#12
Izvestia
July 30, 2002
A BLOWN BUBBLE
A new power party: between triumph and failure
Author: Mikhail Vinogradov, Alexander Sadchikov
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]

AN ANALYSIS ON THE NEW POWER PARTY, UNITED RUSSIA.
A new power party is born by Kremlin masterminds and their allies in the regions and national parliament

Post-perestroika Russia has seen a lot of power parties - Democratic Choice, Russia's Choice, Our Home is Russia, and the hastily concocted Unity. For severla months United Russia has been viewed as a party close to the president. Last week its leaders visited Khabarovsk, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Birobidzhan, and Irkutsk. Today Chairman of its Executive Council Alexander Bespalov will visit Ufa in Bashkortostan. Local branches are being opened in the regions. All these voyages and construction of the party's power vertical is aimed at ensuring United Russia's triumph in the parliamentary election next year.

Izvestia is embarking on a project that will analyze the state of Russia's multi-party system eighteen months before the election. We ran a general review of parties in the July 22 issue (last Monday). Today, we offer a description of specific parties.

United Russia is a young party. Its inaugural congress took place last December in the Kremlin. This is the first power party to emerge from beyond the Kremlin wall.

Finding the author of the idea is probably impossible. The authorship was ascribed to political technologist Gleb Pavlovsky, Deputy Director of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, his boss Alexander Voloshin, and Mr. Bespalov. In any case, this is something wholly new in Russian politics.

Finding the senior functionaries of the party is a difficult undertaking. The command structure of the party is complicated and tangled. There is the Supreme Council comprising 18 men and controlled by Sergei Shoigu, Yuri Luzhkov, and Mintimer Shaimiyev. They are like founding fathers of the three components of United Russia, namely Unity, Fatherland, and All Russia. The remaining fifteen members of the Supreme Council are essentially figureheads who simply represent the party's connections in the regions and in society in general. They include an athlete Alina Kabayeva and actor Alexander Kalyagin, governors Vladimir Yakovlev (St. Petersburg) and Sergei Sobyanin (Tyumen), and others. Only a naive person will believe that all these people are really involved in party construction.

The General Council handles party construction. It comprises thirteen functionaries whose prosperity (including financial) depends on the future of the party. General Council Chairman Bespalov is referred to in the registration documents as the leader (no Shoigu, Luzhkov, or Shaimthe major generator of ideas, some of which are quite dubious.

Bespalov's career profile suits Putin's preferences perfectly - he is from St. Petersburg, from the secret services, and he knows the president. Some rumors even indicate that the two are friends. Bespalov himself tries to be vague when asked about his relations with the president: we do meet every now and then, he often says. This may be just a part of his image. To crown it all, Bespalov worked with Anatoly Sobchak once. (As one political technologist put it, "only a lazy FSS officer nowadays would not claim to have worked with Sobchak at some point in the past".)

Bespalov remained for a long time in the background, behind mouthpieces of the party that are Vyacheslav Volodin, Vladimir Pekhtin, and Oleg Morozov, leaders of Duma factions of the United Russia. There are rumors that the seat on the senate was needed for Bespalov to try his hand in public politics. The position of assistant plenipotentiary representative in the Central federal region did not give the opportunity. Besides, Bespalov has a serious task in the Federation Council. He has to build the senators' representation in United Russia because the position of the party in the upper house of the parliament are clearly weak.

There are no formal reasons to believe that leadership of United Russia will be replaced before the parliamentary election. Sources close to the presidential administration say, however, that this must be done: the current team is not up to the tasks. On the other hand, however, no radical steps will help the party.

In the short history of United Russia, the program and ideology of the party became the stumbling stones for its upper echelons and rank party members more than once. Mechanical symbiosis of Unity and Fatherland-All Russia ended with a conflict between liberal and social democrats within the same structure. The inaugural congress of last December made it clear that party leaders had different views on he ideology of centrism. Shaimiyev said that the party "needs a shift to the right", then Luzhkov advocated socialist values, and delegates spoke of statehood and "a patriotic ideology".

In the long run, the pendulum swung to the left. The last congress of United Russia held in spring 2002 proclaimed social democratic slogans - war on impoverishment, protection of the rights of budget-funded employees, etc.

A party functionary said: The task was as follows: try to get some votes from the Communists and play on their field. We assumed that our voters would vote for us, and wanted some left electorate as well.

The essence of the slogans, however, collided with the form of their implementation. Leaders of the European Union did not know how to protect the rights of budget sphere employees in practice. Everything ended in staged functions which did not bind party members to anything. Some problems were encountered with initiatives as well. According to information gathered by Izvestia, Kremlin analysts eventually got fed up with inventing initiatives for United Russia.

Ideology has not been found yet. The closer the elections gets, the more fierce debates over self-identification of United Russia will become. A lot of party members are not worried by the lack of ideology. Many of them were democrats and centrists over the past decade. They do not care about ideologies, only about their own place in the power structure. There are some problems with society as well. According to one analyst, "society does not care about ideologies. It is too lazy and poorly organized to care about ideas. It reacts to familiar faces only."

There are two kinds of political parties: the staff and the popular. The majority of Russian parties fall into the first slot, while the second is reserved for the Communist Party alone. A popular, masses-centered party breeds future leaders and sends them to the executive branch of government. The organization is actually ruled by the upper echelons of the apparatus. Supporters are united in local organizations, accepting all orders from the top.

Staff parties are virtually independent of the masses and, on the other hand, cannot control them as they think best. Supporters of these parties (not necessarily members) are men who dabble into politics only in their spare time. Their local organizations are something like clubs. Their leadership structure is a bit vague. The apparatus performs purely technical functions and does not engage in politics.

United Russia is intended to become a mass part, "a CPSU of our time", "an alternative to the CPRF." Its leaders make attempts every now and then to make just that of the party but most experts agree that it is not going to happen in the foreseeable future. Party leaders (Bespalov and Co) are typical leaders of a staff party. 90% of its make up are deputies of three centrist factions of the Duma and some members of the Federation Council. These men are virtually independent of the next party level, regional structures. Even the United Russia charter states that leaders of regional structures are people proposed by the center.

In presidential and gubernatorial elections the party always supports the candidate with the best chances. In some cases, they are acting governors, in others they are people who do not irritate the Kremlin. Party leaders are very perceptive in this respect. The Krasnoyarsk episode displayed the true nature of this practice when United Russia supported three candidates at once. The party has never promoted its own candidate yet, a nuance which is revealing in itself. It shows that regional structures of the party are not ready for a serious fight yet and that the party is not prepared to challenge regional bureaucracies. There is another problem: United Russia does not have able candidates.

United Russia has 87 regional structures now. A wave of inaugural conferences swept the country in spring when local political councils were elected. The councils are headed by men taught in the Moscow region, "the best" representatives of local elite groups - mayors, vice governors, businessmen. In Yakutsk, for example, the local council is chaired by Mayor Ilya Mikhalchuk, in Yekaterinburg by Mayor Arkady Chernetsky, and the Karelin council is headed by Vladimir Sobinsky, owner of the Kondopozh Bakery. The list can be extended. Local councils are also headed by men prominent by regional standards, often answerable to heads of local organizations. Party construction is supervised by Franz Klintsevitch, deputy leader of the Unity faction and leader of the Union of Afghan War Veterans. Some positions of power in regional organizations were therefore reserved for men from the Union of Afghan War Veterans. The major emphasis is made on the weight of every specific party functionary in his respective region. One thing unites all these men: they may claim a deputy mandate.

When regional organizations were formed, United Russia did not escape the so called party franchising. The men elected into political councils should not have been elected in the first place, they do not need instructions from Moscow. They are quite independent and self- sufficient at the local levels. They are merely using the brand of United Russia to find finances for the party's tasks and for their own ambitions.

It took United Russia a short period to establish almost 1,500 local organizations. According to a party functionary, most local organizations are established in the following manner: Some official of the municipal or regional organization finds an acquaintance who agrees to handle all organizational matters in establishing a cell (students are usually used for that). When the cell is formed, it exists only on paper. The higher organization which is supposed to be the donor does not sent any money or even instructions. According to some rumors, money for local organizations will come only by the Duma election, and the sums will be modest. In this case, rank party members are supposed to advance the party on the grass root levels and become perfect observers plaguing local election commissions.

It is always difficult to know about a party's financial sources unless it exists solely on party membership fees, but that is something even the Communist Party cannot afford. Neither can United Russia even if and when it raises its membership figure to 800,000 people as Bespalov wants. All the same, the power party cannot complain. Sources in the upper echelons of United Russia's political enemies say that the executive branch of government allocated almost $5 million to centrists in summer 2002 alone. The figure is fantastic (budget of a properly staffed Duma party usually amounts to $1 million in a non-election year), but numerous functions organized by United Russia indicate that this might be true. We are talking about an unprecedented PR campaign with numerous billboards all over the country. In Moscow one of such billboard costs $200 a month. The sum is smaller in the provinces but the nationwide campaign costs a lot all the same.

According to Izvestia's sources, the party's treasure chest is replenished from several sources. There are rumors that some money come from the upper echelons of the executive branch of government, where United Russia has the support of a deputy director of the presidential administration. Some serious sums come from business tycoons but men like that never put all eggs in one basket. United Russia is not the only party they sponsor.

The party's personnel policy in the regions brings about some financial results as well: local businessmen with contacts in local organization invest a great deal. And finally, the party gets some money from the activities of members already sitting on legislatures. The centrist majority in the Duma has already displayed its lobbying capacities, which is backed up by senators.

United Russia's chances of getting into the next Duma are not bad at all. The party will poll 20-25% votes even if the status quo is preserved (absence of ideology and mistakes of the leadership) and does not make any serious effort. The figures may actually be larger due to use of administrative resource. On the other hand, a great deal will depend on the party's relations with the president. Vladimir Putin personally attended its inaugural congress but serious analysts are skeptical about rumors that Putin may become party leader before the election. Moreover, Izvestia has gathered that leaders of Duma factions were ordered by the Kremlin to drop the subject altogether.

Most probably, regional structures will be formed in the fall and leaders of all levels will be elected. The party will have a year to acquaint voters with its tasks and goals and challenge its major rivals, the Communists in the regions. In any case, the Communist Party is not the worst threat United Russia is facing. The threat is in the projects to modify it or find "some other major player" like the Party of Life for example (it will be all too easy to find another man from St. Petersburg and "presidential pal" for its leader). There are rumors as well that United Russia may become part of the electoral bloc with Raikov's People's Party, Mironov's Party of Life, and Seleznev's socialists.

A party functionary said: Some people read too much of Western textbooks and constantly invent one thing or the other. Like the Party of Life. This is a purely commercial undertaking having nothing to do with politics.

A political technologist said: Every power party is conditional. The bubble of United Russia can bust as easily as it was inflated in the first place. It is much more interesting to find new men, like we did with Unity in 1999, and some political technologist will make something of them.

(Translated by A. Ignatkin)