#12 - JRL 7304
Moscow News
August 27-September 2, 2003
Party Politics Gets Down to Earth
Dmitry Oreshkin, Merkator group
The three summer months have seen a breakthrough in Russian party politics that could have far-reaching implications. Oddly enough, it is about the evolution of a genuine multi-party system, and a basically new substance of partisanship.
Slowly but surely the feeling that politics determine our fates has receded - to be replaced by irritation and fatigue: "To hell with your elections." A very rational reaction, insofar as it marks a change in political culture: There are the problems of the ruling establishment and here are my own problems, and the two have precious little in common. This is a surprising discovery for Homo Soveticus, born to be a cog and never to separate himself from the state.
Centrist Time
The either-or alternative voting pattern - "Either you are for Yeltsin or all hell will break loose"; "If you dont want Luzhkov-Primakov, you must vote for Putin-Shoigu" - which has faithfully served political spin doctors for the past decade, does not work anymore. "For all the abundance of choice there is no real alternative" was the intrinsically conflicting slogan characteristic of those years.
Since the early 1990s, the pragmatic part of the ruling establishment toiled to raise a couple of moderate bourgeois parties that could bear the brunt of parliamentary intrigue - "center left" vs. "center right." Rybkin et al. vs. Chernomyrdin, Shakhrai, etc. Yet it proved impossible to narrow the amplitude of the fateful pendulum. It just had to be opting for the one or the other lot with nothing in between.
Today, the "either-or" dilemma has suddenly declined. As a result, the political focus has shifted to the center with a strange vacuum emerging on the fringe of the political spectrum. Now there are quite a few left-of-center and right-of-center formations. Ideological zeal is gone. Who cares about Viktor Anpilov, a guy even his friends call Bullhorn? Zyuganov positions himself as a European social-democrat. Zhirinovskys rhetoric has acquired a tinge of fatherly wisdom and his eyes, a trace of muffled sorrow.
In short, everyone, absolutely everyone is against sharp political twists and in favor of well-considered moves in the right direction.
What is it, has Russia finally matured?
Corporate Clashirly broad economic, and subsequently political, coalitions have evolved. From purely ideological entities, parties have emerged as interest groups. Today they are confronted with a new problem: either, from old habit, keep harping on the fundamental, and unattainable, values or honestly disclose their real motives. There are too few core values and too many parties. There are not enough of the former to go round. So parties have to explain in simple terms why one is better than another exploiting exactly the same set of ideological cliches. But this disclosure and spelling out of intentions is fraught with loss of electoral base.
The most fierce battles are raging not between the opposite ends of the political spectrum, as before, but between the closest neighbors.
Let us take the "centrists." Whereas United Russia - a party of bureaucracy that has successfully merged with big business - needs stability, statehood, and "great Russia instead of great upheavals," the Peoples Party, formed in the interests of the military that failed to get a cut from the privatization pie, does not see "great upheavals" as an exorbitant price to pay. Indeed, can Russia ever be a really great power if her generals lack property?
But there is also a congenital affinity. Both "centrist" parties - purely corporate structures with pronounced group interests - painstakingly conceal their corporateness from the voter. Both seek to position themselves as a "party of value" and so are unable to divide between themselves the slogans of patriotism, statism, and national character - as well as the president. Unless these two corporations come to terms soon and divvy up the playing field, a new war between "St. Pete men" and the "oligarchs" - their neighbors in the corridors of power - is a foregone conclusion.
Leftist Intrigue
The Communists went through a difficult internal crisis - metamorphosing from an upholder of the interests of the old-style nomenklatura into a purely electoral party. In this sense it is one of the most democratic parties today: With the administrative resources almost entirely controlled by the "centrists," Zyuganovs base is comprised exclusively of ordinary people hungry for justice. Basically, this plays into the Communist hands. The 1990s ideological scares do not wash anymore while, in a country where a large proportion of the population is still dependent on the state budget for its livelihood, the idea of redistributing property and money cannot fail to fire up the masses.
The leftist voter has become visibly more pragmatic. He no longer wants tales about Communist society, or about the Lenin-Stalin cause, come to that. He is more interested in higher wages and social benefits. Zyuganov himself has also become more pragmatic. This was duly appreciated by both Berezovsky and Khodorkovsky, each of whom is falling over himself to invest in such an attractive project. The situation is equally well understood in the presidential staff, which is fielding a powerful Glazyev-Rogozin tandem on the left flank. These two gentlemen are supposed to give the left-of-center voter the picture of the world that he would like to see: a lawful and just seizure of money from the rich and its fair redistribution in the interests of the Motherland. Therefore, Zyuganov will have formidable rivals in the election battles while political intrigue may take an unusual and unpredictable turn.
Ideological Parties
There are only two wholly ideological parties - Yabloko and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, or LDPR. It is indicative that they are identical in their purely leadership structure. Their transition to pragmatic politics is a fascinating process.
The LDPR is better positioned in this respect: Zhirinovskys image enables it to reconcile the irreconcilable, equally convincingly getting its message across to the right, left, rich, poor, nationalists, and internationalists. The main thing is that listeners should not be particularly overburdened with education. They can rest assured that this person will remain one of the most pragmatic Duma members, in this capacity sought after by many.
When it gets down to brass tacks, Yabloko is also extremely pragmatic and flexible. But in dealing with the voter, it is ideological purity incarnate. In this respect its information war with the SPS - its erstwhile ally on the democratic front - is remarkable.
Yablokos ideology puts the ethical above the political. Yabloko does not see anything wrong in teaming up with the Communists or moving away from the ideas of liberalism to dirigisme (something that the right has always referred to as populism) but will strongly object to anyone describing this as treachery.
Either Action or...
There is a basic disagreement between the SPS and Yabloko. The former is ready to sacrifice image to practical goals. The latter, quite the contrary, sacrifices practical goals to a spotless image.
At the end of the day, each has its specific electoral base. That Chubais, with his anti-hero image, has been placed at the top of the SPS federal list means that it intends to position itself as a "party of action." This is a pragmatic move, leaving the ball in Yablokos court: Now it will have to prove that it is not a "party of sheer rhetoric."
The SPS and Yabloko have finally disagreed not only in form but also in substance. The SPS seems the only party on the right flank and will most likely be drifting toward greater conservatism and rightist values in the Western sense of the word. By contrast, Yabloko is increasingly emerging as a leftist-liberal party - a fixture in European parliaments. If there is something in common between them, it is their pro-Western worldview. This is obviously too little if Russia is to evolve in accordance with European pragmatic tradition. So the dream of a "united democratic party of Russia" is history now.
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