A Russian Diary (17 page)

The NTV television company is refusing to provide airtime for the election campaign and debates of the “other” presidential candidates. It claims they have low ratings in the opinion polls and nobody would watch the programs. Perhaps a country gets the candidates it deserves, but they should at least be allowed to speak. There is no doubt that the company's decision was made under pressure from the Kremlin.

In Moscow the committee supporting Khakamada has met in the fashionable and expensive Berlin Club on Petrovka. Khakamada said, “I am going into this election as if to the scaffold, and with only one aim: to show the state authorities that there are normal people in Russia who know exactly what they are up to.” That is good. She is trying to show that fear has not yet conquered Russia, which would be an unconditional victory for Putin.

United Russia also held a meeting of “the democratic intelligentsia” in support of Putin, who, it was claimed, is having mud slung at him by his opponents. Putin's defenders included the veteran singer Larisa Dolina, theater and film director Mark Zakharov, the actor Nikolai Kara-chentsev, and circus manager Natalia Durova. They were sent a letter asking them to “defend the honor and dignity of the president,” and duly answered the call. It was mentioned in passing that the overall membership of United Russia has reached 740,000, and that more than two million “supporters” have been registered, although no explanation of what
this means has been forthcoming. United Russia emphasized that its purpose as a political party is to support the president. Not policies, not ideals, not a program of reform: an individual.

The Central Electoral Commission joyfully reports that more than 200 international observers have been officially accredited for the election on March 14. In all, some 400 are expected.

The Duma contributes its mite to the pathetic attempts to fight terrorism. The powers of the secret police and spies will be widened, and amendments to the criminal code have been adopted to increase the penalties for suicide bombers. They will now be liable to life imprisonment! This seems unlikely to deter people who have decided to settle their accounts with life in this way. The Fourth Duma is the collective brain of today's bone-headed Russian bureaucracy.

The Duma is playing up to the intelligence services because that is what Putin likes. There is no mention of the additional three billion rubles [$104 million] the intelligence services were awarded shortly after
Nord-Ost
for the fight against terrorism. Where did all that go, and why has the number of terrorist outrages not decreased? The Fourth Duma has given its legislative blessing to a purely virtual fight against terrorism. The efficiency of the intelligence services is not even queried, and the problem of Chechnya, which is at the root of everything, is not mentioned.

February 19

Sergey Mironov has taken part in the television debates for the first time. Everybody immediately rounded on him, as if he were Putin, but Mironov refused to be a whipping boy.

“Of course you are Putin!” Khakamada said. “Why, after all the terrorist acts, has Gryzlov been promoted when he should have been fired?”

“I am not the representative of candidate Putin!” Mironov replied.

“Then answer as the third person in the hierarchy of power in the state,” Khakamada continued.

Mironov still chose not to answer. That's the kind of debates we have.

Nobody takes them seriously. They are broadcast very early in the morning.

The Central Electoral Commission has refused Rybkin permission to take part in live preelection debates from London. There is no way Rybkin is going to be allowed to dish the dirt on Putin live on television.

February 21

In Voronezh, Amar Antoniu Lima, twenty-four, a first-year student at the Voronezh Medical Academy, has died after being stabbed seventeen times. He came from Guinea-Bissau. This is the seventh murder of a foreign student in Voronezh in recent years. The murderers are skinheads. Zhirinovsky's slogan in the parliamentary elections was “We are for the poor! We are for the Russians!” It has been taken over by United Russia, and accordingly by the Guarantor of the Constitution himself. And by the skinheads.

February 22

There is increasing speculation that all the candidates, with the exception of Malyshkin and Mironov (and Putin), may withdraw from the election simultaneously. Glaziev has already announced his withdrawal, Rybkin is on the verge of doing so, and so is Khakamada. The pro-Putin press says this is a plot to enable them to save political face because they will achieve only tiny percentages of the vote on March 14.

The real reason is simply frustration at Putin's total absence from all preelection discussion, putting the other candidates in a farcical situation. In Khakamada's words, “The campaign is becoming increasingly lawless and dishonest.”

February 24

Putin has fired his government live on television, nineteen days before the election. According to the Constitution, the newly elected president
appoints a new cabinet, and at that point the previous government retires. The reason for the dismissal has not been revealed. The government was not blamed for anything, although there would have been plenty of grounds for doing so, and the only explanation being offered is that Putin wants to go to the electorate with an open visor, so that they should know who he will be working with after the election. The fired ministers speak on television about the joy with which their hearts were filled when they heard they had been fired. The Kremlin has demonstrated to the electorate that our elections are a complete sham and that the government is purely ornamental. At any moment of the spin doctors’ choosing, it can be done away with.

Does it matter one jot whom Putin appoints as prime minister in place of Kasianov, or who is in the government? No. Everything in the country depends on the presidential administration. The firing resembled a special operation. It was carried out in total secrecy. There were no leaks. It is as if they were carrying out a targeted military strike, not just dismissing ministers. The majority of the cabinet learned of their firing from the television news.

The dismissal of the government in this manner demonstrates the establishment in Russia of political oligarchy. With this lot, all the financial oligarchs, who up till now had a finger in the pie, are nowhere.

The official television stations explain that “the president is optimizing the replacement of ineffective ministers so that the Russian people should know who will be in office after March 14.” As if the election were already over.

Putin's first presidential term has effectively come to an end today. This is the termination of the era of Yeltsin, of whom Kasianov was the last remaining major appointee. Putin will now spend his second term completely distancing himself from Yeltsin's policies.

Yelena Bonner has appealed to the presidential candidates in an open letter from America:

Once again I call upon the presidential candidates Irina Khaka-mada, Nikolai Kharitonov, and Ivan Rybkin to jointly withdraw from the election. By standing as candidates each of you has tried to make your program known to the electorate and to demonstrate to Russian society and world opinion the dishonesty of this election. Leave Candidate No. 1, Putin, alone with his puppets, and call on the groups supporting you and ordinary electors to boycott the election. Anybody who dislikes the word “boycott” may, if they prefer, describe this as a call not to appear on parade. It will then be of no importance what percentage they dream up for the turnout. What matters is that the authorities will know the real figure.

Even more important is that everyone who deliberately does not vote will gain self-respect from not participating in this state-sponsored lie. Most importantly, refusing to participate will clearly indicate your goal, a goal shared for the next four years by right and left politicians and their political supporters. That is the battle to restore the institution of real elections in Russia, in place of the surrogate that is being imposed on the country today. Later, in 2007 and 2008, if you jointly stop elections from being a big lie, a scam, you will once again become political opponents and competitors in the struggle for voters. Right now, however, only your joint refusal to take part in the election and your call to the voters not to participate in it are strategically and morally justifiable.

There was no reaction to Bonner's appeal. No commentaries, no thunder and lightning. Nothing.

February 26

People are beginning to titter about Putin, even on television. He is in Khabarovsk today, looking as pompous and imperial as a king in a folktale. In the morning he opened the Khabarovsk-Chita motorway. After that he talked to some war veterans who asked him for more money, so he increased the northern supplement for pensions. He spent some time with young hockey players at a new ice skating stadium. The commander in chief of the Pacific fleet, Viktor Fyodorov, had been expressing alarm at the possibility of force reductions, so Putin also announced that the
Pacific fleet would not be trimmed back because “our Pacific fist needs to be strong.” He also promised support for the submarine base in Kamchatka. (He should try going there to see for himself the conditions in the officers’ village at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky.) Next, the acting minister of transport, Vadim Morozov, asked Putin for 4.5 billion rubles [$158 million] for a railway link between the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal-Amur Highway, and Putin gave it to him. The businessman and governor of Primoriye, Sergey Darkin, asked for three billion rubles [$105 million] for new ships. The president of Yakutia, Vyacheslav Shty-rov, asked for funds for an oil and gas pipeline from Irkutsk to the Far East, and Putin promised to fix it.

No hint has been given as to who is to be the new prime minister. Rumors are circulating.

Some say Putin will appoint himself prime minister, others that it will be Gryzlov, or maybe Kudrin.

In the evening, NTV broadcast
To the Barrier!
The duelists were Vladimir Ryzhkov, an independently minded deputy in the Duma, and Lyudmila Narusova, the widow of Anatoly Sobchak, Putin's teacher and boss. The question for discussion was why Putin had dismissed the government. Ryzhkov was witty and ironical without being malicious. He mocked Putin, but in a friendly, condescending way. During the program viewers were invited to vote on whether they supported Narusova or Ryzhkov.

Narusova insisted that the president was always right about everything, but could not explain anything beyond that. This is highly typical of Putin's supporters. The result was a resounding victory for Ryzhkov, who polled 71,000 votes to Narusova's 19,000 for her defense of Putin. Narusova, assuring everyone that Putin was going into the elections with the purest of intentions, was trounced.

February 27

Early voting in the election has begun for those who are on the high seas, in the air, on expeditions, or who live in remote and inaccessible regions.
Although the results will be declared only on March 14, the main ballot rigging will occur with these early ballot boxes. It is easily done.

February 29

Throughout the weekend we were hearing that the president was consulting the main United Russia figures over whom to appoint as prime minister. Most people are sure this is just PR and that nobody is being consulted about anything.

In Moscow, a “presidential election” by text message has been held. The result was 64 percent for Putin, 18 percent for Khakamada, and 5 percent for Glaziev.

March 2

Putin is shown on all television channels talking to the actor and director Yury Solomin about the 250th anniversary, in 2006, of the rescript of Catherine the Great on the establishment of theaters in Russia. Putin keeps asking how the occasion should be marked, and goes on being interested for a very long time.

The new prime minister of Russia is Mikhail Fradkov.* Nobody has a clue who he is. Apparently, he was an official in the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade and worked in various embassies; he occupied various positions in various ministries in the post-Soviet period, and worked in the Tax Police when they were at their lowest ebb. Fradkov, flying back from Brussels, said that he doesn't yet know what a “technical prime minister” is. That is, he doesn't know what position he has been appointed to by Putin. A prime minister as clueless as this is, even for us, quite unusual.

March 5

Everything is being reduced to absurdity. The appointment of Fradkov as prime minister by the Duma deserves an entry in the
Guinness Book of Records:
352 votes in favor of a man who, when asked what his plans for
the future were, could only blurt, “I have just come out of the shadow into the light.”

Fradkov is a man of the shadows because he is a spy. We have a truly third-rate prime minister. He is even bald. His very appearance tells you he is a political ploy. He has been chosen so that Putin, and only Putin, should be the authority figure. Nothing is going to change. Putin will continue to decide.

So what is the new policy? The answer is: nothing. Fradkov is a modest executive, always ready to carry out the tasks dictated by the party. No more, no less than that.

Rybkin has withdrawn his candidacy, without giving any clear explanation as to why. He continues to give the impression of being mentally unwell.

Khakamada has traveled to Nizhny Novgorod, Perm, and St. Petersburg. She appears to the public looking irritated and exhausted, but if that's the state she is in, she would do better not to go there in the first place. Kharitonov is off to Tula. Malyshkin is in the Altai but can barely string his words together. Mironov is in Irkutsk but incapable of saying anything without notes.

The main thrust of the television commentaries about the candidates is that it is an outrage for them to dare to compete with our principal candidate. There is a gradual atrophy of the organ responsible for the democratic perception of reality. Propaganda is put out to the effect that people voted for a single candidate in the Soviet period, and everything was fine then. Presumably in the next elections we won't even hear these matters debated. There will be one officially appointed opposition candidate, and society will take that in its stride. The country is sinking into a state of collective unconsciousness, into unreason.