Russia: Other Points of View

RUSSIAN FEDERATION SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Candidates. The rules say that nominees of parties in the Duma are easily registered. So Putin (United Russia), Mironov (Just Russia), Zhirinovsky (LDPR) and Zyuganov (KPRF) were all registered early. Independents must produce two million signatures (a process that requires money and organisation). Mikhail Prokhorov (independent), who has lots of the first, passed and was officially registered The CEC rejected Yavlinskiy (Yabloko) saying that a second check of 400,000 signatures turned up 23% invalid. Yavlinskiy says he will appeal. This would mean that Yabloko members could not be elections observers but Putin and Prokhorov have said they will give them mandates to do so. The signature collection process is rife with fraud and easily-discovered technicalities.

Polls. A number of opinion polls show that Putin&Co have recovered their position and make it likely that he will win it on the first ballot. Number two is Zyuganov and number three is Zhirinovskiy. And thus it has ever been. “Liberals” are at the margin of error. Prokhorov, who has said that he intends to be the consolidated anti-Putin candidate, has a distance to go from his current rating of 3-4% to get enough to force a run-off. Mironov maybe (maybe) could get himself up to Zhirinovskiy’s level. Another VTsIOM poll puts Putin and Medvedev as the best leaders of the last century (Brezhnev and Nikolay II third and fourth, Yeltsin and Gorbachev last).

GLASNOST’ 2.0, PERESTROIKA 2.0, AND THE NASCENT WHITE REVOLUTION

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

 

In the mid-1980s, the USSR’s last General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev instituted a policy of glasnost or openness in the Soviet media that allowed discussion of previously taboo topics.  Gorbachev gradually expanded that policy and others took the ball and ran with it leading to the establishment of the first independent media during Gorbachev’s last years in power.  Official glasnost in state media, in addition to the emergence of unofficial glasnost in independent media, helped to mobilize opposition and provoke splits within the Soviet regime which ultimately destroyed the regime and state.

During the tenure of Dmitrii Medvedev’s presidency, accompanying thaw or liberalization policies (Perestroika 2.0), a somewhat similar glasnost has taken shape in the media.  Medvedev signaled Glasnost 2.0 when he met with democratic opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta’s editor-in-chief Dmitrii Muratov and leading backer Mikhail Gorbachev months after his inauguration.  Year 2011 was the peak year for Glasnost 2.0 so far, despite the fact that it was pivotal one for both the Duma elections of this year and the presidential elections of the coming year.  The expectation induced by the U.S. mainstream media was that Putin would limit media freedoms more, not less, during such a period.  He didn’t.

 

THE NATIONAL REPUBLICS AS ADMINISTRATIVE RESOURCE IN RUSSIA'S ELECTIONS

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

My previous article for ROPV (“The Thaw at the Polls: Tandem's Liberalization Policy Rocks the Vote”) indicated that the recent Duma election was freer and fairer than previous Putin-era elections, and the loss of some 77 seats (16 percent of the total) by the United Russia (YeR) party of President Dmitrii Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin testifies to this.  I also emphasized the likelihood that the voting process and vote counting appeared to be cleaner, while the pre-election campaign remains the locus of continuing unfairness, including the use of administrative resources such as keeping certain candidates or parties off the ballot and thus tilting the playing field in the favor of Kremlin candidates like those from the YeR.  One of several arguments I offered was the correspondence between exit and pre-election opinion polls, on the one hand, and the official final election results, on the other hand.  Afterward, it occurred to me that that there may have been a similar correspondence in previous elections, so I decided to dig back into the archives and check polling and voting patterns.  Here is what I found.

To access the full article, click here  Download GH__RusElections

MY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION BET

by Patrick Armstrong

It sometimes seems that the only story in Russia today is who will run for President and the Kommentariat is parsing every word uttered by Putin or Medvedev in its search for clues. Neither has yet said anything definite (and no more would either: the fear is that the Russian bureaucracy – ever alert to power shifts – would stop working altogether). Readers are reminded that we heard similar speculation before: Gorbachev would not step down; Yeltsin would not (could not some said) step down; Putin would change the Constitution and stay on. In some cases, there are Russia watchers who have stoutly maintained all these positions.

I was amused by a recent – and rather lengthy – think piece which concluded that the possibilities were that Medvedev, Putin or someone else would be the next President. I believe that people who watch Russia should do better than that; and I am putting my bets down:

1. Medvedev will run for President and Putin will not.

2. There may be another candidate from the Team who runs.

Medvedev will run for President and Putin will not.

THE TANDEM'S PARTY DANCE

COMMENTARY

by Gordon M. Hahn

There is still much speculation and uncertainty about whether Russian President Dmitrii Medvedev and Prime Minister and former president Vladimir Putin are now competing for the right to be the Kremlin’s presidential nominee for the upcoming 2012 elections set for March, less than a year from now.  Differences over emphasis on reform (Medvedev) versus stability (Putin), the Khodorkovskii trial, and Libya are just a few of the pieces of evidence observers put forward as evidence of a split in the tandem.

Perhaps, the ‘tussle under the carpet’ between their teams and even between Medvedev and Putin themselves should be looked at through the prism of the respective teams’ recent dancing with political parties in the present runup to the December Duma elections.  Any tussle within the tandem should now be centered on influencing the outcome of the Duma vote.  Under such a scenario Medvedev and/or his team would be seeking to lower the ruling United Russia (UR) party’s vote so, if necessary, he could pose the threat or actually remove Putin as PM.  This would perhaps protect Medvedev from any attempt by Putin to return to the presidency by forcing Medvedev not to run.  Putin and/or his team would be trying to maintain UR’s majority to deprive Medvedev of this option and maintain his own position of parity or even advantage over the president, despite the latter’s superior powers on paper.  In recent days, maneuvering seems to have emerged in accordance with this framework.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Libya. After Russia abstained on the UNSC resolution, allowing it to pass, the Foreign Ministry spokesman piously objected when the “no fly zone” enforcement began exactly as the US Defense Secretary had said it would two weeks before. Much as it may please some Russians to throw that fatuous word “disproportionate” back at the West, this is pretty hypocritical. Russia could have stopped it by veto. Meanwhile Medvedev has declared that Moscow is ready to mediate. That may happen yet: for all I know, NATO would still be fighting in Kosovo if Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari hadn’t stepped in.

Split in the duumvirate? Is there a difference between Putin and Medvedev on Libya? Putin said that the resolution reminded him of “a medieval call to crusade”; shortly afterwards, Medvedev said that to talk of crusades was “unacceptable”. Certainly Medvedev seems more comfortable (or less uncomfortable) with the operation than Putin does (not surprisingly given the number of times Putin was burned by the West.). Although, when meeting with the US Defense Secretary, Medvedev used the words “indiscriminate use of air power”. Which it is not (but then, the Russians don’t have JDAMs. See below). When Medvedev (in Moscow) made his formal statement, was he aware that Putin (in the Udmurt Republic) had given his “personal opinion” about four hours earlier? On the other hand the word “Crusaders” is commonly used by jihadists to describe the West and Gaddafi is using it too. So, coincidence or direct rebuke? Putin (in Slovenia) has denied any split: “We have a president in Russia who directs foreign policy and there can not be a split”. Yesterday he (in Serbia) eased off a bit more. What this incident does show is that the assumption that Putin is the puppet master and Medvedev the puppet is naïve.

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Anniversary. Twenty years today the USSR held a referendum on whether to support the proposed New Union Treaty. The new setup would have given much more power to the republics; the word used to describe it then was “confederation”. I recall much brouhaha about how the referendum would be a bust and even some “experts” claiming that no one knew what they were voting on (despite the fact that all the iterations of the treaty – 3 as I remember – had been published in the Soviet press). In the event there was a decent turnout and a strong support for continuing in the new arrangement. This was the pre-Internet days and I have lost the detailed results but the overall results are here and more detailed here. (Both sources are disingenuous, taking their numbers not from the whole population of potential voters but from those who actually did vote; in several areas not voting was voting “no”). The three Baltic SSRs, the Moldavian, Georgian and Armenian SSRs did not hold votes, on the grounds that they had not legally been incorporated into the USSR in the first place. But the Abkhaz ASSR voted by a small margin to stay in. The Chechen-Ingush ASSR voted to get out as did the Nakhichevan ASSR (the last I suspect being part of Heydar Aliyev’s manoeuvring to get to Baku). So, some hints of the future were given. The proposed signing date was set for 20 August but the coup attempt on the 19^th (not unconnected of course) intervened. In the event the leaders of the Ukrainian and Belarussian SSRs and the RSFSR (55.7% of whose registered voters had voted “yes”) simply declared the end of the USSR in December (the three Baltics had been let go in September in what turned out to be effectively the last official act of the USSR). And that was that. I still believe that the bulk of the USSR could have transformed into the New Union; if so, a lot of suffering would have been avoided. Three quotations are instructive: "The recent dramatic events [ie the coup attempt] showed that our republic is absolutely unprotected... " (Kravchuk 1991); “if Ukraine really will not be in the Union, I cannot imagine such a Union” (Yeltsin 1991); “I believed that Ukraine is so rich that it provided for the entire [Soviet] Union” (Kuchma 1993). So Ukraine killed the New Union on the expectation that it would become immediately rich by stopping the imagined drain from the others on its “rich” economy. Ah well, divorce in haste, repent at leisure: a recent poll from Ukraine says half the population now regrets the breakup. I suspect that a lot of former Soviets do too. Indeed it would be very interesting to see polls from others of the fifteen; especially from those that were very glad to get out twenty years ago. But it’s too late, it’s gone.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE “ARAB UPRISING”

The Unsettling Dust: Russia Should Get Prepared To Face Consequences Of The “Arab Uprising”

by Eugene Ivanov

This piece originally appeared on Russia Beyond the Headlines 

Conventional wisdom suggests waiting until the dust settles before drawing conclusions from the events of the past, but the “dust” generated by the public unrest in North Africa and the Middle East is so thick -- and shows no signs of ablation – that in this case, Russia can’t wait.  It needs to watch the uprising in the Arab world carefully, and be prepared to face the consequences of the rapid geopolitical changes in the region.    

The first, most obvious and, at first glance, not-so-unpleasant of these consequences is the rising price of oil.  After steadily climbing overthe past two years, oil prices shot through the roof at the end of February, when the “Arab revolution” spread into oil-rich Libya and threatened to engulf the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia. 

RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Revolutions. The Arab Revolution is making a few people (Gorbachev for one) speculate about the possibility of a similar rising in Russia. Speculation about a Russian “Arab scenario” is little more than wishful thinking from a negligible opposition that agrees on almost nothing. The “Arab revolution” is sui generis: rulers-for-life enriching their circle while impoverishing everyone else and populations in which half are under 30 or 25 with little to hope for. And some outside advice. This is not Russia: simply stated, the necessary conditions are not there. The Duumvirate remains popular and for good reason: Russians can see and touch the improvement in their situation over the past decade. If in 15-20 years the same people were on top still taking about police reform, cooruption and modernisation that would be a different story. However, some of the other post Soviet states, especially those with rulers-for-life, could develop that way. One place to keep an eye on is Georgia: if Saakashvili contrives to stay in power (as he seems to be trying) and we have another few years of stagnation and blaming everything on Russia, it could happen there – at least some of the opposition says so.

US COVERAGE OF THE DOMODEDOVO TERRORIST ATTACK

COMMENTARY

by Gordon Hahn

The Washington Post (WP) and New York Times (NYT) initial coverage of the Domodedovo airport terrorist bombing in Moscow diverged significantly.  The WP featured the usual biases and prejudices; the NYT broke significantly from past coverage providing an unusual respite from the Russophobic bacchanalia common to the U.S. media’s reporting on Russia.

The WP’s first words regarding the terrorist attack focused not on the attack or the likely perpetrators, but rather that it had occurred “despite Putin’s promises of order”: “Vladimir Putin's years in power have been marked by a series of terrorist acts that have given him the latitude to acquire ever-tighter control over Russia, all in the name of security and stability.  Monday's explosion in a crowded hall at Moscow's busiest airport reminded Russians, once again, that they have neither.” (Kathy Lally, “Terrorists strike Moscow despite Putin promises of order,” Washington Post, 24 January 2011.)