On to the next episode

It's always hard to come back from a hiatus of a few weeks, especially in such eventful times. One builds up so many things to say which have remained unsaid for so long...

But happily others have had much to say about last Sunday's Duma elections - SiberianLight has a few posts with pretty-colored graphics; Moscow Rules gave his impressions from ground zero; Wally Shedd weighed in; PutinWatcher has had some interesting posts on the elections, including this one; Jesse Heath at Russia Monitor put up a valiant effort in the face of law school finals; Robert Amsterdam's blog had wall-to-wall coverage as usual; Veronica at Global Voices Online wrote a couple of roundup posts and posted a link on her own blog to a fantastic article that I hope to have time to translate; TOL's dedicated elections blogs covered events in English and in Russian [UPD - engrossed in that orgy of link love, I somehow neglected to mention the kingpin of Russian election coverage, Mr. Guillory]; and of course the izbircom LJ community had lots and lots of reports about what went down last Sunday at the polls.

Speaking of the ties that IzbirCom (that's the Central Electoral Commission, or TsIK) has to the blogosphere, it looks like the powers-that-be at TsIK have realized the power of the internet. The LiveJournal community represents TsIK's first attempt at a blog, although they don't seem to have put a link to the community anywhere on the main TsIK website. Here's what one member of the electoral commission had to say about the effort in an interview:

This electoral cycle is the first time that TsIK has set up a blog. Is this a faddish thing or a real instrument to increase voter turnout and popularize the institution of elections?

Fashion and popularization are inextricably connected, but to be more specific, we understand perfectly well that the Internet is a very important instrument for communicating and broadcasting information. Therefore, Russia's TsIK cannot ignore this method of communicating with and receiving feedback from the citizens of our country. We are of course interested in ensuring that active Internet users (first and foremost, the younger generation) know about the elections and in giving them a chance to state their position and to ask us questions, and in having the chance to search together with them for answers which are important to everyone.

TsIK's effort at mastering the blogosphere is being trumpeted on the Vzglyad-, Kremlin- and Zaputina-affiliated "internet TV channel" parked at the posh "Russia.ru" domain, which has a very nicely produced video clip titled "Our Man in TsIK":

The clip (nestled in among other classic Russia.ru content - clips with titles like "Bondarchuk is for Putin," "30-year-olds are for Putin," "The Crisis ofLiberalism," "Day of the Jackal" (featuring Nemtsov) and "Nizhnii on the Rise") is shot in black-and-white, with one of the songs from the classic spy thriller "17 Moments of Spring" as part of the soundtrack.

Prominently featured in the nearly nine-minute video are two fairly widely read bloggers from the RuBlogosphere - Sholademi and Casualmente (who also has a friends-only journal here) - who are the "curators" or moderators of the electoral commission's LJ community. I can't help noticing, though perhaps it should be irrelevant, that neither of these bloggers is an ethnic Russian. The bloggers are shown helping TsIK Chairman Churov learn to surf the web, and it is suggested that they will have regular audiences with Churov and may have exclusive scoops for their readers.

The LJ community looks like a way for the authorities to demonstrate that they are attentive to potential complaints about the elections. On an LJ community, any blogger can sign up and post material (subject to the moderators' approval), and according to the izbircom community's profile, Churov and/or his colleagues read the postings there regularly.

And the nice publicity given to the bloggers involved looks like a kind way for the government to reward and encourage its helpers, sort of like the "Golden Hundred" rating of journalists on the Press-Ministry-sponsored Mediacratia website. I don't necessarily want to criticize the bloggers involved - after all, they really did provide a good vehicle for feedback - e.g., this open thread calling for reports of ballot-rigging - much of which was critical of the elections. However, it's another matter entirely whether the authorities cared to read that feedback, and it's certainly possible to see this foray onto the Internet as just another bit of legitimizing window-dressing for Putin's Plan.

I may have a few more retrospective posts about the Duma campaign when I get some more free time, although the issues may start to seem stale fairly quickly - lord knows I've stored up lots of interesting links over the past few weeks on issues like election observers, western-oriented "jackals," and the like.

The only thought I had when I saw the poll results - and I've read enough to know that it wasn't a unique reaction - was that the result for "Fair Russia" seemed awfully high for a party which had been hemorrhaging high-profile members for months before the elections.

For now, Russia is on to the next episode - the Presidential race (or whatever form of succession the next few months have in store) is already gathering steam, although even VVP expressed a sense of weariness about having to go through another round of elections.