Russia's parliamentary elections have sparked a
political crisis, surprising everyone, from President
Putin (excuse me, Medvedev) down, including the
demonstrators themselves, marvels Eric Walberg
Tahrir Square continues to send out its beacon of
light. Thousands of Russian riot police were deployed
in Red Square to prevent it from being turned into
another Tahrir last Saturday, when demonstrators,
without any resources except cell phones and fur-lined
winter coats, pulled off the largest uprising since
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, in 60
Russian cities, across nine time zones, with at least
one repeat performance scheduled for 24 December.
The uprising united the usually fractious liberals,
nationalists and Communists, with slogans "Swindlers
and Thieves!", "Russia without Putin!" and "Churov
Resign!" – references to United Russia (UR) and
election commission chief Vladimir Churov. Russian
expats in more than 20 countries also demonstrated in
a show of solidarity outside embassies and consulates.
To date under Putin, rallies have been forbidden or
limited to a few hundred. Unauthorised attempts bring
beatings and arrests. But most of Saturday's protests
had official sanction; Moscow officials authorised a
crowd of 30,000 and did not send riot police into
action when 40,000 turned up, and the follow-up rally
has been authorised for 50,000.
This new embrace of Western norms indicates that Putin
is deeply concerned about his weakened position. 42
per cent of Russians in September said they would vote
for Putin in the presidential election, but only 31
per cent by November. And that was before the 4
December debacle. Whether this new leniency shows yet
another face for the inscrutable autocrat, or is a nod
to advisers, who warn that a harsh crackdown could
threaten the wobbly "Restart" button and even the
precious 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, is a good
question.
If the latter, this would be an especially cruel
irony, as the last Russian Olympics in 1980 were
boycotted by the West because of Soviet actions in
Afghanistan, signalling the beginning of the end of
that version of the Russian bear. Just as the Soviet
Union let itself be seduced by Western human rights
talk resulting in the Helsinki Accords in 1975, which
became a weapon in clever Western hands, so Putin et
al are forced to hold their noses (or plug their ears)
faced with noisy, persistent protests if the Sochi
Olympics are to be a successful showcase for the new
Russia.
Uncharacteristically ploddingly, Putin charged Western
interference: "They heard the signal and with the
support of the US State Department began active work."
It was the protesters who showed wit and
resourcefulness this time: "Are we here because
Hillary Clinton texted us?" Some protesters carried
badminton rackets, a reference to Putin and Medvedev's
squeaky-clean sportiness. A riot police officer was
photographed holding a white flower, a symbol of the
protest, behind his back.
The fact is there was blatant vote rigging in some
areas. This was documented, especially in Moscow,
central Russia and the North Caucasus. The FOM (Fund
for Social Opinion) exit poll, the most comprehensive
in Russia, estimated the UR vote in Moscow at 23.6 per
cent, a full 23 per cent less than the official
results. Similarly in the Caucasus, there was a
difference of 20.8 per cent, and in Russia as a whole
a gap of 6.3 per cent between official and exit polls.
FOM's regional breakdown was mysteriously removed from
the FOM site, but not before it was saved by enough
observers to verify its authenticity.
The North Caucasus is dominated by local clans who are
part of the power structure, so vote rigging is to be
expected. But fiddling with the vote in Moscow and
other large cities, where an independent-minded middle
class has the latest in communications gadgets is no
longer acceptable. People were observed voting in a
"carousel", taking a bus to vote up to 15 times at
separate polling stations. One voter was told that if
he voted for Putin's party, there was a present
waiting for him outside the booth, a bottle of vodka
and plastic cups inside a plastic bag. Moscow voting
stations with electronic voting machines, which are
hard to mess with, reported 30 per cent for UR vs the
46.6 per cent average. Communist headquarters received
thousands of calls from regional offices about
ballot-box stuffing and other violations. A flustered
President Dmitri Medvedev finally agreed to ordered an
investigation into reports of election fraud,
according to his Facebook page.
It appears the fraud was indeed necessary to preserve
UR's majority, but unfortunately for UR, it was more
that the 1-2 per cent that is the upper limit of
acceptable fraud in close elections in, say, the US
(remember Ohio's cliffhanger vote in 2004, with a
Republican controlling the voting and a Republican
company providing the notorious voting machines, that
gave George W Bush just enough extra votes to steal
the election from John Kerry?). Or the 2006 Mexican
presidential election, which almost all observers
acknowledged should have gone to the socialist Obrador?
What Russians are now living through is the neoliberal
version of democracy which Russia adopted after 1991,
better described as polyarchy, where factions of the
ruling elite allow for some cosmetic change of faces,
but where elections are controlled by the corporatised
state and commented on by the corporatised media, all
in league. When a populist (or even a Kerry) tries to
buck this formidable machine and his support
approaches a danger zone, the necessary stops can be
pulled, allowing an illusion of "almost" victory for
the underdog but keeping the system in tact.
Of course, the corruption charge is not just about
stuffing boxes or bribing voters. It is about the
entire post-Soviet economic and political structure,
the result of massive economic theft of state
resources and widespread official corruption,
resulting in personal dynasties where the 22-year-old
niece of the governor of Krasnodar owns a major stake
in a massive pipe factory, poultry plant and other
businesses, and the 18-year-old daughter of the
governor of Sverdlovsk owns a plywood mill and a dozen
other local businesses. "How does all this wonderful
entrepeneurial talent appear only in the children of
United Russia members?" asks rising opposition star
Alexei Navalny.
What about claims of Western interference? Of course.
Opposition leader Vladimir Ryzhkov's World Movement
for Democracy (WMD) is a veritable franchise of the
National Endowment of Democracy's WMD. Opposition
stars recently attended the NED-funded seminar
"Elections in Russia: Polling and Perspectives" along
with sundry Soros groupies and USAIDers. Navalny is a
co-founder of the NED-funded DA! (Democratic
Alternative) activist movement, as stated in his Yale
World Fellows bio.
But it is far worse in, for example, Egypt, where US
aid has gone and continues to go to both sides --
Mubarak/ the army and democracy activists -- just in
case. But even here, US interference can backfire. It
is no secret that Egyptian revolutionaries were
trained and inspired by Colour Revolutionaries from
Serbia and American pacifist legend Gene Sharp. That
in itself is not a sin, nor are all recipients
traitors. Western media/ election-savvy young people
mustering all the latest technology and strategies and
precipitated the toppling of their dictators. Who can
possibly deny this was a good thing? And now
disaffected Russians and even Americans themselves are
taking inspiration from their Arab
fellow-dispossessed. Wow.
Besides, the Russian state has full access to all the
gadgets and pamphlets and is quite good at hacking
computers and devising counter-strategies, and if all
else fails, beating up and arresting (and possibly
worse) gadflies who dare to defy authority. All's fair
in love and war.
But at the same time, whether or not Hillary's
twitters inspired the Russian unrest, it is clearly in
America's interest is to keep Russia weak, and
encouraging political unrest is the perfect vehicle.
Russia's defiance on Western plans to invade Syria and
Iran infuriates Washington. Washington gambles that
"democracy" will bring its flunkeys to power in the
Kremlin, just as it hopes that pro-US Arab liberals
can be put into power with a little scheming. Very
risky politics, but this is clearly what's going on,
and NED is doing its part, as it did throughout
eastern Europe in the 1990s. Putin has a point.
Protest organisers met on Sunday, trying to pull
together some sort of leadership council. It is most
unlikely, even if a few recounts are allowed, that UR
will lose its majority, but the momentum of the
demonstrations will make the presidential campaign in
February very heated. Putin will now face at least
four serious candidates: charismatic billionaire
Mikhail Prokhorov, the perennial Communist Gennady
Zyuganov, Sergei Mironov of the Just Russia Party, and
rising star Navalny.
Those elections will be much harder to falsify with
box-stuffing and vodka payoffs, and Putin will most
certainly face a runoff. Again, it is unlikely that he
will lose to the corrupt playboy oligarch, the dour
Communist, the ex-Putin groupie who ran as token
opposition to Mr UR in 2004, or the 35-year-old black
sheep of the Yabloko Party, who was kicked out for
racist threats. But he will have a rough ride.
The up side of this electoral tempest is that Russian
politics has come back to life. Russians are taking
electoral politics seriously, and new parties are in
the works as the UR begins to unravel. The new middle
class that Putin's decade of one-man rule produced is
on the march, much like in Pinochet's Chile, where a
new middle class also rose up against the strongman to
demand their political rights. If Putin is a true
statesman, he will see the writing on the wall, seize
the opportunity to entrench honest elections, and
retire early, leaving a legacy as important as his
role in saving Russia from the predatory neoliberals a
decade ago.
Egypt's uprising, too, started not with the starving
peasants (though they soon joined in). The result,
which is still in process, despite much turmoil and
many setbacks, is probably the freest election in
modern history anywhere, as the corporatised Egyptian
state, with its control of the media and elections,
was pushed aside. This allowed what was, until a few
short months ago, the illegal opposition -- the Muslim
Brotherhood and the Salafis -- to gain a
constitutional majority virtually overnight, much like
in Russia in 1917.
Russians, too, want to know that their dysfunctional
state apparatus can be successfully challenged, so
that real elections can take place. And how long will
it be before Americans see the light and push their
dysfunctional state apparatus aside and enjoy the
"democracy" that the NED and Soros croon so
beautifully about?
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