It is once again a “party in our sandbox”, as Soviet journalist and dissident Alexander Podrabinek put it: “Grown-up children are preparing to play at elections.” Russians will vote on 20 September to replace the eighth State Duma, as well as local legislatures and offices in several regions of the Russian Federation.
Everyone understands perfectly well that these are not real elections, but "a complete farce, yet the game itself is captivating."
One can imagine that everything is real, from registering candidates to winning seats in parliament. One can use one's imagination and ask others to play along, to make the game more authentic. So that everything is like adults, like democracies.
The most paradoxical thing about this story is that both the government and the opposition, especially the liberal Yabloko party, are actively participating in the game. Each side has its reasons, but one thing unites the players: both are approaching the elections in a consumerist and manipulative manner.
The elections themselves, which have long since been a farce, are of little interest to anyone. The government's utilitarian approach to the elections is dictated by a desire to preserve a democratic façade; the opposition wishes to demonstrate its resilience despite repression and the degradation of democratic institutions.
The game, however, took a worrying turn on 10 August, when the Supreme Court cancelled Yabloko's registration at the request of the ultranationalist Rodina party, on trivial grounds, claiming irregularities in the composition of the lists.
This has elevated the political debate to an even more paradoxical level, highlighting the growing popularity of liberals, especially among young Russians. Surveys suggested that the party, established in the 1990s when Boris Yeltsin was president, could take up to 20 per cent of the vote, something unacceptable for the Kremlin.
While awaiting the appeal that could reinstate the party, Yabloko leaders are issuing bombastic statements, as if they had already won the election. The party's historic founder, Grigory Yavlinsky, stressed that the campaign slogan "For peace and freedom!", calling for a halt to military action and the start of real peace negotiations.
Party president Nikolai Rybakov claims that “this way, the authorities are supporting the people who are leading the country to catastrophe”, and the head of the Moscow section, Kirill Goncharov, quips that "we all thank and bow to those who excluded us, because they are proving those who support us right, and who, in the future, will know who to vote for."
The opposition's reasons are clear, but their way of asserting themselves is rather unfortunate, like a poet seeking recognition who arrives at the site of a public execution and, taking advantage of the large crowd gathered in the square, begins reading his poems about nature from the scaffold. They may even be beautiful words, but, somehow, they seem out of place.
There's no need to trivialise elections by turning them into a squalid operetta with a predictable outcome, nor to belittle them by watering down their content for the sake of political calculations.
Journalist Podrabinek, who spent five and a half years in a Soviet concentration camp for asserting his views in defence of democracy, wonders whether it's worth "ignoring the principles of the electoral system and the idea of parliamentarism for fleeting political gain."
Indeed, it seemed rather strange that a government as authoritarian as Putin's would engage in such futile games: Why would a personalist dictatorship need democratic transformation?
The answers may vary, but the fact remains: Tyrannies like to look good, they like to pretend to be democratic, and sometimes they go to considerable lengths to achieve this goal.
In the Soviet Union, participation in elections was mandatory, strictly controlled by party authorities, local officials, and state security.
At the same time, candidates from the Communist Bloc and non-party members in the Supreme Soviet elections always received a mandatory 99.9 per cent of the vote, and in the annexed and rebel Baltic republics, 99.8 per cent. After all, the game had to have at least some semblance of truth.
In Nazi Germany, in the 1936 Reichstag elections, also unopposed, the National Socialist German Workers' Party won 98.80 per cent of the vote, and in 1938, 99.08 per cent. As you might expect, voter turnout in both "elections" exceeded 99 per cent.
In North Korea’s "parliamentary elections" in March of this year, the United Democratic Front of the Fatherland, composed of the Workers' Party of Korea, the Social Democrats, the Young Friends of the Heavenly Path Party, and independent candidates, received 99.93 per cent of the vote. Voter turnout, of course, was 99.99 per cent.
In the 2023 Cuban parliamentary elections, the communist government nominated 470 candidates, all of whom were elected. A 100 per cent success, without electoral tricks or other democratic gimmicks, which reminded Podrabinek of a joke about Soviet-era elections: God brings Adam to Eve and says, “Okay, Adam, now choose your wife.”
In some countries with despotic governments, certain exceptions are permitted, within limits that do not threaten the stability of the regime.
Iran holds actual parliamentary and presidential elections, but the real power, both de facto and de jure, lies with the country's religious leader, the supreme leader (rahbar), and state bodies are subordinate to him, including the Expediency Discernment Council and the Guardian Council.
If all power is firmly concentrated in the hands of an autocrat, why not indulge in a little democracy? The Kremlin is playing the same game today: the closer the elections, the more thoroughly the authorities flaunt their authoritarianism.
Some émigré politician is given a severe but unenforceable sentence, some opposition figure is labelled a "foreign agent”, and now Yabloko is suspended.
This is to show to everyone that the authorities take the elections seriously and fear losing, so that no one thinks this is an endless series, a low-brow spectacle that has been played out on the Russian stage for over a quarter of a century.
It is as if adults were playing with children, shouting, "Oh, how scary, how scary!" and the child is elated with joy, laughing and asking to start the game over and over again, endlessly.
Likewise, the Russian government is staging "democratic elections" with the opposition, which also includes communists, liberal nationalists, and law-and-order advocates.
One opposition member bursts into joyous laughter, then another, and to demonstrate that the elections are a serious state event, the government periodically jails opposition members and observers who participate in the game.
Then everyone starts saying that the government genuinely fears an opposition victory, and that is why it is resorting to political repression, as if the ruling party could theoretically lose these “elections”. They point to the decline in support for United Russia and the rise of other parties, more or less loyal to the regime, and so the goal is achieved.
In this malicious way, the government puts a layer of authenticity on its sham elections. While the regime's unfortunate victims pay the price with their freedom, the government uses them to lend credibility to yet another countrywide fraud.
The difference between "show" elections and genuine elections is very simple and clear, as Podrabinek noted. “Genuine parliamentary elections lead to the honest election of the people's representatives to parliament, and if this doesn't happen and the elections aren't genuine, the opposition shouldn't legitimise a grand farce by participating in it just to prove a point to someone or to convey its own political message.”
Opposition politicians should seek other ways to express themselves and consolidate their support without distorting the electoral institution, as the martyr of Putin's dissent, Alexei Navalny, attempted to do. He did not disdain “smart voting” for various parties, but sought to spread a sense of responsibility in the people, who instead now seems to have been lost in the Kremlin sandbox.
RUSSIAN WORLD IS THE ASIANEWS NEWSLETTER DEDICATED TO RUSSIA. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RECEIVE IT EVERY SATURDAY? TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE.
