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Capital’s one man state
Vladimir Putin is concentrating more and more power in his
own hands. The arrest of big business opponents is one step. Another was last
December’s parliamentary elections which gave him effective control of 70% of
the seats. The trend is set to continue with the presidential election in March.
ROB JONES reports from Moscow.
THERE USED TO be a joke in the former Soviet Union that
involved the TV newsreader announcing the results of next week’s elections. Now,
after the degradation of society that has accompanied the restoration of
capitalism and the growing disillusionment in the ‘democratic’ process, it seems
that Russia’s new ruling elite decides in advance how many votes it wants and
then ‘manages’ the elections to ensure the desired outcome. December’s
parliamentary elections and the coming presidential election reflect the
disillusionment of the masses and the cynicism of the ruling elite, which has
crudely manipulated the elections into a superficial show, with more in common
with the fixed votes of the Stalinist past than with parliamentary elections in
Western Europe.
Typical of this cynicism is the horse trading in the duma
(parliament) since the election. President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party
gained 37% of the vote on the party list. When the deputies elected on a
first-past-the-post constituency basis were added to those elected by
‘proportional’ representation, United Russia was two deputies short of a
majority. Since then, nearly 80 deputies from other parties, or elected as
‘independents’, have joined the United Russia bloc, giving it nearly 70% of the
deputies, enough to amend the constitution.
To these should be added 36 deputies from Vladimir
Zhirinovskii’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), which in every critical vote
over the past ten years supported the Kremlin. For the first few months of the
new duma at least, Putin will face little opposition pushing through even more
draconian laws on trade union rights, ‘reforms’ of pension and housing, and
preparation for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organisation (WTO).
An extreme bout of soul-searching has struck the three
parties that did particularly badly. The two neo-liberal parties – Union of
Rightist Forces (SPS) and Yabloko – officially gained nearly 9% of the vote
between them yet have only half-a-dozen seats because neither party crossed the
5% barrier entitling them to seats allocated on a proportional basis. For the
SPS, containing as it does former premiers and senior ministers, this was a
particularly hard blow. Two of the best-known leaders, Yegor Gaidar and the
oligarch Anatoly Chubais, were premier and privatisation minister respectively
in the early 1990s, when they pushed through an extreme Thatcherite programme of
mass privatisation of public services. In that period, the ruling elite was
directly interested in forcing through the restoration of capitalism using the
most radical methods, involving the unfettered opening up of the economy to
private ownership. Now, however, the ruling elite is trying to consolidate
ownership into Russian hands and no longer sees the neo-liberals as useful to
their cause.
Many commentators have argued that SPS and Yabloko would
have done better if they had run as a joint bloc. But the two parties have
different electoral bases. The Thatcherite SPS appeals to the urban new rich,
whilst Yabloka, although it has a neo-liberal economic programme, gets most of
its support from urban intellectuals, students, lecturers – the very people
losing out most from the neo-liberal ‘reforms’. Meetings to try to decide on a
joint presidential candidate failed to reach agreement.
The worst blow dealt during the elections, however, was to
the Communist Party (KPRF), which saw its number of seats more than halved.
After the previous election in 1999, Genaddy Seleznyov (KPRF) was elected duma
speaker. In the first session of this new parliament, KPRF deputies were bluntly
told to shut up ‘in accordance with the number of seats’ they hold.
During the campaign, the KPRF complained bitterly about the
unfair nature of the election. The mass media, in particular TV, was hugely
biased in favour of United Russia. In the last couple of weeks of the campaign,
however, Zhirinovskii also featured prominently. This was a conscious attempt to
increase the turnout. The people who vote for Zhirinovskii tend to be from a
lumpenised section of society, and would not vote for any other party. Yet the
LDPR represents no threat to the Kremlin.
The vote gained by United Russia was also inflated by false
reporting, especially in republics such as Tatarstan, Bashkiria and Kalmikia
where the regime is particularly undemocratic. Several of these areas reported
60-70% votes for United Russia. One of the highest reported votes was from the
mountain regions of Chechnya, which are actually controlled by separatists. But
the KPRF organised its own count and discovered that, while the vote for United
Russia was inflated by three million, bringing down the percentages for SPS and
Yabloko (according to the KPRF, Yabloko breached the 5% barrier), the numerical
vote for the KPRF was fairly accurate.
The main reason for the drop in the KPRF vote is linked to
its failure to offer any real opposition to the Kremlin. Whilst the party is
usually described as on the left, it is difficult to draw analogies with Western
European left parties as many of its policies are more comparable with those of
the European right. It favours a strong state and army, and supports the most
conservative policies in relation to the family and national rights. On social
issues, such as the ecology, drugs and youth rights, parties such as Yabloko
tend to have a much more ‘left’ position. But even within the context of its own
policies, the KPRF leadership was particularly stupid in its electoral tactics.
With Putin in power and the swing away from pro-Western neo-liberalism to a more
state-dominated Russian protectionism, the KPRF found itself in direct
competition with the Kremlin for the ‘patriotic vote’. The formation by the
Kremlin of the Rodina (Homeland) party three months before the election, led by
KPRF fellow traveller and ideologue of protectionism, Sergei Glazyev, and
Russian chauvinist and former governor of Voronezh, Dmitrii Rogozin, further cut
the potential for a KPRF appeal to patriotism. Yet this is exactly what it tried
to do. Social and class issues were pushed to the back and chauvinists and
anti-Semites headed the party’s list.
Oil in the machine
EVEN MORE REMARKABLE was the effective sale of several
places on the KPRF list to representatives of the oil industry. So when the
oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovskii was arrested, the KPRF was seen as supporting
these unsavoury businessmen. Unlike the last election when a significant layer
of workers backed the KPRF as the main opposition to the Kremlin, there is much
anecdotal evidence to indicate that quite a large number of members and
traditional KPRF voters either did not vote or were among the 5% or so voting
against all candidates.
The Khodorkovskii arrest had a big influence on this
election. Arrested for tax evasion, it is also being suggested that he was
involved in the murder of local politicians who blocked his business plans in
the mid-1990s. Few doubt that he is guilty and his arrest is viewed by many as
an attempt by Putin to bring the oligarchs, who ran and profited from mass
privatisation, back into line. Khodorkovskii was picked on because of his open
financing of SPS, Yabloko and the KPRF in the election. The arrest was a warning
to other sections of the new bourgeoisie not to step out of line.
Behind Khodorkovskii’s arrest, however, are even bigger
geo-political interests. Khodorkovskii is seen as the most pro-Western of the
oligarchs and has a particularly close relationship to the US administration,
having been wined and dined by George Bush Senior and Junior, Dick Cheney and
Condoleezza Rice over the past few months. At their prompting, Khodorkovskii,
then head of the oil giant Yukos, was planning a private pipeline across Russia.
Such a project would give control of oil exports to private industry (and the US
an alternative to Saudi Arabian oil) and destroy Russian government control over
the volume of oil exported. Russia is vying with Saudi Arabia to be the world’s
leading oil exporter. A private pipeline threatened to give the US government,
through Khodorkovskii’s links to Chevron-Texaco and Exxon-Mobil, effective
control over the world oil price and the Russian economy. Immediately after the
attacks on Yukos started, the Saudi royal family made its first official visit
to Russia for over 70 years, seeing the arrests as a sign that Russia would
follow an oil policy independent of the US.
The Rodina bloc made the exploitation of natural resources
one of the main issues during the campaign. It is estimated that Russia has 60%
of the world’s non-renewable energy resources, including 20% of oil reserves,
35% of natural gas, and 12% of coal. In addition, there are huge reserves of
gold, diamonds, platinum and other precious and ferrous metals. In theory, these
are owned by the state but the private companies now exploiting these reserves
pay hardly any taxes. Rodina, whose proposals were echoed by both the KPRF and
United Russia, argues that these companies, mostly controlled by the oligarchs,
should pay taxes on the natural resources they exploit. As Glazyev points out,
in other countries, such as Norway and Saudi Arabia, oil companies pay up to 80%
in taxes. In Russia they pay practically nothing. Glazyev claims that such a tax
would generate $50 billion a year, enough to double salaries and pensions within
two years. Indeed, claims like this and the general ‘anti-oligarch’ image
presented by Rodina enabled it to build its support to 9% of the vote within
three months.
Communists split
IN PAST ELECTIONS, Glazyev has been prominent on the KPRF
list and originally the leadership wanted to include him this time. But his
participation in Rodina helped to squeeze the KPRF vote and the party is now in
deep crisis. At its post-election congress, different tendencies vied for
position. The conservatives, the Stalinist-Brezhnevite wing who think that the
clock can somehow be reversed to the stability and relative prosperity of the
late Soviet period, have been losing influence as their supporters grow older.
However, they launched an attack on the prominent place given to oil companies
on the party list. The Russian chauvinists have seen their position weakened as
a result of Putin’s coming to power and his drive to strengthen the state
apparatus.
The so-called ‘modernisers’ want to create a newer, more
social-democratic type of party. One of the driving forces behind this tendency
is Ilya Ponomarov, who was appointed a year ago as the CP’s image maker. Before
that he was head of PR for Yukos! Ponomarov’s understanding of social democracy
is not that gradually capitalism should be reformed out of existence and
replaced by a form of socialism. On the contrary, he believes that big
businesses should use a (small) part of their wealth to patronise education,
health and social welfare. Already Yukos is widely involved in sponsoring higher
education. Indeed, one of the victims of Khodorkovskii’s arrest was the rector
of Moscow’s Humanitarian University, sacked for effectively allowing Yukos to
take over the university administration.
KPRF leader, Gennady Zhuganov, has attempted to balance
between the different wings of the party. Due to the electoral failure, however,
his position has become untenable. He will not run as presidential candidate,
although he remains head of the party’s duma group.
In the immediate aftermath of the elections, the three main
opposition parties (SPS, Yabloko and KPRF) spoke of boycotting the presidentials
in protest at the unfair nature of the parliamentary vote. This would have been
significant because by law a 50% turnout is required for the election to be
valid. Although the boycott could undermine the authority of Putin’s
re-election, the very fact that the opposition has been forced to discuss this
option is a sign of its impotence in mobilising opposition. Marxists would not
normally call for a boycott. If it had gone ahead, however, Socialist Resistance
(CWI Russia) would have participated, while explaining the need to build a
genuine workers’ party to mobilise real opposition to Putin and his capitalist
backers.
SPS and Yabloko, although not announcing an official
boycott, have not nominated a candidate. Over the New Year, however, an SPS
leader, Irina Khakamada, announced her personal candidature. This was under
pressure from the Kremlin to create the image of a real election, and it has
been suggested that the Kremlin will help her collect the two million signatures
needed for nomination. The KPRF also has backed off from a boycott by nominating
Nikolai Kharitonov, leader of the Agrarian Party, as its candidate. The Agrarian
Party, mainly supported by the poor and elderly rural population, wavered
between supporting the KPRF and Putin, more often the latter, in the previous
duma. This means that the three best-known candidates in previous elections –
Grigori Yavlinski, Zhuganov and Zhirinovskii, who has passed the gauntlet to his
bodyguard – will not be participating. Rodina has so far proposed two
candidates, former central banker, Viktor Gerashchenko, and Glazyev, nominations
also pushed by the Kremlin. The leader of the upper house, Sergei Mironov,
member of the Party of Life, set up by Lyudmila Putin (the president’s wife),
and another member of United Russia, the ultra-right, anti-Semitic
pharmaceutical magnate, Vladimir Bryntsalov, have also been nominated.
The Kremlin has been deprived of the participation of
Zhirinovskii, who could have been used in a repeat of the French presidential
stand-off between Chirac and Le Pen in 2002 to frighten people into voting for
Putin. With the possible exception of Glazyev, none of the other candidates
offer any credible alternative. This makes it likely that Putin will win in the
first round if people can be persuaded to turn out. Discussing a possible low
turnout, one of the main bourgeois papers, Nezavisimaya, warned that the Kremlin
could use special tactics – packing ballot boxes or a ‘terrorist’ act just
before the election – to spur people on to vote.
Centralising power
THE OPEN DISCUSSION of these options shows how superficial
is the democracy that exists in Russia. In a stable bourgeois democracy there
are many different institutions (upper and lower houses, government, judiciary,
mass media, police, etc) which all ultimately serve capitalism but act as a
check on one another, ensuring that no one person or group concentrates too much
power in their hands. But since Putin came to power, the already weak powers
held by these other bodies have been steadily whittled away and power
concentrated more and more into the hands of the Kremlin. The parliamentary and
presidential elections are further steps in this process.
The fate of prime minister, Mikhail Kasyanov, who is seen as
being too close to some of the oligarchs in ex-president Boris Yeltsin’s
‘family’, is also under question. He could be replaced by defence minister,
Sergei Ivanov, usually seen as a leading advocate of the Siloviki – the armed
forces and secret police. If Kasyanov goes, there could be an accompanying
change in the way the government is formed. Up till now, the president has
appointed and sacked ministers. It has been suggested that in future the
government will be made up of representatives of the parties in the duma.
Although this appears more democratic, when Putin’s party has 70% of the seats,
such a move will make the government even more dependent on his patronage.
Putin has continued to get away with this, notwithstanding
signs of growing dissatisfaction, because of the continuing growth in the
economy and, consequently, a certain growth in wages and pensions. Official
statistics indicate that the economy grew by about 7% in 2003, significantly up
from 2002’s 4%. But this is almost exclusively due to the high price of raw
materials, particularly oil and gas, on the world market. Nearly 78% of the
growth in industrial production has been driven by exports, increases in
domestic spending accounts for 15%, and capital investment growth has actually
dropped slightly to 7%. Given that Putin and the majority of the Russian
bourgeoisie have openly declared that they do not want the economy to be so
dependent on oil and gas, it is quite possible that the government will take on
board the proposals of Rodina to increase taxes on the exploitation of natural
resources.
The economic growth should also be put into context. Gross
national product (GNP), which in 1998 fell to 56% of the 1989 level, has now
only climbed to about 75%, with industrial production last year on 66%, and
capital investment at 36% of that in 1989. Exports are at 184%, imports are
still 10% lower. Real incomes are 15% lower than in 1989, but that does not take
into account astronomical increases in the costs of housing, transport,
education and healthcare. Even if the current growth continues, it will be 2011,
20 years after the coup that smoothed the road to capitalist restoration, before
GNP reaches the level it was in 1989! And the cost in human terms, in bloody
coups and wars, and the growth of terrorism has been colossal. Demographic
research indicates that one million lives have ended earlier than would have
been the case in Soviet times, due to the increase in alcoholism, crime, stress
and other factors. Male life expectancy has fallen from 65 in 1985 to 58 today.
In most countries, a million lives cut sort would be treated as a huge crime
against humanity.
Despite this current growth, Russia has not entered a period
when things are just going to get better. On the contrary, the ruling elite, by
putting all its weight behind Putin, has created a monster that could well come
back to haunt it. The workers’ movement is practically inactive, partly because
of the economic growth, partly because of repression, and partly because of the
lack of any leadership capable of mobilising resistance. But events in the
advanced capitalist world and further attacks on workers’ rights and living
standards will make it impossible for the working class not to fight back. When
that begins to happen, the ruling elite will find that splits will open up, even
in Putin’s own party, and its failure to build strong institutions of bourgeois
rule will leave it facing crises with a weak and unstable one-man state to
maintain control.
State duma election results, 7 December 2003
Party
list vote (%) list seats SMD seats
Total (1999 totals)
United Russia
37.57 120
102
222 (Unity & Fatherland 141)
Communists (KPRF) 12.61
40 12
52 (113)
Rodina
9.02
29
8
37 ( - )
LDPR
11.45
36
0
36 (17)
People’s Party
1.18
0 17
17 ( - )
Yabloko
4.03
0
4
4 (20)
SPS
3.97
0
3
3 (29)
Agrarian Party
3.64
0
2
2 ( - )
Others
11.56
0
6
6 (16)
Independents
68
68 (105)
Against all
4.7
3
3 (9)
Duma seats are divided into 225 seats allocated to parties
gaining over 5% of the vote on the party lists, and 225 going to individuals
elected to single member districts (SMD).
United Russia was formed by the merger of the Unity and
Fatherland-All Russia parties in 2001. In the 1999 election Unity won 23.3% (73
seats), Fatherland 13.3% (68).
Elections for the three seats down as ‘Against all’ have to
be re-run (14 March). In these districts, the number of votes ‘against all’
exceeded the votes for any one candidate.
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