Russia: Everyone loses in 2000 election
By Boris Kagarlitsky
MOSCOW — The official results of the March 26 Russian presidential election were no surprise. Former president Boris Yeltsin's handpicked successor, Vladimir Putin, won in the first round, as had been programmed in the Kremlin's scenario. Nevertheless, the election went badly for almost all the forces that took part.
The main thing that was new about the election was not the results, but the discussion that surrounded them. For the first time in the whole period since 1993, the rigging of election results was discussed openly on vote-counting night.
The 2000 election was not in fact dirtier than the constitutional referendum of 1993 or the presidential election of 1996. But at that time none of the opposition politicians had the resolve to declare openly that the results were rigged. This year, election night was quite different.
Analysts, live to air on the channel NTV, spoke shamefacedly of "administrative resources" (they could not bring themselves to utter the word "falsification"). The candidates themselves also began relating what had really happened, citing facts such as contradictory figures for the number of electors, and obvious "correcting" of the totals as they came in.
All three of the "serious" opposition candidates, Communist Party (KPRF) leader Gennady Zyuganov, liberal neo-liberal Grigory Yavlinsky and even ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, spoke of ballot-rigging.
These revelations should be attributed not so much to the unexpectedly awakened civic conscience of the candidates, as to the success of the public campaign against the elections, a campaign waged in significant parts of the country. In this situation the politicians, or at least those who claimed to be in opposition, could not ignore the pressure coming from below.
Putin's Pyrrhic victory
In essence, all the politicians lost. Putin gained a Pyrrhic victory at most. If we take into account the situation surrounding the elections, and the number of votes in his favour that were simply fictitious, his official total of 52% represents a complete debacle. The effort to turn the elections into a referendum on unrestricted presidential powers was a failure.
It was clear to everyone, both supporters and opponents of the regime, that the popular support enjoyed by the Kremlin was dramatically lower than had been claimed (it was enough to recall the "sociological surveys" popularised by the state television, and crediting the acting president with the support of 60-70% of the population).
Against such a background, Zyuganov does not appear too badly, with just under 30% of the vote. But this is probably his last election.
Zyuganov's political bankruptcy as a presidential candidate has become too obvious. In 1996 he might have won, if he had been prepared to fight. This time, he never had a chance.
Ultimately, Zyuganov received even fewer votes than in the first round in 1996. This cannot be explained as the result of falsification, since there was ballot-rigging in 1996 as well, and on a similar scale.
The defeat suffered by Yavlinsky was still more devastating. If Zyuganov could complain that he had yet again been robbed, the leader of the Yabloko party had no-one to blame but himself.
It is clear that Yavlinsky was also robbed, but even without the impact of "administrative resources", his result would have been pitiable. The cause is to be found in the fundamentally wrong political course chosen by the leader of the "democratic opposition".
Throughout the election campaign period, Yavlinsky kept stubbornly repeating that he saw no difference between the Communists and the "party of power", and that he, the leader of Yabloko, was the only real democrat in Russia.
According to this logic, the 5% of the vote he received should be considered a disaster both for Yavlinsky and for democracy. The situation was in fact quite different.
Even according to the rigged official figures, the "official" opposition including Yabloko and the Communists gained 45% of the vote, an unquestionable success.
It is clear that the leaders of the KPRF are corrupt, that they have struck a deal with the authorities, and that they are selling out their own supporters. The mass of KPRF voters, however, voted for the party as an expression of protest against the system. They voted Communist despite everything that Zyuganov had said and done in past years.
Anyone who really wants democratic changes in Russia must first of all orient toward this protest movement.
Rout of liberal democrats
Not only is Yavlinsky offensively unjust in relation to the mass of Communist voters and supporters, but he is also mistaken in his view of the social essence of the Putin regime. In this respect, an election-night speech by Union of Right-Wing Forces leader Sergey Kirienko is particularly revealing.
Acknowledging that democracy might, of course, be in for problems with Putin as president, Kirienko stressed that the main thing was that liberalism would continue to hold sway in economic policy. This was absolutely correct. It is precisely in order to continue pursuing liberal economic policies that an authoritarian regime is being introduced in Russia.
Moreover, authoritarianism is absolutely suited to these policies. On the rhetorical level, economic liberalism means defending the "free market" from the interference of bureaucrats. If we translate this from the language of slogans to that of real life, it means defending the financial oligarchy from control by society.
The references to Western experience that are so loved by Russian liberal "democrats" confirm the same historic trend. The age of classical, unrestricted liberalism was a time when democracy in the modern sense of the word did not and could not exist.
As soon as universal suffrage was introduced, and numerous bans and limitations on working people's political activity were abolished, the "freedom" of the market became increasingly restricted. The triumph of neoliberal "free market" policies in the West in the 1980s and '90s was invariably accompanied by an erosion of democracy.
As a right-wing authoritarian regime consolidates itself in Russia, an effective democratic opposition simply cannot be other than leftist. But it is not simply that Yavlinsky is no leftist; he has a mortal fear of any "compromising association" with the left. He therefore continues to seek an understanding with politically impotent right-wing "democrats".
Sometimes he even finds it. The results are instructive: Yevgeny Savostyanov withdrew his candidacy in favour of Yavlinsky, and this brought Yavlinsky no votes whatever. It may well be that this kind of "support" even cost the Yabloko chief votes!
No 'honeymoon'
The only real winner in the elections, it might be said, was "Comrade Boycott". According to official figures, about 35% of electors ignored the polls (unofficial estimates put this figure at more than 50%).
This is hardly news, since the results in earlier elections were similar. The only difference is that this time the non-voters, so to speak, acquired a voice.
Putin now faces a thoroughly unpleasant situation. He has taken power. All that remains for him is to hold onto it, and as Lenin remarked, in Russia that is far more difficult.
One way or another, large numbers of people voted for Putin, some out of a hope that he might restore order, others out of fear, and many no doubt from a mixture of both. In two or three months, it will emerge that both these feelings were baseless. Putin will be unable either to organise sweeping repression, or to bring people's lives back to normal.
The new administration is not expected to enjoy any "honeymoon". It has already had its hundred days of public trust — before the election, while Putin was acting president. When ordinary Russians discover that their hopes have been betrayed, and that their fears were groundless, the mood in the country will change.
On election night, Chechen militia seized the town of Nozhay-Yurt in the south of the Chechen republic. The military reverses have begun. The social and political crisis is still on the horizon.