Liberals Prepare to Cry “We was robbed”
Putin is Poised to Win
by ISRAEL SHAMIR
Moscow
Moscow is shining in the bright spring sun; the golden
domes of its churches are a-glitter, surrounded by pure
white snow; endless boutiques display the latest Paris
fashions; restaurants are plentiful and expensive;
numerous theaters are full, at a hundred dollars a seat
for a Chekhov play. High oil prices have brought
prosperity and crisis is forgotten. There’s a lot of
budget money for all sorts of projects, from modern art
to kindergartens to universities. Even those old
sufferers, the armed forces, have got a big hike in
pay.

In
these rather easy circumstances this Sunday March 4 the
Russians are going to elect their President. They have
no economic grievances requiring desperate solutions.
This is good for the incumbent, and indeed the polls
indicate victory for Vladimir Putin. But all bets are
off for whatever will happen the next day. Some of
Putin’s opponents have already called for mass rallies
and riots on Monday March 5. It’s become a tradition of
sorts that the electoral victory of a government figure
may lead to riots, as happened in Belarus in December
2010 and in the Ukraine in December 2004.
On
Sunday there are five candidates applying for the job; a
Communist, a Social-Democrat, a Nationalist, a
Neoliberal, and Mr Putin. Pollsters say Vladimir Putin
will receive above 60 per cent of the popular vote, so
he will not need a second round run-off. However,
elections are never a sure thing, and it is not
impossible that there will be a second round between
Putin and the second most likely candidate, Gennady
Zuganov of the Communist Party, and then Putin will win
anyway.
So
fraud won’t necessary. Putin would likely to win even if
Hillary Clinton was to personally roll up her sleeves
and count the votes. However, there is a sixth
candidate, call him X, who does not participate in the
elections but commands many followers. His followers –
they wear white, but are often and confusingly described
as ‘orange’, as in the Ukraine – seized the streets of
the capital in December last year, and now are likely to
riot whatever the results may be.
This
phantom candidate is a creation of the second and recent
Putin-Medvedev swap, when Medvedev announced he would
not run for a second term but would support Putin and
serve as PM under him. There was a liberal camp around
Medvedev, and ir had hoped that Medvedev would take a
liberal course, set the jailed oligarch Khodorkovsky
free, privatize state enterprises, sack Putin and become
“the only European in Russia”, an enlightened ruler.
This
camp has a few oligarchs ready to dish out their money
in much bigger amounts than the State Department could
ever manage, notably Mrs Sindeeva and her husband the
banker Alexander Vinokurov, owner of Dozhd TV station,
a web-portal and a Moscow giveaway entertainment paper;
Alexander Lebedev, an ex-spook and billionaire, owner of
the Independent of London and Novaya Gazeta of Moscow;
London-based oligarch Alisher Usmanov, once a convicted
criminal from Ferghana, Uzbekistan, and now one of the
richest Russian oilmen, who owns the Kommersant that
previously belonged to the famous London exile Boris
Berezovsky.
This
camp has a few think-tanks that were prominent in
planning Medvedev’s reforms, notably Mr Yurgens and his
fund. A few days ago Yurgens appealed to Medvedev to
remain as president, and it is not impossible that some
of the ‘orange’ radicals hope it may happen in any
fall-out from riots. Meanwhile there are no external
signs of a breach between Putin and Medvedev, so there
is no candidate X actually running, but the machinery
they set up is still in place.
The
orange team quite successfully exploited the
dissatisfaction of Moscow’s literati and new middle
class with their lack of political clout in December
2011, but the public mood changed on that fateful day,
February 4, 2012, when the opposition demo at Bolotnaya
Moor was bested by the much larger loyalist (or perhaps
anti-orange) rally on Poklonnaya Mount, as we reported
in
a previous dispatch.
Previously, Putin had been seen as a lame duck waiting
for a summary arrow; but at that day the Frondeurs
discovered to their chagrin that their hold on the
streets was precarious.
Now
Putin has fully recovered and bounced back. After
February 4, encouraged by popular support, he directed
the Russian Ambassador in the UN to cast his veto on
the Western UN Security council draft resolution on
Syria and stopped the pending invasion. Afterwards, he
unleashed seven texts published in seven newspapers
disclosing his blueprint for the coming years. He
promised more democracy and transparency, less
bureaucracy, more prosperity for all and more taxation
for the filthy rich. He threatened to ban offshore
companies and to re-open the Pandora’s box of
privatization.
In
foreign affairs he was emphatic and certain: he
asserted the traditional full sovereignty of Russia as
enjoyed by this powerful state since Ivan the Third
asserted his independence against the rival claimants of
the Horde. He rejected the American quest for total
invulnerability which, as he said, could only be
obtained by the total vulnerability of all other states.
Actually, this was the old script of any Russian Tsar
foaming against foreign meddling. It was approvingly
accompanied by pieces by Eugene Primakov, ex-PM who
famously ordered his plane back on its transatlantic
flight when the US decided to bomb Yugoslavia, and by
Dmitri Rogozin, a Vice PM and until recently a combative
Russian envoy to NATO. Putin has not been softened one
little bit by all the offensive of the pro-Western
forces.
The
rallies and political awakening has been good for the
country and good for Putin: activity and drama are
likely to bring more voters to the polling booths. Huge
efforts to provide visibility and transparency to the
counting process including video cameras and internet
broadcasting will do the same, while the attacks on
Putin – in Russia and abroad – will marginalize other
candidates. His position improved after February 4, when
the Western media practically ceased their attacks on
him.
For
a while, the rebellious liberals could – and did –
pretend that only the “rabble” supports Putin while
all classy people stand with them. But in a striking new
development – as the Frondeurs pretended to speak for
the whole Russian art crowd and intelligentsia – many
important Russian cultural personalities stood up in
support of Putin. The favourite of the Moscow
theatre-going public, Chulpan Hamatova, declared her
support for Putin and so did leading film directors
Shahnazarov and Mihalkov, the great conductor Valery
Gergiev, along with other brand names of Russian
culture. Star-studded people of integrity turned their
backs on the self-proclaimed “crème de la crème”. As
Vitaly Leibin, the Russian Reporter’s chief editor said:
I’d rather be a commoner.
This
change was well explained by Eduard Limonov, a poet and
a revolutionary, a returnee who lived for years in New
York and Paris, founder and leader of the radical
National-Bolshevik Party. He has been in strong
opposition to Putin’s regime and served a three year
prison sentence for an alleged attempt to arm his
followers. He eagerly embraced the liberal upheaval but
became disappointed and soon parted ways with the
Bolotnaya crowd. In his passionate blog Limonov
explained the failure of the Frondeurs to win Russian
hearts by their anti-democratism:
“They were associated with the spirit of 1991, the black
year for Russian commoners, for 91-ers are considered
responsible for the USSR’s break-up, for the loss of
their savings, for shock therapy, for the criminal
Nineties… I swear that Bolotnaya Moor attracted all
sorts of people, and the middle-class were in a
minority. But the bourgeois leaders in their greed
granted themselves the exclusive concession on protest…
They proclaimed the rising of a new class, the Creative
Class, (read: Masters’ Class). They happily and
self-adoringly declared themselves – lovable, creative,
rich – the only force for protest . And the authorities
readily agreed: ‘yes, darlings, it is your protest, the
protest of the wealthy, of the middle class, just yours
and nobody else’s !’ Now the whole protest wave is
identified as a rebellion of pro-Western liberals. And
it was isolated, as became evident on February 4.”
A
few days before the elections, Putin appeared at a huge
rally in the Luzhniki stadium in Moscow. Its strength
was estimated at about 150,000. The stadium was full, a
lot of people stood in the arena and many thousands
could not get in. Putin appealed to Russian patriotism;
he spoke softly. There was none of the expected fire and
brimstone. Though electorally, it makes sense to stress
the difference between ‘them’ and ‘us’, Putin did not,
carefully building the foundation for civil peace after
the elections are over.
Will
he get it? The X electorate is still there, implacable
as ever. Mme Sindeeva’s newspaper promises the results
of the elections will trigger vast demos, blood will be
shed and the despot will be overturned. This is also the
view of Sergei Kurginyan, the initiator of the
anti-orange demo on Poklonnaya Mount. On Wednesday,
leaflets appeared in Moscow, calling for mass protests
on March 5, against future falsifications of the
elections, with one slogan: Down with Putin.
The
majority of my informants doubt their ability to cause
much trouble. Life is too good now in prospering Russia,
and these would-be rebels are used to the good life. To
quote Limonov, in order to beat the government or even
to extract concessions one needs people “with clenched
jaws and frowning brows. The perfumed Parfenov, pink
pants-clad Troitsky, and syrupy Ulitskaya won’t do.” We
shall know the answer soon.