(Pointless) Russian Elections: Putin won by 74%!
Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2018 12:51 am
Vladimir Putin wins Russian election with 74% of vote – exit poll - The Grauniad
Vladimir Putin cruised to victory in Sunday’s presidential elections in a result that was never in question. His fourth term as president will extend until 2024, making him the first Kremlin leader to serve two decades in power since Josef Stalin.
With results still coming in, Putin looked set to exceed expectations by clinching more than 73% of the vote.
Turnout, which was seen as a measure of the Kremlin’s legitimacy in this uncompetitive campaign, was close to 60% as of 9pm GMT. The Kremlin had hoped to match the 65% who cast votes in 2012 and had initially sought 70% turnout.
“Thank you for your support,” Putin told crowds on Manezhnaya Square just under the Kremlin walls, wearing a black down jacket with a fur hood. “Everyone who voted today is part of our big, national team.”
Asked by a journalist about whether he would consider future runs for president, he responded: “What you’re saying is just silly … what, am I going to sit here for 100 years?”
The view of the Russian opposition:
There Are Elections That Build Democracy, and Elections That Kill It: The Tricks Is Not to Confuse Them
Reprinted/translated by The Russian Reader blog
Igor Averkiev
igor-averkiev.com
March 13, 2018
1. If you relate to elections solely as a value, you will never grasp their essence. You will never tame them.
2. In the modern world, the presence of elections per se in a particular country is neither an achievement nor a value, except for liberal democratic fundamentalists. In the modern world, it is the political outcome of elections that is an achievement and value. In some countries, elections build democracy, while in other countries they kill democracy. In Russia, they kill democracy.
3. There are about two hundred countries in the modern world. The vast majority of them (around one hundred and eighty) hold elections more or less regularly. Around fifty countries in this vast majority are more or less classic democracies. There are another forty countries that hold elections and are more or less classic authoritarian regimes. The other hundredsome countries that hold elections are ruled by a variety of transitional, semi-authoritarian, and hybrid regimes. Meaning that elections per se do not vouchsafe democracy at all. Morever, in most of the world’s countries, people voting in elections does not produce democracy.
4. Elections are merely a social know-how that can be used by anyone for any purpose. Know-how is a simple thing: if you wield it, you can profit from it in keeping with your interests. An axe is similar in this respect. It matters who wields it: a carpenter or a killer. In the hands of some people, elections produce a democratic regime, while in the hands of others they produce an authoritarian regime. Democracy is not programmed into electoral know-how itself. Democratic elections thus coexist on our planet with authoritarian elections: everything is decided by the person who presides over the elections. If you want elections in Russia to produce democracy, first you have to gain control of them. Elections serve democracy only when they are monitored at all phases by political forces with a stake in democracy. Nor is it only a matter of monitoring the tallying of votes.
5. Elections serve democracy only when the question of power has already been resolved to the benefit of pro-democratic forces or during an unstable transition period in which an authoritarian regime is still in power, but can longer dismiss pro-democratic forces out of hand. Therefore, in order to use elections to advance democratic interests, they must first be taken away from the old authoritarian boss. Or he must be so scared he has to take the interests of pro-democratic forces into account when elections are held. There is no other way. This is how things are done the world over, but millions of freedom-loving Russians for some reason still believe that regularly going to vote in elections presided over by someone else will in itself hasten democracy’s victory in Russia.
6. What is democracy? I won’t go into high-flown arguments, but the democracy that freedom-loving Russians like so much gels only when the country is run by politicians who have no desire to restrict political competition. They are willing, if push comes to shove, to lose elections; moreover, they are willing to accept defeat until the next elections. That’s all there is to it. That is why there is no democracy in Russia: because the people in power restrict political competition and have no intention of losing elections under any circumstances, much less accepting defeat. They are assisted in their restriction of political competition by the selfsame democratic know-how and institutions. It is just that without democratic politicians inhabiting them, this know-how and these institutions are only formally democratic, not democratic in fact.
7. The pro-democratic forces include not only the liberal democratic parties but also all political and civic organizations—leftist, nationalist, imperialist, religious, environmentalist, alternative leftist, alternative rightist, etc.—whose political interests are not bound up with Vladimir Putin’s personalist regime, who have no plans to limit political competition in Russia, and are willing, depending on the outcomes of elections, not only to come to power but also to cede power. Putin’s authoritarian regime can be opposed only by a broad pro-democracy coalition, without necessarily becoming a formal coalition. The trial version of this broad pro-democracy coalition presented itself to the country during the nationwide protest movement that kicked off in December 2011. We should not expect extremely well-coordinated joint actions from a broad pro-democracy coalition. (The “Decembrists” overplayed their hand in this respect.) It is enough to head in the same direction along more or less parallel routes, coordinating actions at certain critical points.
8. An electoral authoritarian regime, such as Russia’s, is organized quite simply. All the democratic know-how a modern country is supposed to have—elections, representation, separation of powers—functions smoothly, but not all comers have access to it. It is even simpler than that. An authoritarian regime simply does not allow potential competitors, that is, leaders and organizations, to get on their feet politically and grow organizationally to the extent they would be able to surpass the two- or three-percent minimumthreshold of votes needed for admission to the political arena. It does this by refusing to register parties, intimidating leaders, limiting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in a pinpoint fashion, etc. If, despite everything, they nevertheless grow and thrive, they are simply not admitted to elections, as I have mentioned. In Russia, therefore, democratic procedures do not serve democracy. The soul of democracy is not know-how, procedures, and institutions, but people willing to use them in a particular way. In Russia, politicians interested in democracy simply do not make it into formal democratic politics. Thanks to the political regime built by Vladimir Putin, year after year only pro-authoritarian political forces make it into Russia’s formally democratic politics, and year after year they limit the involvement of pro-democratic forces in democratic procedures. It is a vicious circle. There is democracy, and there is no democracy at the same. Putin’s authoritarian regime is even elegant after a fashion.
9. Elections in authoritarian countries do not increase the supply of democracy, nor do they prepare the way for it, since they do not facilitate competition, do not put the opposition through its paces, and do not put rank-and-file voters in circumstances where the country’s fortunes depend on the choices they make. In authoritarian countries, elections function as a full-fledged authoritarian institution for legitimizing the regime. In authoritarian countries, elections are required only as a source of power, nothing more. Everyone involved in these elections is involved solely in legitimizing the regime. They are doing nothing else.
10. In authoritarian and hybrid countries, including modern Russia, elections have another vital political function. Elections are also an outlet for the liberal public, a valve, installed by the regime, for releasing oppositional steam and keeping opposition politicians busy somehow. The Putin regime has used elections to satisfy the need many freedom-loving Russians have to “fight for democracy” in a safe, comfortable way, a way that lets them feel like decent dissidents honestly doing their duty. Everyone comes out on top. The liberal public engages in self-actualization, and the regime does not find it frightening.
11. If the liberal democratic opposition’s sole aim is symbolic involvement in election campaigns within the authoritarian regime, but year after year the regime does not permit it to grow politically and organizationally, and does not allow it to run in elections, the opposition will gradually wither and become marginalized. This, in fact, is the kind of opposition we have nowadays. If we realize, however, that elections serve democracy only after the question of power has been decided to the benefit of pro-democratic forces, it means we need a different opposition altogether, one radically different from the opposition that has filled the niche the past fifteen years. We need a liberal democratic opposition that is not hung up on being involved in meaningless elections governed by someone else’s hostile rules. We need an opposition focused on vigorous, direct political action and a propaganda duel (a fight over values) with the regime in order to command the attention and respect of the so-called Putinist majority, those very same “ordinary people” who, when a window of opportunity opens, would at least not oppose the new, free-minded political alternative. There is a big problem with the word “new,” however.
12. The creation of a new, free-minded opposition is encumbered by the liberal democratic fundamentalism that holds sway in the minds of Russia’s freedom-loving public. One manifestation of this fundamentalism is, in fact, the irrational cult of elections: all elections are good, regardless of their political essence and their consequences. Two other burdens are the extreme political impracticality and even archaicism of today’s liberal democratic platform. Currently, we have nothing to offer people from the standpoint of a future regime. Here is a simple question. What can we offer the average Russian family, something they would really need and value, that the Putin regime either cannot give them or promise them? The keywords in this case are “really need and value.” Moreover, in the obviously adverse conditions of a post-Putin Russia, the current liberal democratic prescriptions would necessarily lead the country into new crises the very first year they were implemented and, consequently, to new outbursts of the conservative revolution. It is ridiculous to discuss this with educated people, but thinking outside the box is now more important than doing things. At very least, it is more important than running off to vote in Putin’s elections.
13. For free-minded Russians and Russian politicians, the issue today is not how to win Putin’s authoritarian elections, but how to behave and build a reputation in society today in order to win future democratic elections in which the former so-called Putinist majority would be among the voters. If you want to facilitate the collapse of the Putin regime, you need to work less with the Putinist state and more with the Putinist majority.
14. The main problem freedom-loving Russians face in the impending presidential election is not what choice to make, whether to vote or not, and certainly not who they should vote for. The main problem is that whatever choice each of us makes—to vote or not vote, to vote for Yavlinsky or Sobchak—it will have no impact whatsoever on the fortunes of Vladimir Putin and his political regime. Any electoral action we take will change nothing about the election or the regime. Judging by various opinion polls [sic], there are between ten and fifteen million of us in Russia. Even if we assume the incredible—that all of us would act in concert in this election, and thanks to our monitoring the elections themselves would be extraordinarily fair—we cannot have a significant impact on the outcome of the election, even if each of us to the last man boycotted it or we all voted for Ksenia Sobchak or Grigory Yavlinsky.
15. Everything is seemingly quite simple. In Putin’s Russia, elections have nothing to do with building democracy and vanquishing the Putin regime. Why, however, does something so evident not get through to many advocates of liberty and diversity in Russia? How did the perverted cult of mandatory involvement in all elections take hold among such a considerable segment of the Russian liberal public? There are explanations. First, many opposition politicians, speakers, opinion leader, and experts have a professional stake in Putin’s elections. Some of them try and run in these elections (the simplest way of being an opposition politician in an authoritarian regimes), while others assist the elections professionally, serve as polling station monitors, analyze the whole megillah or write about it. This entire mob would simply be out of a job, in the broad sense of the word, if the opposition-minded public did not vote in authoritarian elections. Thus, in the opposition milieu, they are the principal propagandists and agitators for the idea of voting in these demonstrative non-elections. Since, as a rule, they are the most intelligent, energetic, and authoritative people in opposition-minded communities, their opinion is quite important. Second, as I have mentioned, above, involvement in authoritarian elections (“but they are elections all the same”) has served a considerable segment of the liberal public as a safe, comfortable way to “fight for democracy,” a way that lets them feel like decent dissidents honestly doing their duty. The notion that it is foolish and nasty for an advocate of democracy to vote in authoritarian elections immediately nullifies the opposition’s semantic space, the space of election enthusiasts, plunging them into the “desert of the real.” Everything is so painful and disturbing in that desert. You have to acquire a new civic faithfulness to yourself, redefine yourself in terms of the meanings and tools of your opposition, what normal risks are, who your supporters and opponents are within the opposition, and so on. “No, it’s better to vote in Putin’s elections.”
16. On the other hand, if nothing really depends on us in Putin’s elections, is it worth persuading our allies not to vote in them? Why hassle people? Why prevent them from doing what they deem important? Because things won’t get any worse for us if they do vote in the election anyway, right? I think it is still worth pestering them. Politics, after all, depends on political sentiments and emotions, and thoughts are tangible things even when they are not true. If millions of people who hunger so much for freedom and diversity in Russia think, “How can I vote in authoritarian elections the right way, so that it benefits the opposition’s cause?” that is one kind of opposition. But if millions of people who hunger so much for freedom and diversity in Russia think, “What else, besides voting in authoritarian elections, can I do to dismantle the Putin regime and bring about the victory of freedom and democracy in Russia?” that is a completely different opposition.
Igor Averkiev is the chair of the Perm Civic Chamber. Photo (in original article) courtesy of Igor Averkiev. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader.
Also:
“We Are Racing into a Huge Pit”: The Small-Town Russian Businessman Who Publicly Opposed Putin
https://therussianreader.com/2018/03/18 ... sus-putin/
(This one is best seen over at the Russian Reader site because there are a number of photographs.)
“We Are Racing into a Huge Pit”: The Businessman Who Spoke Out against Putin
Аlexander Valiyev
Radio Svoboda [Radio "Freedom" - it's a part of Radio Free Europe]
26 February 2018
In the town of Verkhny Ufaley, Chelyabinsk Region, police have torn down posters cataloguing the “brilliant” outcome of Putin’s reign from the outside walls of several shops. The posters were hung there by a local businessman, who has already had occasion to fight the authorities in this way.
Nikolai Korshunov owns six small shop in this company town 120 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. Police paid visits to Korshunov’s shops on the eve of Fatherland Defenders Day, February 23. The businessman told Radio Svoboda what happened.
Nikolai Korshunov: I am very active civically. I always serve as an elections monitor during elections. I own six small shops. We sell the basics: bread, milk, etc. The stores are my venue for voicing my opinion about current events. This takes the shape of handmade posters, information leaflets.
My argument is that, since the stores are my property, I have the right to post any information whatsoever in them. The Constitution gives me that right. But I have run into opposition from law enforcement and the city hall in our town. It also happened before the 2016 Duma elections, in which Verkhny Ufaley famously voted only four of the twenty United Russia candidates into the local parliament. People read my posters very carefully. Naturally, they regard anything that is not propaganda as out of the ordinary. It is interesting because if they, say, live in one part of town and the neighborhood dairy plant has shut down, they still remember that, but if, say, a timber plant or infant feeding center has ben closed on the other side of town, they might not have heard about it at all, because it does not affect them. But when they read the entire list, they think to themselves, “What a lot of things have happened in our town over this time.” Even since the 2016 Duma elections there have been colossal changes for the worse in Verkhny Ufaley: total poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness.
Radio Svoboda: What was on the the posters?
I have lived in Verkhny Ufaley for a very long time. I was born and raised here. In the run-up to the presidential election I decided to make a list of things that have changed in our town during the eighteen years of Putin’s administration. What businesses and factories have closed? The town’s main employer, the Ufaley Nickel Plant closed [in December 2017]. The Metalworker Factory closed. The open hearth and wheel spring shops closed. Then all hell broke loose: the sausage plant, the dairy, the furniture factory, etc., closed. There are thirty-four items on the list, including the children’s hospital and the railroad’s inpatient clinic. Then there are the plants that are barely hanging on. I wrote about them, too, for example, the metallurgical plant where five thousand people once worked. Now it employs a maximum of five hundred to seven hundred people.
Do you think people have suddenly forgotten about what has been happening in town?
Of course they know, but it is just another reminder, a way of saying, Hey, guys, you say that Vladimir Putin has raised the country from its knees, but I don’t think that is the case. I think we are racing into a huge pit at enormous speed. I cannot answer for the entire country, but as a resident of a small industrial town, I see what has been shut down, what has been destroyed, what has been dismantled, what has been pilfered. When you go and vote, people, think a bit before making your choice.
How many votes do you think Putin will pick up in Verkhny Ufaley?
He will win for one simple reason. Our town is small: everyone knows everything about everyone else, and everyone tells everyone else about everything. I will give you an example. At the employment office—our town has terrible unemployment, by the way, because everything has shut down—the boss gathers his underlings and says, “God forbid you don’t go and vote. If you don’t, I won’t pay you bonuses.” This is more or less what goes throughout state sector. So a huge number of people, maybe even dissenters, will naturally go out and vote in order to keep their miserable jobs at places like the employment office. No one will buck against the bosses. So, Putin will definitely win. Because he has the administrative resource behind him, and huge numbers of people are incapable of thinking.
The administrative resource can compel people to turn out for an election, but people go into the voting booths alone.
They have their tricks. They can ask people to photograph their filled-out ballot paper on their telephones and send them the photos. We have been through it before. It happend during the 2016 Duma elections, and during the 2012 presidential election, when I was a polling station monitor. It’s all elementary. It’s not a problem at all. But most people have, of course, been hypnotized by television. They cannot reason, think or compare facts. When it comes to them, what the TV says definitely goes, although it is flagrant, mendacious, aggressive propaganda.
I am sure people have asked you, “If not Putin, then who?” People do not see an alternative. How do you counter them?
There is no alternative for one reason and one reason alone: all of politics has been purged by the administrative resource. Anyone who could compete against Putin would never be allowed to run in honest, alternative elections under any circumstances. That’s why there is no alternative. Putin’s only “opponents” are people who have definitely been appointed to the role. They stand for nothing and no one, and compared with them Putin looks like a superhero. On top of everything is the propaganda and hypnosis that reinforces the message that Putin is the most respected politician in the world, and we are the world’s mightiest country.
Do people in Verkhny Ufaley know about Alexei Navalny, his exposés, and his call to boycott the presidential election?
Most of them don’t know, of course. A particular segment knows, young people mainly, of course, because Navalny has access only to the internet, to YouTube, which is largely viewed by young people, by schoolchildren and university students. Elderly people know nothing about Navalny, naturally. They know only what the propagandists on TV tell them: that Navalny is an out-and-out thief, scoundrel, and so on.
What about middle-aged people?
Middle-aged people are probably more thoughtful, but not so very thoughtful at the end of the day. Our town is basically a village. We live in a kind of swamp. Middle-aged people are averse to risks. They work somewhere in the state sector, earn ten thousand rubles a month [approx. 142 euros], and are up to their necks in debt. When they sit around chatting in the kitchen, they support Navalny, of course. But they cannot voice their opinions actively, because they would be fired from their jobs in two seconds flat. People primarily think about themselves. Their political views come second.
How have the authorities reacted to your protests?
Our mayor is also secretary of the local United Russia [Putin's party, founded in 2001 - S.] party branch. During the 2016 election campaign, I hung up leaflets in my shops saying United Russia was the party of crooks and thieves. The United Russians came running and blatantly tore down the posters. Many locals approached me afterwards and said, well done, I had done the right thing, because the United Russians were high-handed, arrogant, and had lost all sense of measure. During this campaign, they have reacted differently. First, they sent young women who work in lowly positions at city hall to photograph the leaflets in my shops. Then city hall put pressure on the police, who showed up on the eve of Fatherland Defenders Day, February 23. The leaflet had been up for around two weeks by then, and from time to time I had added information to them. They showed up when I was not there and tore down everything. In one shop, they tore down a big piece of fiberglass along with the posters. There were five or six of them. They intimidated the cashiers. They took statements from them and drove away. That happened in five shops. They showed up at the sixth shop the next day. There, however, the cashier is a serious woman. She did not let them tear down the posters and called me. I arrived, and we hashed things out with them for two and a half hours. There were two neighborhood beat cops and an investigator. They were unable to tell me what laws I could have violated. I imagine they are quite unfamiliar with the Administrative Offenses Code. From time to time they would call the dispatch center for instructions. I know there is nothing illegal about my actions. Nothing will come of it, just like last time.
There was no pressure on you after the Duma elections? You were not tormented with surprise inspections of your shops?
No, there was nothing of the sort. I was written up for an administrative violation, but apparently the magistrates told the police there was no law covering leaflets. So nothing came of it, nor was any pressure put on me.
Are you planning to file a complaint against the police?
I did not complain last time, and I will not complain this time, either. It is a waste of time. There is honor among thieves.
Will you put the leaflets back up?
Yes, definitely, they are already up in some shops.
What are your plans for March 18? Will you vote?
I completely agree with Alexei Navalny. I’m going to boycott the vote. I even traveled to Moscow on January 28 for the Voters Strike. But I will definitely go to some polling station or another on election day to help prevent vote rigging.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Uvarova for the heads-up.
The view of Russian academia linked to by American academics studying Russia:
Russian Presidential elections 2018: predicable results with unpredictable aftermath
by Ilya Budraitskis
http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/author/ilya/
Translated from the original Russian by Joseph Livesey
According to forecasts, the upcoming March 18 presidential elections in Russia will proceed without any surprises, as just the latest legitimization of another presidential term for Vladimir Putin. However, this foreseeable ‘victory,’ gained via massive pressure on the electorate and the Kremlin’s tight control over the political sphere will still point to a deep crisis within Putin’s model of “managed democracy.” During Putin’s current third term, his regime has become much more clearly based on personality, while the fact that its “democratic” elements are a mere façade has become evident beyond all reasonable doubt. Over the past few years, the rhetoric of Russia as a “besieged fortress,” and rallying around a “national leader” in the face of external enemies has meant that elections at almost every level have become plebiscites for confirming faith in the country and loyalty to the government.
The Turnout Problem
Ongoing economic crisis, a decline in most people’s incomes, and increasingly glaring social inequality, are causing a mood of protest that can no longer be expressed within existing political institutions. Passive discontent is increasingly manifest in absenteeism, or in people “voting with their feet.” As a result, the most recent parliamentary elections in Autumn 2016 were an alarm bell for the authorities—turnout was 47.8% across the country, while barely over 30% of voters turned out in major cities, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Russians’ low interest in elections has been a boon to the authorities in the past, making election results more predictable, and helping Russia’s ruling party United Russia get into power. However, low turnouts in today’s political climate have become a clear threat to the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s upcoming victory. In December, polls indicated that 58% of voters were planning on voting in the presidential elections, 30% of whom only answering that they would “most likely” be turning out to vote.
Ahead of the March 2018 elections, the Kremlin administration has unofficially promoted a “70-70” scenario, whereby Putin would receive 70% of votes from a 70% turnout. Yet the Kremlin has repeatedly stressed that such a sharp increase in electoral activity cannot be achieved at the local level solely through so-called “administrative resource”—mobilizing budget-dependent employees and pensioners who rely on local authorities. According to the Kremlin’s plan, the elections must result in a triumphant victory for Putin, but without precipitating claims of massive electoral fraud, as was the case in 2011 when news of widespread falsifying of ballots triggered protests in the streets.
The Kremlin is hoping to accomplish its aim by engineering increased interest in the elections, by organizing concerts and local events on the day of the vote, lumping the presidential election together with separate referenda on pressing local issues, and, most of all, by creating the impression of real political competition among the candidates.
Despite the fact that Putin, in his characteristic “Caesar” fashion, rising above the mob, has refrained from taking part in any debates, the other participants in the campaign have to pretend to be involved in a battle among themselves within the framework of the scenario approved at the top. Their common goal is to draw currently apathetic or skeptical potential voters into participating in the elections, and, just as importantly, to divert attention away from the campaign for boycotting the elections, called for by the well-known opposition politician Alexei Navalny. So, who are the people in this strange election race?
Candidate Putin
Vladimir Putin officially announced his candidacy in the upcoming elections on December 6, at a speech before workers at the GAZ car manufacturing plant in Nizhny Novgorod. Reminiscent of the start of his previous term, both place and audience were selected in line with the president’s man-of-the-people, above-party-politics image.
Back in 2012, Putin’s election campaign focused on combating the West’s secret agents within the opposition, and fighting for “traditional values.” Appealing to “ordinary people,” as opposed to complacent and unpatriotic members of the middle class, Putin made a point of combining conservative and paternalistic rhetoric. One of his main promises was a sizable increase in public sector salaries. Immediately after his victory in Spring 2012 Putin issued the “May Decrees”, which required regional governments to comply with his plan to raise wages, as well as to report regularly on their progress in front of TV cameras before the head of state. Raising wages during an economic recession, with government policy as a whole sought to reduce spending, meant that the “May Decrees” actually resulted in job cuts in order to pay for the salary increases of those who kept their positions, not to mention some massaging of the statistics.
Today, the authorities no longer have the resources necessary to back up the theory that “stability” means higher incomes. On the contrary, Putin’s third term has seen inflation and a sharp decline in living standards. The incumbent president’s two most loyal electoral demographics—pensioners and state employees—have been the greatest losers from the government’s “anti-crisis” policies in recent years. Putin is no longer in a position to fire off promises to raise living standards; he can only try to assure voters that there won’t be another sharp collapse. This is why Putin insists that active foreign policy and escalation of militarist hysteria inside the country will be put on the back burner in his new term. Announcing his candidacy in early December, he solemnly declared the end of Russian military operations in Syria. The issue of East Ukraine has also been deliberately removed from his campaign’s narrative. The new consensus is that Russia should focus on fixing its domestic problems, while the frozen conflict in the Donbass region following the Minsk Agreements goes on indefinitely.
Putin’s official electoral manifesto is yet to be published, but we know it is being written under the guidance of Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and a key strategist of Putin’s neo-liberal policies in the 2000s. The main vision will be of modest growth in spending on education and health paid for by tax increases, raising the retirement age, and more “targeted” social policies.Once again, the government’s continued course of compensating for the consequences of the economic crisis by reducing living standards will be dressed up with false declarations about “investing in human capital.”
Given the total substantive vacuity of Putin’s electoral campaign, the main emphasis will be on the absence of any alternative. Voting for the incumbent president should seem like simply fulfilling one’s patriotic duty. Hence the scheduling of the vote for March 18, the official day of Crimea’s “reunification” with Russia.
The Communists’ New Candidate
Perhaps the Kremlin’s most successful move to attract attention to the election was the emergence of a new candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Pavel Grudinin. Over the past decade, the CPRF has once and for all transformed itself from a mass activist party into a bureaucratic structure focused exclusively on participating in elections. The party’s leadership has become fully integrated into the “managed democracy” system, supporting the president on all key political issues. The CPRF’s permanent leader Gennady Zyuganov has long ceased to be seen as a serious alternative to Putin. His personal ratings at the end of 2017 were less than 4%. It was clear that Zyuganov was no longer able to attract a “protest electorate,” the mobilization of which had been traditionally the responsibility of the CPRF within the existing political order. A collapse in support for the Communists in the upcoming elections could lead to an imbalance in the fake party system, which in turn could cause a serious crisis within the party itself. However, a solution has been found. At the end of December, the CPRF Congress approved the official candidacy of non-partisan businessman Pavel Grudinin.
Grudinin’s calling card is the enterprise he owns on the outskirts of Moscow, which bears the loaded name “Lenin State Farm” (“Sovhoz”). In reality, this “sovhoz” has long become a joint stock company, with controlling stakes held by a small group of managers, while Grudinin owns a 40% share. Most revenue from this particular “sovhoz” comes from renting out land to wholesale supermarkets and dealer centers, for companies such as Cash & Carry, Toyota, Nissan, among others. None of this, however, has stopped Grudinin and other CPRF functionaries from portraying this business as an “oasis of socialism,” where workers enjoy access to Soviet-era social programs. Grudinin presents himself as the candidate for a coalition of “patriotic forces,” rallying together the extreme left, imperial nationalists, and “nationally-oriented” medium-sized businesses around the CPRF. Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, who probably sees this as a way into “big politics,” is actively involved in Grudinin’s campaign in the same way one might expect to see retired patriotic army generals.
Grudinin’s non-party affiliation also benefits the CPRF leadership, as it means no changes within the party. This is most likely a “marriage of convenience” that will come to an end immediately after the election.
His constant presence on Russian television talk shows, typically under strict control from the top, suggests that Grudinin is in the Kremlin’s good graces. Grudinin’s manifesto contains nothing new compared to the usual set of CPRF proposals—increases in social spending, restrictions on capital outflows, developing the domestic market, and so on. However, his fresh public speaking style and lively presence in the media are already making him an almost guaranteed second place in March (as of mid-January, Grudinin’s rating was about 7%).
The Liberal Opposition
One of the Kremlin’s main challenges within the narrative framework of the March elections is to distract liberally-inclined voters from the idea of a boycott. Two candidates, Grigory Yavlinsky and Ksenia Sobchak, have been put forward as a way to engage liberals in the campaign spectacle.
Yavlinsky, the long-serving leader of the Yabloko Party, is a veteran of Russian politics from the 1990s. His message has never shifted: Russia has been taken over by an authoritarian, nationalist regime, which must be removed peacefully, and be replaced by civil liberties and “European values.” Yavlinsky openly declares that he has no chance of winning these elections, as their result is already common knowledge. However, he presents a vote for him as an ethical choice, a demonstration to the authorities that there is a part of society in disagreement with corruption, imperial aggression, and social inequality.
The second liberal candidate, Ksenia Sobchak, best known previously as a presenter on entertainment television shows aimed at young people, also claims to be a protest candidate. She has called on young voters to use the election as a way to express their dissatisfaction with a lack of systemic justice and a lack of social mobility. There have been repeated accusations that Sobchak’s candidacy is a ruse, secretly supported by the Kremlin, to disorient would-be supporters of Alexei Navalny.
A negligible result for both candidates—as currently predicted, no more than a combined 3-4% of the total vote—will also allow pro-government voices to assert that there is little demand for political liberalization in Russian society.
The Eternal Zhirinovsky
Third place in the upcoming elections is likely to be pocket right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky has run in all presidential elections in Russia since 1991. His brand of politics is to promote absurd and incommensurable demands—like lowering the price of vodka or bombing America—that project the irrational imaginings of lumpenized lower social classes. Zhirinovsky’s ticket will help increase turnout among this demographic.
Navalny and the Boycott Campaign
Anti-corruption campaigner and anti-establishment populist Aleksei Navalny was not allowed to run in the elections due to trumped-up criminal charges, on which he was provisionally convicted several years ago. However, the real reason for the Electoral Commission’s decision lies in the unpredictability of a would-be vote for Navalny. He has proved capable of garnering significant support from voters. Over the past year, in response to calls from Navalny, several nationwide public protests have taken place, demonstrating a growing mood of protest among young people and provincial middle classes. Navalny has also managed to establish a formidable network of supporters, with operations in all major cities across the country, and nearly 200,000 registered volunteers—effectively the sole mass opposition organization in the country.
Navalny’s campaign manifesto consists of a series of populist demands, a portion of which are distinctly social in character, such as combatting “illegal enrichment,” progressive taxation, and limits on police and defense spending. Even his campaign’s chief slogan, “wealth for all, not just for the 1%,” clearly reflects its anti-elite orientation. At the same time, Navalny regurgitates liberal calls for the “demonopolization” of the economy (read, privatization of state assets), while flirting with nationalists by calling for the introduction of visa regulations for migrant workers from Central Asia.
Under current political circumstances, Navalny’s campaign policies are ultimately of marginal concern. Unlike Navalny, Yavlinsky has a clear message advocating rights for trade unions; Grudinin is focusing on the nationalization of natural resources; Sobchak—alone among the candidates in this regard—is calling for gender equality and an end to discrimination against sexual minorities. Navalny’s main significance is not in his program, it’s in his principled promotion of grassroots mass protest. He insistently repeats that only engaged street politics, as opposed to fake elections, can change the current state of affairs. In early January, Navalny openly called for a “voter strike,” an active election boycott combining non-participation in the vote with mass protest events and monitoring of potential fraud at polling stations.
The Left’s Position
The leftist movement outside the KPRF has been divided in regard to the upcoming elections. A significant number of its ranks are leaning toward an active boycott, others support Pavel Grudinin, while the small Stalinist Russian United Labor Front (ROT-Front) is still trying to register its own party “workers” candidate. The situation as I’ve described it here points to the conclusion that any participation in the March elections will ultimately contribute to a temporary stabilization of the current regime, and the legitimization of another six years of personal rule by Putin.
That said, uncritical support for Navalny could end up diluting his populist movement, a risk magnified by its clearly leader-centric and anti-democratic character. An independent movement for a “boycott by the left,” which would articulate an anti-capitalist alternative to Russia’s existing political and social order, could, through coordinated unity, draw a line between a leftist position and that of Navalny, while also laying a foundation for a subsequent consolidation of Russian radical leftists who refuse to play by Kremlin rules.
Ilya Budraitskis is a historian, cultural and political activist. Since 2009, he’s been Ph.D. student at the Institute for World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. In 2001-2004 he organized Russian activists in mobilizations against the G8, in European and World Social Forums. Since 2011 he has been an activist and spokesperson for Russian Socialist Movement, member of editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine, and a regular contributor to a number of political and cultural websites. He’s the author of Dissidenty sredi dissidentov (Dissidents among Dissidents) published by the Free Marxist Press.
My view: Putin is trapped (this was also the view of Natalia Antonova in The Baffler*) - he's been president since the turn of the century, he can't leave his job for fear that the next guy will wreck it, or that Russia will pull the Chinese stunt of beginning corruption charges against the last leader. However, unlike China, Russia lacks a totalizing party, so if Uncle Vova (his Russian nickname) goes down, United Russia goes with him. He doesn't want the job, but he never created a decent successor, and he rides the winds of world capitalism. This victory will be his undoing.
* https://thebaffler.com/latest/russian-election-antonova
Vladimir Putin cruised to victory in Sunday’s presidential elections in a result that was never in question. His fourth term as president will extend until 2024, making him the first Kremlin leader to serve two decades in power since Josef Stalin.
With results still coming in, Putin looked set to exceed expectations by clinching more than 73% of the vote.
Turnout, which was seen as a measure of the Kremlin’s legitimacy in this uncompetitive campaign, was close to 60% as of 9pm GMT. The Kremlin had hoped to match the 65% who cast votes in 2012 and had initially sought 70% turnout.
“Thank you for your support,” Putin told crowds on Manezhnaya Square just under the Kremlin walls, wearing a black down jacket with a fur hood. “Everyone who voted today is part of our big, national team.”
Asked by a journalist about whether he would consider future runs for president, he responded: “What you’re saying is just silly … what, am I going to sit here for 100 years?”
The view of the Russian opposition:
There Are Elections That Build Democracy, and Elections That Kill It: The Tricks Is Not to Confuse Them
Reprinted/translated by The Russian Reader blog
Igor Averkiev
igor-averkiev.com
March 13, 2018
1. If you relate to elections solely as a value, you will never grasp their essence. You will never tame them.
2. In the modern world, the presence of elections per se in a particular country is neither an achievement nor a value, except for liberal democratic fundamentalists. In the modern world, it is the political outcome of elections that is an achievement and value. In some countries, elections build democracy, while in other countries they kill democracy. In Russia, they kill democracy.
3. There are about two hundred countries in the modern world. The vast majority of them (around one hundred and eighty) hold elections more or less regularly. Around fifty countries in this vast majority are more or less classic democracies. There are another forty countries that hold elections and are more or less classic authoritarian regimes. The other hundredsome countries that hold elections are ruled by a variety of transitional, semi-authoritarian, and hybrid regimes. Meaning that elections per se do not vouchsafe democracy at all. Morever, in most of the world’s countries, people voting in elections does not produce democracy.
4. Elections are merely a social know-how that can be used by anyone for any purpose. Know-how is a simple thing: if you wield it, you can profit from it in keeping with your interests. An axe is similar in this respect. It matters who wields it: a carpenter or a killer. In the hands of some people, elections produce a democratic regime, while in the hands of others they produce an authoritarian regime. Democracy is not programmed into electoral know-how itself. Democratic elections thus coexist on our planet with authoritarian elections: everything is decided by the person who presides over the elections. If you want elections in Russia to produce democracy, first you have to gain control of them. Elections serve democracy only when they are monitored at all phases by political forces with a stake in democracy. Nor is it only a matter of monitoring the tallying of votes.
5. Elections serve democracy only when the question of power has already been resolved to the benefit of pro-democratic forces or during an unstable transition period in which an authoritarian regime is still in power, but can longer dismiss pro-democratic forces out of hand. Therefore, in order to use elections to advance democratic interests, they must first be taken away from the old authoritarian boss. Or he must be so scared he has to take the interests of pro-democratic forces into account when elections are held. There is no other way. This is how things are done the world over, but millions of freedom-loving Russians for some reason still believe that regularly going to vote in elections presided over by someone else will in itself hasten democracy’s victory in Russia.
6. What is democracy? I won’t go into high-flown arguments, but the democracy that freedom-loving Russians like so much gels only when the country is run by politicians who have no desire to restrict political competition. They are willing, if push comes to shove, to lose elections; moreover, they are willing to accept defeat until the next elections. That’s all there is to it. That is why there is no democracy in Russia: because the people in power restrict political competition and have no intention of losing elections under any circumstances, much less accepting defeat. They are assisted in their restriction of political competition by the selfsame democratic know-how and institutions. It is just that without democratic politicians inhabiting them, this know-how and these institutions are only formally democratic, not democratic in fact.
7. The pro-democratic forces include not only the liberal democratic parties but also all political and civic organizations—leftist, nationalist, imperialist, religious, environmentalist, alternative leftist, alternative rightist, etc.—whose political interests are not bound up with Vladimir Putin’s personalist regime, who have no plans to limit political competition in Russia, and are willing, depending on the outcomes of elections, not only to come to power but also to cede power. Putin’s authoritarian regime can be opposed only by a broad pro-democracy coalition, without necessarily becoming a formal coalition. The trial version of this broad pro-democracy coalition presented itself to the country during the nationwide protest movement that kicked off in December 2011. We should not expect extremely well-coordinated joint actions from a broad pro-democracy coalition. (The “Decembrists” overplayed their hand in this respect.) It is enough to head in the same direction along more or less parallel routes, coordinating actions at certain critical points.
8. An electoral authoritarian regime, such as Russia’s, is organized quite simply. All the democratic know-how a modern country is supposed to have—elections, representation, separation of powers—functions smoothly, but not all comers have access to it. It is even simpler than that. An authoritarian regime simply does not allow potential competitors, that is, leaders and organizations, to get on their feet politically and grow organizationally to the extent they would be able to surpass the two- or three-percent minimumthreshold of votes needed for admission to the political arena. It does this by refusing to register parties, intimidating leaders, limiting freedom of speech and freedom of assembly in a pinpoint fashion, etc. If, despite everything, they nevertheless grow and thrive, they are simply not admitted to elections, as I have mentioned. In Russia, therefore, democratic procedures do not serve democracy. The soul of democracy is not know-how, procedures, and institutions, but people willing to use them in a particular way. In Russia, politicians interested in democracy simply do not make it into formal democratic politics. Thanks to the political regime built by Vladimir Putin, year after year only pro-authoritarian political forces make it into Russia’s formally democratic politics, and year after year they limit the involvement of pro-democratic forces in democratic procedures. It is a vicious circle. There is democracy, and there is no democracy at the same. Putin’s authoritarian regime is even elegant after a fashion.
9. Elections in authoritarian countries do not increase the supply of democracy, nor do they prepare the way for it, since they do not facilitate competition, do not put the opposition through its paces, and do not put rank-and-file voters in circumstances where the country’s fortunes depend on the choices they make. In authoritarian countries, elections function as a full-fledged authoritarian institution for legitimizing the regime. In authoritarian countries, elections are required only as a source of power, nothing more. Everyone involved in these elections is involved solely in legitimizing the regime. They are doing nothing else.
10. In authoritarian and hybrid countries, including modern Russia, elections have another vital political function. Elections are also an outlet for the liberal public, a valve, installed by the regime, for releasing oppositional steam and keeping opposition politicians busy somehow. The Putin regime has used elections to satisfy the need many freedom-loving Russians have to “fight for democracy” in a safe, comfortable way, a way that lets them feel like decent dissidents honestly doing their duty. Everyone comes out on top. The liberal public engages in self-actualization, and the regime does not find it frightening.
11. If the liberal democratic opposition’s sole aim is symbolic involvement in election campaigns within the authoritarian regime, but year after year the regime does not permit it to grow politically and organizationally, and does not allow it to run in elections, the opposition will gradually wither and become marginalized. This, in fact, is the kind of opposition we have nowadays. If we realize, however, that elections serve democracy only after the question of power has been decided to the benefit of pro-democratic forces, it means we need a different opposition altogether, one radically different from the opposition that has filled the niche the past fifteen years. We need a liberal democratic opposition that is not hung up on being involved in meaningless elections governed by someone else’s hostile rules. We need an opposition focused on vigorous, direct political action and a propaganda duel (a fight over values) with the regime in order to command the attention and respect of the so-called Putinist majority, those very same “ordinary people” who, when a window of opportunity opens, would at least not oppose the new, free-minded political alternative. There is a big problem with the word “new,” however.
12. The creation of a new, free-minded opposition is encumbered by the liberal democratic fundamentalism that holds sway in the minds of Russia’s freedom-loving public. One manifestation of this fundamentalism is, in fact, the irrational cult of elections: all elections are good, regardless of their political essence and their consequences. Two other burdens are the extreme political impracticality and even archaicism of today’s liberal democratic platform. Currently, we have nothing to offer people from the standpoint of a future regime. Here is a simple question. What can we offer the average Russian family, something they would really need and value, that the Putin regime either cannot give them or promise them? The keywords in this case are “really need and value.” Moreover, in the obviously adverse conditions of a post-Putin Russia, the current liberal democratic prescriptions would necessarily lead the country into new crises the very first year they were implemented and, consequently, to new outbursts of the conservative revolution. It is ridiculous to discuss this with educated people, but thinking outside the box is now more important than doing things. At very least, it is more important than running off to vote in Putin’s elections.
13. For free-minded Russians and Russian politicians, the issue today is not how to win Putin’s authoritarian elections, but how to behave and build a reputation in society today in order to win future democratic elections in which the former so-called Putinist majority would be among the voters. If you want to facilitate the collapse of the Putin regime, you need to work less with the Putinist state and more with the Putinist majority.
14. The main problem freedom-loving Russians face in the impending presidential election is not what choice to make, whether to vote or not, and certainly not who they should vote for. The main problem is that whatever choice each of us makes—to vote or not vote, to vote for Yavlinsky or Sobchak—it will have no impact whatsoever on the fortunes of Vladimir Putin and his political regime. Any electoral action we take will change nothing about the election or the regime. Judging by various opinion polls [sic], there are between ten and fifteen million of us in Russia. Even if we assume the incredible—that all of us would act in concert in this election, and thanks to our monitoring the elections themselves would be extraordinarily fair—we cannot have a significant impact on the outcome of the election, even if each of us to the last man boycotted it or we all voted for Ksenia Sobchak or Grigory Yavlinsky.
15. Everything is seemingly quite simple. In Putin’s Russia, elections have nothing to do with building democracy and vanquishing the Putin regime. Why, however, does something so evident not get through to many advocates of liberty and diversity in Russia? How did the perverted cult of mandatory involvement in all elections take hold among such a considerable segment of the Russian liberal public? There are explanations. First, many opposition politicians, speakers, opinion leader, and experts have a professional stake in Putin’s elections. Some of them try and run in these elections (the simplest way of being an opposition politician in an authoritarian regimes), while others assist the elections professionally, serve as polling station monitors, analyze the whole megillah or write about it. This entire mob would simply be out of a job, in the broad sense of the word, if the opposition-minded public did not vote in authoritarian elections. Thus, in the opposition milieu, they are the principal propagandists and agitators for the idea of voting in these demonstrative non-elections. Since, as a rule, they are the most intelligent, energetic, and authoritative people in opposition-minded communities, their opinion is quite important. Second, as I have mentioned, above, involvement in authoritarian elections (“but they are elections all the same”) has served a considerable segment of the liberal public as a safe, comfortable way to “fight for democracy,” a way that lets them feel like decent dissidents honestly doing their duty. The notion that it is foolish and nasty for an advocate of democracy to vote in authoritarian elections immediately nullifies the opposition’s semantic space, the space of election enthusiasts, plunging them into the “desert of the real.” Everything is so painful and disturbing in that desert. You have to acquire a new civic faithfulness to yourself, redefine yourself in terms of the meanings and tools of your opposition, what normal risks are, who your supporters and opponents are within the opposition, and so on. “No, it’s better to vote in Putin’s elections.”
16. On the other hand, if nothing really depends on us in Putin’s elections, is it worth persuading our allies not to vote in them? Why hassle people? Why prevent them from doing what they deem important? Because things won’t get any worse for us if they do vote in the election anyway, right? I think it is still worth pestering them. Politics, after all, depends on political sentiments and emotions, and thoughts are tangible things even when they are not true. If millions of people who hunger so much for freedom and diversity in Russia think, “How can I vote in authoritarian elections the right way, so that it benefits the opposition’s cause?” that is one kind of opposition. But if millions of people who hunger so much for freedom and diversity in Russia think, “What else, besides voting in authoritarian elections, can I do to dismantle the Putin regime and bring about the victory of freedom and democracy in Russia?” that is a completely different opposition.
Igor Averkiev is the chair of the Perm Civic Chamber. Photo (in original article) courtesy of Igor Averkiev. Thanks to Comrade Koganzon for the heads-up. Translated by the Russian Reader.
Also:
“We Are Racing into a Huge Pit”: The Small-Town Russian Businessman Who Publicly Opposed Putin
https://therussianreader.com/2018/03/18 ... sus-putin/
(This one is best seen over at the Russian Reader site because there are a number of photographs.)
“We Are Racing into a Huge Pit”: The Businessman Who Spoke Out against Putin
Аlexander Valiyev
Radio Svoboda [Radio "Freedom" - it's a part of Radio Free Europe]
26 February 2018
In the town of Verkhny Ufaley, Chelyabinsk Region, police have torn down posters cataloguing the “brilliant” outcome of Putin’s reign from the outside walls of several shops. The posters were hung there by a local businessman, who has already had occasion to fight the authorities in this way.
Nikolai Korshunov owns six small shop in this company town 120 kilometers from Chelyabinsk. Police paid visits to Korshunov’s shops on the eve of Fatherland Defenders Day, February 23. The businessman told Radio Svoboda what happened.
Nikolai Korshunov: I am very active civically. I always serve as an elections monitor during elections. I own six small shops. We sell the basics: bread, milk, etc. The stores are my venue for voicing my opinion about current events. This takes the shape of handmade posters, information leaflets.
My argument is that, since the stores are my property, I have the right to post any information whatsoever in them. The Constitution gives me that right. But I have run into opposition from law enforcement and the city hall in our town. It also happened before the 2016 Duma elections, in which Verkhny Ufaley famously voted only four of the twenty United Russia candidates into the local parliament. People read my posters very carefully. Naturally, they regard anything that is not propaganda as out of the ordinary. It is interesting because if they, say, live in one part of town and the neighborhood dairy plant has shut down, they still remember that, but if, say, a timber plant or infant feeding center has ben closed on the other side of town, they might not have heard about it at all, because it does not affect them. But when they read the entire list, they think to themselves, “What a lot of things have happened in our town over this time.” Even since the 2016 Duma elections there have been colossal changes for the worse in Verkhny Ufaley: total poverty, unemployment, and hopelessness.
Radio Svoboda: What was on the the posters?
I have lived in Verkhny Ufaley for a very long time. I was born and raised here. In the run-up to the presidential election I decided to make a list of things that have changed in our town during the eighteen years of Putin’s administration. What businesses and factories have closed? The town’s main employer, the Ufaley Nickel Plant closed [in December 2017]. The Metalworker Factory closed. The open hearth and wheel spring shops closed. Then all hell broke loose: the sausage plant, the dairy, the furniture factory, etc., closed. There are thirty-four items on the list, including the children’s hospital and the railroad’s inpatient clinic. Then there are the plants that are barely hanging on. I wrote about them, too, for example, the metallurgical plant where five thousand people once worked. Now it employs a maximum of five hundred to seven hundred people.
Do you think people have suddenly forgotten about what has been happening in town?
Of course they know, but it is just another reminder, a way of saying, Hey, guys, you say that Vladimir Putin has raised the country from its knees, but I don’t think that is the case. I think we are racing into a huge pit at enormous speed. I cannot answer for the entire country, but as a resident of a small industrial town, I see what has been shut down, what has been destroyed, what has been dismantled, what has been pilfered. When you go and vote, people, think a bit before making your choice.
How many votes do you think Putin will pick up in Verkhny Ufaley?
He will win for one simple reason. Our town is small: everyone knows everything about everyone else, and everyone tells everyone else about everything. I will give you an example. At the employment office—our town has terrible unemployment, by the way, because everything has shut down—the boss gathers his underlings and says, “God forbid you don’t go and vote. If you don’t, I won’t pay you bonuses.” This is more or less what goes throughout state sector. So a huge number of people, maybe even dissenters, will naturally go out and vote in order to keep their miserable jobs at places like the employment office. No one will buck against the bosses. So, Putin will definitely win. Because he has the administrative resource behind him, and huge numbers of people are incapable of thinking.
The administrative resource can compel people to turn out for an election, but people go into the voting booths alone.
They have their tricks. They can ask people to photograph their filled-out ballot paper on their telephones and send them the photos. We have been through it before. It happend during the 2016 Duma elections, and during the 2012 presidential election, when I was a polling station monitor. It’s all elementary. It’s not a problem at all. But most people have, of course, been hypnotized by television. They cannot reason, think or compare facts. When it comes to them, what the TV says definitely goes, although it is flagrant, mendacious, aggressive propaganda.
I am sure people have asked you, “If not Putin, then who?” People do not see an alternative. How do you counter them?
There is no alternative for one reason and one reason alone: all of politics has been purged by the administrative resource. Anyone who could compete against Putin would never be allowed to run in honest, alternative elections under any circumstances. That’s why there is no alternative. Putin’s only “opponents” are people who have definitely been appointed to the role. They stand for nothing and no one, and compared with them Putin looks like a superhero. On top of everything is the propaganda and hypnosis that reinforces the message that Putin is the most respected politician in the world, and we are the world’s mightiest country.
Do people in Verkhny Ufaley know about Alexei Navalny, his exposés, and his call to boycott the presidential election?
Most of them don’t know, of course. A particular segment knows, young people mainly, of course, because Navalny has access only to the internet, to YouTube, which is largely viewed by young people, by schoolchildren and university students. Elderly people know nothing about Navalny, naturally. They know only what the propagandists on TV tell them: that Navalny is an out-and-out thief, scoundrel, and so on.
What about middle-aged people?
Middle-aged people are probably more thoughtful, but not so very thoughtful at the end of the day. Our town is basically a village. We live in a kind of swamp. Middle-aged people are averse to risks. They work somewhere in the state sector, earn ten thousand rubles a month [approx. 142 euros], and are up to their necks in debt. When they sit around chatting in the kitchen, they support Navalny, of course. But they cannot voice their opinions actively, because they would be fired from their jobs in two seconds flat. People primarily think about themselves. Their political views come second.
How have the authorities reacted to your protests?
Our mayor is also secretary of the local United Russia [Putin's party, founded in 2001 - S.] party branch. During the 2016 election campaign, I hung up leaflets in my shops saying United Russia was the party of crooks and thieves. The United Russians came running and blatantly tore down the posters. Many locals approached me afterwards and said, well done, I had done the right thing, because the United Russians were high-handed, arrogant, and had lost all sense of measure. During this campaign, they have reacted differently. First, they sent young women who work in lowly positions at city hall to photograph the leaflets in my shops. Then city hall put pressure on the police, who showed up on the eve of Fatherland Defenders Day, February 23. The leaflet had been up for around two weeks by then, and from time to time I had added information to them. They showed up when I was not there and tore down everything. In one shop, they tore down a big piece of fiberglass along with the posters. There were five or six of them. They intimidated the cashiers. They took statements from them and drove away. That happened in five shops. They showed up at the sixth shop the next day. There, however, the cashier is a serious woman. She did not let them tear down the posters and called me. I arrived, and we hashed things out with them for two and a half hours. There were two neighborhood beat cops and an investigator. They were unable to tell me what laws I could have violated. I imagine they are quite unfamiliar with the Administrative Offenses Code. From time to time they would call the dispatch center for instructions. I know there is nothing illegal about my actions. Nothing will come of it, just like last time.
There was no pressure on you after the Duma elections? You were not tormented with surprise inspections of your shops?
No, there was nothing of the sort. I was written up for an administrative violation, but apparently the magistrates told the police there was no law covering leaflets. So nothing came of it, nor was any pressure put on me.
Are you planning to file a complaint against the police?
I did not complain last time, and I will not complain this time, either. It is a waste of time. There is honor among thieves.
Will you put the leaflets back up?
Yes, definitely, they are already up in some shops.
What are your plans for March 18? Will you vote?
I completely agree with Alexei Navalny. I’m going to boycott the vote. I even traveled to Moscow on January 28 for the Voters Strike. But I will definitely go to some polling station or another on election day to help prevent vote rigging.
Translated by the Russian Reader. Thanks to Comrade Uvarova for the heads-up.
The view of Russian academia linked to by American academics studying Russia:
Russian Presidential elections 2018: predicable results with unpredictable aftermath
by Ilya Budraitskis
http://www.criticatac.ro/lefteast/author/ilya/
Translated from the original Russian by Joseph Livesey
According to forecasts, the upcoming March 18 presidential elections in Russia will proceed without any surprises, as just the latest legitimization of another presidential term for Vladimir Putin. However, this foreseeable ‘victory,’ gained via massive pressure on the electorate and the Kremlin’s tight control over the political sphere will still point to a deep crisis within Putin’s model of “managed democracy.” During Putin’s current third term, his regime has become much more clearly based on personality, while the fact that its “democratic” elements are a mere façade has become evident beyond all reasonable doubt. Over the past few years, the rhetoric of Russia as a “besieged fortress,” and rallying around a “national leader” in the face of external enemies has meant that elections at almost every level have become plebiscites for confirming faith in the country and loyalty to the government.
The Turnout Problem
Ongoing economic crisis, a decline in most people’s incomes, and increasingly glaring social inequality, are causing a mood of protest that can no longer be expressed within existing political institutions. Passive discontent is increasingly manifest in absenteeism, or in people “voting with their feet.” As a result, the most recent parliamentary elections in Autumn 2016 were an alarm bell for the authorities—turnout was 47.8% across the country, while barely over 30% of voters turned out in major cities, such as Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Russians’ low interest in elections has been a boon to the authorities in the past, making election results more predictable, and helping Russia’s ruling party United Russia get into power. However, low turnouts in today’s political climate have become a clear threat to the legitimacy of Vladimir Putin’s upcoming victory. In December, polls indicated that 58% of voters were planning on voting in the presidential elections, 30% of whom only answering that they would “most likely” be turning out to vote.
Ahead of the March 2018 elections, the Kremlin administration has unofficially promoted a “70-70” scenario, whereby Putin would receive 70% of votes from a 70% turnout. Yet the Kremlin has repeatedly stressed that such a sharp increase in electoral activity cannot be achieved at the local level solely through so-called “administrative resource”—mobilizing budget-dependent employees and pensioners who rely on local authorities. According to the Kremlin’s plan, the elections must result in a triumphant victory for Putin, but without precipitating claims of massive electoral fraud, as was the case in 2011 when news of widespread falsifying of ballots triggered protests in the streets.
The Kremlin is hoping to accomplish its aim by engineering increased interest in the elections, by organizing concerts and local events on the day of the vote, lumping the presidential election together with separate referenda on pressing local issues, and, most of all, by creating the impression of real political competition among the candidates.
Despite the fact that Putin, in his characteristic “Caesar” fashion, rising above the mob, has refrained from taking part in any debates, the other participants in the campaign have to pretend to be involved in a battle among themselves within the framework of the scenario approved at the top. Their common goal is to draw currently apathetic or skeptical potential voters into participating in the elections, and, just as importantly, to divert attention away from the campaign for boycotting the elections, called for by the well-known opposition politician Alexei Navalny. So, who are the people in this strange election race?
Candidate Putin
Vladimir Putin officially announced his candidacy in the upcoming elections on December 6, at a speech before workers at the GAZ car manufacturing plant in Nizhny Novgorod. Reminiscent of the start of his previous term, both place and audience were selected in line with the president’s man-of-the-people, above-party-politics image.
Back in 2012, Putin’s election campaign focused on combating the West’s secret agents within the opposition, and fighting for “traditional values.” Appealing to “ordinary people,” as opposed to complacent and unpatriotic members of the middle class, Putin made a point of combining conservative and paternalistic rhetoric. One of his main promises was a sizable increase in public sector salaries. Immediately after his victory in Spring 2012 Putin issued the “May Decrees”, which required regional governments to comply with his plan to raise wages, as well as to report regularly on their progress in front of TV cameras before the head of state. Raising wages during an economic recession, with government policy as a whole sought to reduce spending, meant that the “May Decrees” actually resulted in job cuts in order to pay for the salary increases of those who kept their positions, not to mention some massaging of the statistics.
Today, the authorities no longer have the resources necessary to back up the theory that “stability” means higher incomes. On the contrary, Putin’s third term has seen inflation and a sharp decline in living standards. The incumbent president’s two most loyal electoral demographics—pensioners and state employees—have been the greatest losers from the government’s “anti-crisis” policies in recent years. Putin is no longer in a position to fire off promises to raise living standards; he can only try to assure voters that there won’t be another sharp collapse. This is why Putin insists that active foreign policy and escalation of militarist hysteria inside the country will be put on the back burner in his new term. Announcing his candidacy in early December, he solemnly declared the end of Russian military operations in Syria. The issue of East Ukraine has also been deliberately removed from his campaign’s narrative. The new consensus is that Russia should focus on fixing its domestic problems, while the frozen conflict in the Donbass region following the Minsk Agreements goes on indefinitely.
Putin’s official electoral manifesto is yet to be published, but we know it is being written under the guidance of Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister and a key strategist of Putin’s neo-liberal policies in the 2000s. The main vision will be of modest growth in spending on education and health paid for by tax increases, raising the retirement age, and more “targeted” social policies.Once again, the government’s continued course of compensating for the consequences of the economic crisis by reducing living standards will be dressed up with false declarations about “investing in human capital.”
Given the total substantive vacuity of Putin’s electoral campaign, the main emphasis will be on the absence of any alternative. Voting for the incumbent president should seem like simply fulfilling one’s patriotic duty. Hence the scheduling of the vote for March 18, the official day of Crimea’s “reunification” with Russia.
The Communists’ New Candidate
Perhaps the Kremlin’s most successful move to attract attention to the election was the emergence of a new candidate from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF), Pavel Grudinin. Over the past decade, the CPRF has once and for all transformed itself from a mass activist party into a bureaucratic structure focused exclusively on participating in elections. The party’s leadership has become fully integrated into the “managed democracy” system, supporting the president on all key political issues. The CPRF’s permanent leader Gennady Zyuganov has long ceased to be seen as a serious alternative to Putin. His personal ratings at the end of 2017 were less than 4%. It was clear that Zyuganov was no longer able to attract a “protest electorate,” the mobilization of which had been traditionally the responsibility of the CPRF within the existing political order. A collapse in support for the Communists in the upcoming elections could lead to an imbalance in the fake party system, which in turn could cause a serious crisis within the party itself. However, a solution has been found. At the end of December, the CPRF Congress approved the official candidacy of non-partisan businessman Pavel Grudinin.
Grudinin’s calling card is the enterprise he owns on the outskirts of Moscow, which bears the loaded name “Lenin State Farm” (“Sovhoz”). In reality, this “sovhoz” has long become a joint stock company, with controlling stakes held by a small group of managers, while Grudinin owns a 40% share. Most revenue from this particular “sovhoz” comes from renting out land to wholesale supermarkets and dealer centers, for companies such as Cash & Carry, Toyota, Nissan, among others. None of this, however, has stopped Grudinin and other CPRF functionaries from portraying this business as an “oasis of socialism,” where workers enjoy access to Soviet-era social programs. Grudinin presents himself as the candidate for a coalition of “patriotic forces,” rallying together the extreme left, imperial nationalists, and “nationally-oriented” medium-sized businesses around the CPRF. Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, who probably sees this as a way into “big politics,” is actively involved in Grudinin’s campaign in the same way one might expect to see retired patriotic army generals.
Grudinin’s non-party affiliation also benefits the CPRF leadership, as it means no changes within the party. This is most likely a “marriage of convenience” that will come to an end immediately after the election.
His constant presence on Russian television talk shows, typically under strict control from the top, suggests that Grudinin is in the Kremlin’s good graces. Grudinin’s manifesto contains nothing new compared to the usual set of CPRF proposals—increases in social spending, restrictions on capital outflows, developing the domestic market, and so on. However, his fresh public speaking style and lively presence in the media are already making him an almost guaranteed second place in March (as of mid-January, Grudinin’s rating was about 7%).
The Liberal Opposition
One of the Kremlin’s main challenges within the narrative framework of the March elections is to distract liberally-inclined voters from the idea of a boycott. Two candidates, Grigory Yavlinsky and Ksenia Sobchak, have been put forward as a way to engage liberals in the campaign spectacle.
Yavlinsky, the long-serving leader of the Yabloko Party, is a veteran of Russian politics from the 1990s. His message has never shifted: Russia has been taken over by an authoritarian, nationalist regime, which must be removed peacefully, and be replaced by civil liberties and “European values.” Yavlinsky openly declares that he has no chance of winning these elections, as their result is already common knowledge. However, he presents a vote for him as an ethical choice, a demonstration to the authorities that there is a part of society in disagreement with corruption, imperial aggression, and social inequality.
The second liberal candidate, Ksenia Sobchak, best known previously as a presenter on entertainment television shows aimed at young people, also claims to be a protest candidate. She has called on young voters to use the election as a way to express their dissatisfaction with a lack of systemic justice and a lack of social mobility. There have been repeated accusations that Sobchak’s candidacy is a ruse, secretly supported by the Kremlin, to disorient would-be supporters of Alexei Navalny.
A negligible result for both candidates—as currently predicted, no more than a combined 3-4% of the total vote—will also allow pro-government voices to assert that there is little demand for political liberalization in Russian society.
The Eternal Zhirinovsky
Third place in the upcoming elections is likely to be pocket right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. Zhirinovsky has run in all presidential elections in Russia since 1991. His brand of politics is to promote absurd and incommensurable demands—like lowering the price of vodka or bombing America—that project the irrational imaginings of lumpenized lower social classes. Zhirinovsky’s ticket will help increase turnout among this demographic.
Navalny and the Boycott Campaign
Anti-corruption campaigner and anti-establishment populist Aleksei Navalny was not allowed to run in the elections due to trumped-up criminal charges, on which he was provisionally convicted several years ago. However, the real reason for the Electoral Commission’s decision lies in the unpredictability of a would-be vote for Navalny. He has proved capable of garnering significant support from voters. Over the past year, in response to calls from Navalny, several nationwide public protests have taken place, demonstrating a growing mood of protest among young people and provincial middle classes. Navalny has also managed to establish a formidable network of supporters, with operations in all major cities across the country, and nearly 200,000 registered volunteers—effectively the sole mass opposition organization in the country.
Navalny’s campaign manifesto consists of a series of populist demands, a portion of which are distinctly social in character, such as combatting “illegal enrichment,” progressive taxation, and limits on police and defense spending. Even his campaign’s chief slogan, “wealth for all, not just for the 1%,” clearly reflects its anti-elite orientation. At the same time, Navalny regurgitates liberal calls for the “demonopolization” of the economy (read, privatization of state assets), while flirting with nationalists by calling for the introduction of visa regulations for migrant workers from Central Asia.
Under current political circumstances, Navalny’s campaign policies are ultimately of marginal concern. Unlike Navalny, Yavlinsky has a clear message advocating rights for trade unions; Grudinin is focusing on the nationalization of natural resources; Sobchak—alone among the candidates in this regard—is calling for gender equality and an end to discrimination against sexual minorities. Navalny’s main significance is not in his program, it’s in his principled promotion of grassroots mass protest. He insistently repeats that only engaged street politics, as opposed to fake elections, can change the current state of affairs. In early January, Navalny openly called for a “voter strike,” an active election boycott combining non-participation in the vote with mass protest events and monitoring of potential fraud at polling stations.
The Left’s Position
The leftist movement outside the KPRF has been divided in regard to the upcoming elections. A significant number of its ranks are leaning toward an active boycott, others support Pavel Grudinin, while the small Stalinist Russian United Labor Front (ROT-Front) is still trying to register its own party “workers” candidate. The situation as I’ve described it here points to the conclusion that any participation in the March elections will ultimately contribute to a temporary stabilization of the current regime, and the legitimization of another six years of personal rule by Putin.
That said, uncritical support for Navalny could end up diluting his populist movement, a risk magnified by its clearly leader-centric and anti-democratic character. An independent movement for a “boycott by the left,” which would articulate an anti-capitalist alternative to Russia’s existing political and social order, could, through coordinated unity, draw a line between a leftist position and that of Navalny, while also laying a foundation for a subsequent consolidation of Russian radical leftists who refuse to play by Kremlin rules.
Ilya Budraitskis is a historian, cultural and political activist. Since 2009, he’s been Ph.D. student at the Institute for World History, Russian Academy of Science, Moscow. In 2001-2004 he organized Russian activists in mobilizations against the G8, in European and World Social Forums. Since 2011 he has been an activist and spokesperson for Russian Socialist Movement, member of editorial board of Moscow Art Magazine, and a regular contributor to a number of political and cultural websites. He’s the author of Dissidenty sredi dissidentov (Dissidents among Dissidents) published by the Free Marxist Press.
My view: Putin is trapped (this was also the view of Natalia Antonova in The Baffler*) - he's been president since the turn of the century, he can't leave his job for fear that the next guy will wreck it, or that Russia will pull the Chinese stunt of beginning corruption charges against the last leader. However, unlike China, Russia lacks a totalizing party, so if Uncle Vova (his Russian nickname) goes down, United Russia goes with him. He doesn't want the job, but he never created a decent successor, and he rides the winds of world capitalism. This victory will be his undoing.
* https://thebaffler.com/latest/russian-election-antonova
