It would be wrong to say that the election season in Russia cast any shadows over the 39th Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavi Studies (AAASS) - the world's largest association of scholars of Russia and other former Soviet block countries, which took place in New Orleans on Nov. 14-18. After all, the diverse group of over 1,500 academics is traditionally preoccupied in the days of the convention with another type of election: choosing which often conflicting panels in their area of interest to attend, often ending up shuttling between two or three in the same time slot.

With about 40 discussions taking place in different rooms at any given time on topics ranging from "Tolstoy and Motherhood" to "Imperial Russian Policies Toward Jews," and from "Filming the Soviet Dog: Ideological and Generic Uses of Canine Identities in Soviet Cinema" to "Sex, Smoke and All that Jazz: Luxury and Excess in Postwar Eastern Europe," the choice was indeed difficult. With the attractions of New Orleans' fine restaurants and Bourbon Street just around the corner, the convention also offered excellent opportunities to socialize for colleagues who arrived from universities and think tanks around the world.

With the debate among Russia experts on whether Russia was a democracy clearly over, the overarching theme picked for this convention and reflected in a number of panels was admittedly non-republican: "Persistence of Empire in Eurasia."

Several panels, nonetheless, were understandably dedicated to the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections in Russia. One of them was the roundtable sponsored by Russia Profile, entitled "Russian Elections 2007-2008: Is There any Choice Involved?"

Leon Aron, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a member of Russia Profile's International Advisory Board opened the discussion by reformulating the topic into whether there is an "effective and informed" choice involved. He recalled a paper he had written ahead of the previous parliamentary elections in Russia in 2003. Back then, Aron said, he was in a minority among his colleagues in Washington, because he believed that the elections were still meaningful, because political parties were able to get on the ballot, launch an effective public campaign, get a fair share of media coverage, receive independent private funding, control the candidates on their ballots, and resist or at least diminish the so-called "administrative resources," or the ability of local governments to influence the results of the elections.

Today, he said, on each of these counts, the situation has considerably worsened, citing the government's ability to split and merge the parties and change their leadership, as in the case of Rodina, or absence, after the demise of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, of donors who would fund campaigns without clear instructions from the Kremlin.

"Harassment, cancellation of purchased ads, pamphlets - all of that bespeaks of virtual dominance of the administrative resource," Aron said. "What concerns me most is that, with the absence of an independent judiciary - at least where the affairs of the state are concerned, the Central Electoral Commission is now effectively the final court of appeal. And the CEC, especially with the departure of Alexander Veshnyakov, is now effectively a branch of the government."

There has been an increase in media debates ahead of the elections and some representatives of the opposition, who had previously been blacklisted by the federal television channels, are back in, but it is too little too late for the opposition to get its message across, Aron said.

"I am afraid that, short of a miracle, an honest election, the outcome of which would be the result of an informed and effective choice, is unlikely," he concluded.

The other panelist, Igor Zevelev, head of RIA Novosti's Washington bureau, said in his opening remarks that for Putin, stability has always been more important than democracy. "And now the most important word is continuity. So, the constitution is a mere instrument to provide stability and the elections are a mere instrument to provide continuity of policies. For Putin, order comes first, and then liberty and constitutionalism as he understands them," Zevelev said.

But it is still unclear why the Kremlin seems to have taken so many steps towards assuring that the elections will be "neither free nor fair" when the country looks stable, living standards are growing and the president is very popular.

The main goal for the Kremlin, Zevelev said, is to ensure continuity of policies and to ensure the interests of a small group of people within or close to the Kremlin. Thus the only choice offered to the public in these elections, especially after Putin agreed to lead United Russia's ballot, is to vote in support of Putin or not.

Zevelev has pinned his hopes on the growing Russian middle class, which will gradually demand a better judiciary system to protect their property rights and will realize that a real struggle against corruption is impossible without a competitive political arena. In that, they will follow the pattern of South Korea and other southeast Asian countries, which became truly democratic only after stability was established and followed by the rule of law.

The danger to Russia, said Zevelev, is that, as in the case of Indonesia under Mohammed Suharto, stability may become a mere instrument for protecting the elite's interests. "It is still an open question, for which purpose stability will be used in Russia."

Zevelev's remarks about the middle class generated a lively discussion, in which several participants pointed out that, according to the study of the Russian middle class by the Russian Academy of Sciences, most people who consider themselves belonging to the middle class derive their position from the state or government-owned companies and that civil liberties and democracy is in fact quite low on their priority list. Maria Lipman, editor of the Carnegie Moscow Center's Pro et Contra journal, suggested that perhaps it is not the middle class, but those between the poor and the middle, who are likely to become politicized in the coming years.

Scenarios for Putin remaining in power were another major subject of discussion.

"Sergei Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev [as successors for president] is last year's snow," Aron said. "No one will get it. I think it will be Putin, and there are several constitutional ways to do it. Russia is after all not Belarus or Kazakhstan, the Russians will draw the line on changing the constitution."

"Even as of last summer I thought that it was 55 to 45 percent certain that Putin will step down," Aron said. "Now there is something about what he says and how he says it, how the so-called public organizations are supporting him and the intensity of this support, that all of this seems to have passed the point of no return. Never in Russian history have so few exercised such a control over a wealth that is so vast and so liquid at the same time. For Putin to become prime minister, so much needs to be changed not just in the formal, but in the informal flows of power, so much would need to be redirected from the Kremlin into the office of prime minister, that a lot of powerful and ambitious men in the prime of life would be terribly upset about it."

Lipman supported him, saying that Putin has presided over a major redistribution of property, just as Yeltsin did during his term. But Yeltsin was unable to secure the results of this redistribution, and Putin wants to secure his.

"It takes him personally, not the or a president of Russia, but Putin, because with no institutions or procedures to rely on, Putin is regarded as the only safeguard and arbiter of this redistribution of property."

The panelists agreed that not participating in the elections is one of the few choices offered to the Russian public, making turnout the major issue in the parliamentary elections.

In the meantime, another major threat to stability comes from the infighting elites, the first example of which was shown by the publication of a letter by Viktor Cherkesov, the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, which signaled a confrontation between two groups of security officials.

"The question is whether the squabbling elites will be desperate enough to mobilize the population," Aron said.