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This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011/12.

On Dec. 31, 1999, as Russians were celebrating New Year's Eve, a holiday that transcends religion and politics, President Boris Yeltsin went on the air and announced that Vladimir Putin would be instated as acting President. Before signing off, he added: “I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes.”

In the aftermath of the devastating apartment bombings that occurred in September 1999 and the launching of the Second Chechen War, Mr. Putin's sole platform for the 2000 Russian presidential election was counter-terrorism in the North Caucasus. Beyond that, Mr. Putin refused to campaign or to join a political party. Nevertheless, he finished first among the 11 candidates with 53% of the vote - and the “Putin Era” began.

Twelve years later, Mr Putin's candidacy seems much more turbulent, as protesters took to the the streets alleging improprieties in the Dec. 2011 parliamentary elections. Still, polling data suggests that he is heading into Sunday's election with the support of the majority of the electorate.

Protesters hold a poster against the Russian Prime Minister and presidential candidate Vladimir Putin during a rally for fair elections in St. Petersburg, Russia. Photo by MIKE KIREEV, copyright © Demotix (25/02/12).

For World Affairs Journal Blog, Vladimir Kara-Murza contextualized the March 4 election in a post entitled, “In Sunday's Vote, It's Putin Vs. Russia”:

On Monday, Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki was at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, attending a performance of Rodion Shchedrin’s opera Dead Souls. As the performance was getting underway, spectators noticed Penderecki in the box and started booing. The legendary musician was bewildered, not understanding the reason for such hostility. Only later was it explained to him that the audience mistook him for Vladimir Churov, the chairman of Russia’s Central Electoral Commission — to whom he indeed bears an uncanny resemblance.

As Sunday’s presidential election draws near, the public frustration with Vladimir Putin is becoming increasingly apparent. Over the weekend, thousands of Muscovites formed a human chain alongside the 10-mile Garden Ring Road — inspired by the pro-independence “Baltic Way” of 1989 — to protest Putin’s return to power and demand free and fair elections. In St. Petersburg, thousands of people from across the political spectrum marched through the city center calling for “a peaceful revolution.” Attitudes to the regime are also being expressed in less political ways: a mock Channel One “news report” from the future showing Putin’s arrest and trial in Moscow became an instant online hit, with five million views in one week. […]

Sean Guillory of Sean's Russia Blog provided the background for the candidates running against Mr. Putin:

[…] Indeed, the Russian presidential election has been anything but ordinary. Sure, the official cast of characters remains virtually identical to past contests, save a few additions. Communist Party stalwart, Gennady Ziuganov still plays the role of “loyal opposition in-chief,” the aging face of a Communist Party that has the organizational resources to actually present a political alternative to Putin, but lacks the so-called “Leninist will” to adapt to present political conditions. Part of that adaption, however, would require dumping Ziuganov and forsake its aging electorate, something the KPRF mandarins and rank and file are still unwilling to do. Opposite Ziuganov is Vladimir Zhirinovsky, another perennial “loyal oppositionist.” Zhirik plays the harlequin in this grand performance, adding outrageous, comic relief to a show already thin on drama. In a way, Zhirinovsky reflects the whole process itself, a clown for a clownish spectacle. Then there is Mikhail Prokhorov, the new addition to the cast. Prokhorov serves as a kind of Khodorkovsky-lite (since the real Khodorkovsky is less pliable and, well, in jail for the foreseeable future). An oligarch who “made” the bulk of his wealth in the “loans for shares” scheme that saved Boris Yeltsin from defeat in the 1996 Presidential election, Prokhorov, unlike Khodorkovsky, not only understood the rules of the game, but also played them correctly. But the biggest question that has dogged Prokhorov is not his past, but whether he’s a Kremlin project or not. I suspect that he’s a mixture. One thing is clear to me after reading Julia Ioffe’s profile of him in the New Yorker is that Prokhorov’s biggest obstacle is that he’s a sleazeball. Bringing up the rear is Just Russia’s candidate, Sergei Mironov. His candidacy only inspires one question: Who’s he? […]

Along with the results of the election itself, freedom of expression has been a resounding issue for the past few months.

Committee to Protect Journalists Blog provided details to the backlash the Russian media endured after its coverage of the protests surrounding the controversial Dec. 2011 parliamentary elections:

[…] On December 12, Russian tycoon Alisher Usmanov, owner of the Kommersant Publishing House - which produces independent business daily Kommersant and several other news outlets - announced that he was sacking Maksim Kovalsky, chief editor of the popular weekly magazine Kommersant-Vlast. Demyan Kudryavtsev, the publisher's executive director, announced he would resign. The news was a huge blow, as Kovalsky and Kudryavtsev are leading journalists and considered fathers of Kommersant and its publisher.

The magazine's coverage of the parliamentary election was surely the reason for Kommersant's beheading. A week after the vote, most of Kommersant-Vlast's coverage was of the alleged fraud that led to public outrage and protests unprecedented in Russia in the past decade. But Usmanov - believed to be in Putin's close circle - zeroed in on a formal reason to punish the magazine. In its December 12 issue, Kommersant-Vlast published a picture of a ballot cast in London for the opposition Yabloko party; the ballot carried a hand-written insult to Putin across it. Usmanov publicly scolded the magazine for “unacceptable use of coarse language,” and said it was unethical and “on the borderline of hooliganism.” The magazine removed the picture from its website, but it was circulated on social networks, including Kommersant reporter Oleg Kashin's Twitter account.

The removal of Kovalsky and Kudryavtsev angered their colleagues at Kommersant. Two days later, dozens of journalists from Usmanov's news outlets - including independent news website Gazeta - signed and published online an open letter headlined, “We are forced into cowardice.” Veronika Kucyllo, a long-serving deputy editor at Kommersant-Vlast, announced her resignation in protest of Usmanov's decision.

Another important theme this election season has been the role of citizen media as a catalyst of political activism in Russia. Even though they are harder to censor than mainstream news sources, they are not totally immune to censorship, however, as Global Voices discussed in a post entitled, “Why are Russians Protesting Now?”

In a post entitled, “The Man Vladimir Putin Fears Most,” Wall Street Journal Blog predicts that blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny will have an impact on the presidential election:

[…] Anticorruption blogger and activist Alexei Navalny will be in the middle of it — as he has been over the past three months of Russia's unexpected political awakening. By the tens of thousands, Russians shed their fear and apathy to protest December's fraud-ridden parliamentary elections and Mr. Putin's hold on power. From a crowded stage of opposition figures, Mr. Navalny has emerged as the charismatic and fresh face of the movement.

The next phase will test him and the opposition. The series of large demonstrations after December exposed the shallowness of support for Mr. Putin in the large cities and public frustration with the political stagnation and lack of accountability in Russia. Yet the rallies forced no notable government concessions. Though weakened, Mr. Putin gets a new term and possibly energy to reverse his slide or to crack down. […]

Tolik Belenko's Russian-language LiveJounal blog included a link to a “Nashi” announcement [ru] that the pro-Putin youth group has made plans to quash civil unrest in the aftermath of the elections:

On March 5, a few thousand activists from the groups “Nashi” and “Steel” will take to the streets of Moscow in order to prevent any illegal activity aimed at destabilizing society in the aftermath of the Russian presidential election.

LJ user tolik_belenko also shared the link to Nashi's announcement on his ya.ru page [ru]. Readers' comments were somewhat ominous.

Johnny TraHvoltin wrote [ru]:

This has already happened, though not with us, but in China, when [Mao Zedong] occasionally called out the [Red Guards Hóng Wèibīng] troops to the streets in order to maintain order. How did it end? Read history.

Svetlana wrote [ru]:

It's not yet tomorrow. Why guess? We shall see.

This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011/12.

Written by Donna Welles · comments (0)
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This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011/12.

The pre-election month of February has been filled with reports of large-scale gatherings of both the opponents and the supporters of Russia's current regime. On Monday, Feb. 27, however, as the countdown to the March 4 presidential vote entered its final stages, the news of the foiled attempt to assassinate Vladimir Putin, the Russian PM and one of the presidential candidates, temporarily succeeded in shifting the spotlight onto the person who may re-enter Russia's political scene as the head of state quite soon - and away from the citizens, their hopes, fears and demands.

Below is a quick overview of what some of the Anglophone bloggers have been writing about the pre-election politics in Russia this past month.

Mark Galeotti of In Moscow's Shadows shared initial thoughts on the Putin assassination plot:

[…] I’m willing to accept that this was a real plot, not some complete fabrication (as some seem to imply). On the other hand, the news was obviously held back with the aim of seizing the news cycle just before the elections. This is not exactly unique to Russians, but considering the wide scale skepticism, even downright disbelief with which the revelation has been greeted in Russia, this does not seem to have been an especially effective tactic. To be honest, how many times can you play the same kind of card? […]

Mark Adomanis wrote this on the same issue:

[…] Discussion has already turned to the political significance of this plot, and it is fully possible that it augurs for a “tightening of the screws” and that Putin will once again use the threat of terrorism as an excuse to tighten political control (recall that the most dramatic re-centralization of political power occurred in the aftermath of the attack on Beslan). However I lean towards a slightly less malign interpretation in which the thwarting of this plot is merely a PR stunt and an opportunity for some (mostly harmless) pre-election chest thumping: Putin will get a chance to play the aggrieved victim of aggression, a role he plays very well, and say a few things about the tenacity and determination of his government in confronting and defeating terror. We’ll see what happens, but given the totality of the political situation in Russia and the obvious weakening of Putin’s position I don’t think a dramatic re-centralization of power is even possible, at least without the widespread use of force. […]

St. Petersburg: "For Putin" banners inside a bus that has brought people to a presidential campaign rally in support of the Russian PM. Photo by YURY GOLDENSHTEYN, copyright © Demotix (18/02/12).

Eugene Ivanov of The Ivanov Report has produced a series of posts on the upcoming election: The Dinosaur (on Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Feb. 9) Putin and the Polls (Feb. 16), Putin and Elites (Feb. 21), and Putin and Protesters (Feb. 26). In the latest post, he put the recent rallies into perspective and explained their significance for Putin's political future:

I’m puzzled when someone begins comparing the number of people participating in pro- and anti-Putin demonstrations in Russia: to me, it’s like comparing the number of apples with the size of oranges. I get even more puzzled when I hear that by putting more people on the streets, the Kremlin “has won” over its opponents. It’s about the same as to say that because the admirers of Yo-Yo Ma can be comfortably accommodated in the Carnegie Hall with its 2,800 seats whereas Britney Spears can easily attract a crowd of 30,000 fans at a sports arena, the pop diva is ten-time better musician than the venerable cellist.

[…]

What the protesters should really pay attention to is their message. Brought together by the power of a single emotion – the outrage at the rigged Duma elections – they now need to transform their “raw feelings” into a set of comprehensive political goals and demands. Far from trying to beat the Kremlin in the game of numbers, the protesters should actually reduce the size of their columns by decisively parting with the nationalists, monarchists and the like. And if they want to broaden their appeal, they would better outreach to industrial workers whose loyalty to Putin is only conditional and may rapidly disappear should Russia’s economic situation deteriorate.

[…]

Yet, the major reason Putin so far hasn’t made any attempt to start a dialog with the protesters is that he doesn’t understand them. Putin seems to be genuinely at a loss to figure out why a bunch of well fed people would go on a protest action, especially if their grievances are caused by such a nuisance as “irregularities” in the parliamentary elections. The concept that some people may value their principles and their dignity over material well-being seems to be completely foreign to Putin. (Apparently, there are no such people in the close circle of Putin’s associates.) That’s why he tries to explain their behavior by something he can comprehend: money, directives from the State Department, or “orange leprosy.” […]

Following the Feb. 4 opposition rallies, Mark Adomanis compared the turnout in Moscow with that in other Russian cities:

[…] One thing that does seem noteworthy, though, is that the protests in other Russian cities seem to have been rather underwhelming. […]

[…]

What does this mean for the future of the protests? Well, probably nothing good. Putin and his team are not going to be easy to displace, and I think only a sustained and truly nation-wide popular mobilization could possibly compel them to do so. As always, the situation is fluid and should be watched closely, but there are certainly indications that Putin’s grip on power remains quite secure in large sections of the country. His image has taken a very big and very noteworthy dent, but at this juncture it seems improper to project the palpable anger and frustration of Muscovites onto all Russians. […]

Kevin Rothrock of A Good Treaty moved a few levels down from the overly familiar nationwide politics story, taking a closer look at the relatively obscure local confrontation that occurred in the town of Lermontov in Stavropol region; not surprisingly, he discovered that the latter shared its most important elements with the former:

Yesterday, the town of Lermontov (located in Russia’s North Caucasus) experienced what some are calling “a small revolution.” As the state municipal building was preparing to close for the evening, a collection of townsfolk and former members of the city council gathered and eventually forced their way into the main lobby. Once inside, reporters accompanying the activists took turns interviewing ex-deputies and disgruntled locals. Acting head of the city’s government Viktor Vasil’ev warned protesters that they were breaking the law by illegally occupying state property. Undeterred, the former deputies announced the beginning of an indefinite hunger strike, promising to occupy Lermontov’s municipal building night and day, until their demands are met: chiefly, the cancelation of the city’s upcoming local elections, which the ex-deputies consider to be illegitimate because they were denied the right to participate.

[…]

The Lermontov ‘crisis’ has something for everyone. If you’re a diehard enemy of the Putin regime, there are former city officials protesting in the open, linking local regional corruption to the Kremlin’s evil influence. Certainly, many aspects of the Lermontov election — barred candidates, political control of the courts, and the squashing of local independence — echo the larger criticisms commonly made of ‘Putinism.’

On the other hand, fans of the Prime Minister seem to find it inspiring that several of the assembled protesters are reaching out to Putin in the tradition of ‘good tsarism,’ hoping that he’ll notice their plight and swoop in to right the city’s wrongs. […]

This post is part of our special coverage Russia Elections 2011/12.

Written by Veronica Khokhlova · comments (0)
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