news commentaries, other than in an insidious link to the Yukos scandal.
So, it would appear, that Mr Putin has effectively muffled the democratic process and, with the help of placemen and women, created a CPSU mark-2, a monolithic party structure but minus the Marxism-Leninism.

The Right has been castrated with the removal of Khodorkovsky and the Left has been reformatted, with the pliable Glaziev likely to strip away a good percentage away from his former ally Zyuganov and ultimately, possibly, replace the veteran Communist as the main presidential contender from the Left in 2004.
The battle for Duma seats, however, can be seen as a phoney war, with the real battle shaping up for the presidential election. If the money men unite in the face of pressure from both ‘Siloviki’ and remnants of the Family faction – a case of millionaires wishing to replace billionaires – then Vladimir Putin may have cause to worry.

Ultimately, Russia is a capitalist state and capital will ultimately decide who governs.
At the previous elections the Russian Embassy and the Trade Delegation in Highgate allowed Russians in Britain to vote. Interestingly, the SPS garnered 25% of the expat vote in Britain, and decided to set up a UK branch. I guess you have to go after votes wherever they may be!

Paul Colston