A Russian Diary (4 page)

The state's administrative resources swung into action in these elections in just the same way as in the Soviet period. This was also true in no small measure of the elections in 1996 and 2000 in order to get Yeltsin elected even though he was ill and decrepit. This time, however, there was no holding back the presidential administration. Officialdom merged with the United Russia Party as enthusiastically as it used to with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (the CPSU). Putin revived the Soviet system as neither Gorbachev* nor Yeltsin had done. His unique achievement was the establishment of United Russia, to the cheers of officials who were only too glad to become members of the new CPSU. They had plainly been missing Big Brother, who always did their thinking for them.

The Russian electorate, however, was also missing Big Brother, having
heard no words of comfort from the democrats. There were no protests. United Russia's election slogans were stolen from the Communists and were all about rich bloodsuckers stealing our national wealth and leaving us in rags. The slogans proved so popular precisely because it was now not the Communists proclaiming them.

It must also be said that in 2003 a majority of our citizens heartily supported the imprisonment, through the efforts of members of United Russia, of the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky* head of the Yukos oil company. Accordingly, although manipulating the state's administrative resources for political ends is no doubt an abuse, the politicians had public support. It was just a matter of the administration's leaving nothing to chance.

December 8

Early in the morning, political analysts assembled on the
Free Speech
program to discuss the results as they came in. They were jittery. Igor Bunin talked of a crisis of Russian liberalism, about how the Yukos affair had suddenly aroused a wave of antioligarchic feeling in the middle of the campaign. They talked about the hatred that had accumulated in the hearts of many people, “especially decent people who could not bring themselves to support Zhirinovsky,” and the fact that the eclectic United Russia Party had managed to unite everybody, from the most liberal to the most reactionary. He predicted that the president would now stand in for the liberals in the ruling elite.

On the same program, Vyacheslav Nikonov, the grandson of Molotov, suggested that young people had not turned out to vote and this was the main reason for the democrats’ defeat. “Ivan the Terrible and Stalin are more to the taste of the Russian people.”

The evening's television continued. The program was funereal, with an added sense of impending stormy weather. Those in the studio seemed more inclined to take shelter than to fight. Georgii Satarov, a former adviser to President Yeltsin, insisted that the outcome had been decided by the “nostalgia vote” of those who pined for the USSR. The democrats came in for a lot of flak. The writer Vasilii Aksyonov complained
that the liberals had failed to exploit the unsavoriness of the Yukos affair. He was quite right. The democrats failed to take a stand one way or the other over the issue of Khodorkovsky's treatment.

*

Free Speech
was shortly to be taken off the air by its parent company NTV, to which Putin commented, “Who needs a talk show for political losers?” He was referring, no doubt, to Yavlinsky, Nemtsov, and the other defeated liberals and democrats.

Vyacheslav Nikonov was to transform himself a few months later into a raging apologist for Putin. There were to be many such conversions among political analysts.

So, where would we go from here? Our freedoms were bestowed upon us from above, and the democrats kept running to the Kremlin for guarantees that they would not be revoked, in effect accepting the state's right to regulate liberalism. They kept compromising and now had nowhere left to run to.

On November 25, thirteen days before the elections, a number of us journalists had talked for five hours or so to Grigorii Yavlinsky of the Yabloko Party. He seemed very calm and confident, to the point of arrogance, that he would make it into the Duma. We suspected some bargain had been struck with the presidential administration: provision of administrative resources to support Yabloko in return for “burying” a number of issues during the campaign. For me and many others who used to vote for Yabloko, this made our flesh creep.

Yavlinsky had no time for the idea of an alliance between Yabloko and the democratic Union of Right Forces Party.

“I consider that the Union of Right Forces played an enormous part in unleashing the Chechen war. It was the only party that could in any way be described as democratic and in favor of civil society, yet they chose to say that the Russian Army was being reborn in Chechnya, and that anybody who thought otherwise was a traitor who was stabbing the Russian troops in the back.”

“So who else could Yabloko now unite with against the war in Chechnya?”

“Now? I don't know. If the Union of Right Forces were to admit that
they had been wrong, we could discuss the possibility of an alliance with them. But while Nemtsov is pretending to be a dove of peace and Chubais* is talking about the liberal ideal, you'll have to forgive me, I'm not prepared to discuss that possibility. Whom else we could unite with I don't know.”

“But it was not the Union of Right Forces who began the second Chechen war.”

“No, it was Putin, but they supported him as a candidate for the presidency and, incidentally, legitimized him as a war leader in the eyes of the intelligentsia and the entire middle class.”

“You are at daggers drawn with the Union of Right Forces. You don't want an alliance with them, but you have embarked on a number of compromises with the president and his administration in order to obtain some degree of administrative support for your campaign. As I understand it, and there have been many rumors to this effect, the war in Chechnya is precisely the compromise in question. You have agreed not to make too much noise about the Chechen issue, and in return you have been guaranteed the necessary percentage of votes to get you into the Duma.”

“Don't rely on rumors. That is a completely wrong approach. There are rumors about your own newspaper too. No other paper is allowed to write about Chechnya, but you are not shut down for doing so. The rumor is that they give you that leeway so they can go to Strasbourg and wave your newspaper about to show what a free press we have. See what is being written about Chechnya in
Novaya Gazeta!
I don't suppose for a moment that is really the way things are…”

“All the same, please give a straight answer.”

“I never struck any such deal or agreed to any such compromise. It is out of the question.”

“But you did have talks with the administration?”

“No, never. They talked about giving us money, back in September 1999.”

“Where was that money coming from?”

“We didn't get down to that kind of detail, because I said it was unacceptable. I said I was not against Putin—I had only just set eyes on the
man—but to say I would endorse everything he was going to do six months in advance was impossible. I was told, ‘Then in that case we cannot reach agreement with you, either.’ Later, after the elections, when the leaders of the parties were invited to the Kremlin and seated in accordance with their percentage of the vote, one of the most highly placed officials in the land said, ‘And you could have been sitting here…’ I replied, ‘Well, that's just the way it is.’ This time they didn't even offer.”

“When did you last speak to Putin?”

“On July 11, about the Khodorkovsky affair and the searches at Yukos.”

“At your request?”

“Yes. They assembled the entire State Council and the leaders of the political parties at the Kremlin to discuss economic programs, etc. The meeting ended at half past ten at night and I told Putin I needed to talk to him urgently. At half past eleven I met him at his home. We discussed various problems, but the main one was Khodorkovsky.”

“Did you realize that Khodorkovsky would be imprisoned?”

“There was no knowing that in advance, but it was clear that the affair was being taken very seriously. I realized something bad would happen to Khodorkovsky when the
Financial Times
in London published an enormous article with photographs of Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Fridman,* and Roman Abramovich, under a very large headline, which they don't usually do. The story was to the effect that those oligarchs were transferring their wealth to the West and preparing to sell everything here. There were quotes from Fridman saying it was impossible to create modern businesses in Russia, that although they themselves were really pretty good managers, there was no way, in the midst of all the corruption, you could establish proper companies in our country.”

“Have you already reconciled yourself to the fact that Putin will win a second term?”

“Even if I don't reconcile myself to that, he will get it.”

“How do you realistically assess your chances?”

“How should I know? Our own research tells us we have 8 or 9 percent, but we are talking about elections where votes get added here, added there, and they call it ‘managed democracy’ People just give up.”

“I have the impression that you are giving up too. After all, people in Georgia* rejected the results of rigged elections and used extraparlia-mentary methods to alter the situation. Perhaps you should do the same? Perhaps we all should? Are you prepared to resort to extraparliamentary methods?”

“No, I'm not going down that path, because I know that in Russia it would end with the spilling of blood, and not mine, either.”

“What about the Communists? Do you think they might take to the streets?”

“Everybody is gradually being fed the information that they are going to get 12 to 13 percent. It has already become the conventional wisdom. I don't rule that out, because politically Putin has very successfully stolen their clothes. United Russia is hardly going to take to the streets because it's been awarded 35 percent and not 38, and there are no other mass parties. They simply don't exist. Forming a political opposition in Russia became a practical impossibility after 1996. First, we lack an independent judiciary. An opposition has to be able to appeal to an independent legal system. Second, we lack independent national mass media. I mean television, of course, and primarily Channel One and Channel Two. Third, there are no independent sources of finance for anything substantial. In the absence of these three fundamentals it is impossible to create a viable political opposition in Russia.

“There is no democracy now in Russia, because democracy without an opposition is impossible. All the prerequisites for a political opposition were destroyed when Yeltsin beat the Communists in 1996, and to a large extent we allowed them to be destroyed. There isn't even the theoretical possibility of a 100,000-strong demonstration anywhere in Russia today.

“It is a peculiarity of the present regime that it doesn't just brutishly crush opposition, as was done in the era of totalitarianism. Then the system simply destroyed democratic institutions. Now all manner of civil and public institutions are being adapted by the state authorities to their own purposes. If anyone tries to resist, they are simply replaced. If they don't want to be replaced, well then, they'd better look out. Ninety-five percent of all problems are resolved using these techniques of adaptation
or substitution. If we don't like the Union of Journalists, we will create Mediasoyuz. If we don't like NTV with this owner, we will reinvent NTV with a different owner.

“If they began taking an unwelcome interest in your newspaper, I know perfectly well what would happen. They would start buying up your people, they would create an internal rebellion. It wouldn't happen quickly, you have a good team, but gradually, using money and other methods, inviting people to come closer to power, turning the screws, cozying up, everything would start to fall apart. That's how they dealt with NTV. Gleb Pavlovsky stated openly that they had murdered public politics. It was no more than the truth. The authorities also deliberately create pairings, so that everybody has someone to shadow. Rodina can take on the Communists; the Union of Right Forces can take on Yabloko; the People's Party can take on United Russia.”

“But if they are up to all this trickery, what are they afraid of?”

“Change. The state authorities act in their corporate interests. They don't want to lose power. That would put them in a very dangerous situation, and they know it.”

Yavlinsky was not to make it into the Duma.

Were we seeing a crisis of Russian parliamentary democracy in the Putin era? No, we were witnessing its death. In the first place, as Lilia Shevtsova, our best political analyst, accurately put it, the legislative and executive branches of government had merged, and this had meant the rebirth of the Soviet system. As a result, the Duma was purely decorative, a forum for rubber-stamping Putin's decisions.

In the second place—and this is why this was the end and not merely a crisis—the Russian people gave its consent. Nobody stood up. There were no demonstrations, mass protests, acts of civil disobedience. The electorate took it lying down and agreed to live, not only without Yavlinsky, but without democracy. It agreed to be treated like an idiot. According to an official opinion poll, 12 percent of Russians thought United Russia representatives gave the best account of themselves in the preelection television debates. This despite the fact that the representatives of United Russia flatly refused to take part in any television debates. They had nothing to say other than that their actions spoke for them. As Aksyonov
remarked, “The bulk of the electorate said, ‘Let's just leave things the way they are.’ ”

In other words, let's go back to the USSR—slightly retouched, slicked up, modernized, but the good old Soviet Union, now with bureaucratic capitalism where the state official is the main oligarch, vastly richer than any property owner or capitalist.

The corollary was that, if we were going back to the USSR, then Putin was definitely going to win in March 2004. It was a foregone conclusion. The presidential administration concurred, and lost all sense of shame. In the months that followed, right up until March 14, 2004, when Putin was indeed elected, the checks and balances within the state vanished, and the only restraint was the president's conscience. Alas, the nature of the man and the nature of his former profession meant that was not enough.