Orientalizing post-Soviet politics?

[image source]

Andrew Wilson has an article out on openDemocracy that provides a taxonomy of post-Soviet political systems and where they stand in terms of their employment of "political technology."  The piece is interesting for its anecdotes, and I've always been a big fan of Andrew Wilson's work introducing Westerners to the concept of "political technology."  Some of the main ideas from his seminal 2005 book, Virtual Politics, are outlined in a shorter format in these remarks of his from a few years ago.

The questions that Wilson really seems to be asking with this new article - why do governments of states like Russia and Kazakhstan bother orchestrating falsely competitive elections? what is it about the political culture of certain post-Soviet states that has allowed them to more or less leave the pervasive use of "political technology" behind? are some of these countries destined to remain in some sort of political purgatory, having left behind the "hell" of an authoritarian one-party state but never reaching the "heaven" of the (ultimately unattainable) idealized, squeaky-clean, competitive political system extolled by classic democracy promoters? - are very good ones and have concrete policy applications in addressing Western approaches to other political systems now in transition in the Arab world and elsewhere, not to mention American budgets for the variety of activities that fall under the umbrella of "democracy promotion."

The clarity of the current article's thesis, though, suffers a bit from the author's implication that political dark arts and even practices as benign as the manufacturing of artificial campaign narratives are somehow unique to the post-Soviet space and are something that should be "gotten rid of" as these countries move toward some democratic ideal. 

Is it possible that Wilson believes what he calls the "highly developed industry of political manipulation" that exists in Russia and elsewhere in the region is not in many respects an imitation of our own political system with many more rough edges (and a much smaller price tag, at least when compared to American electoral politics)?  The ghost of Lee Atwater, along with generations of dirty tricksters (from both of America's august major political parties) - not to mention a fella named Breitbart - would beg to differ.

[image source - "history reveals that smear campaigns are as American as apple pie"]

I'm not proposing throwing in the towel and allowing moral relativist "whataboutism" to triumph by making us all shrug and say our systems are no better - because that's not the case.  However, I'm not sure how much we do for the cause of "democracy," however one defines it, by lumping in things like politicized judges, politicians advancing the causes of favored business interests, and advanced political campaigning - which has become a career track and educational specialty in its own right in the U.S. in recent years and includes what Americans call "dirty tricks" and Russians call "black PR" - with factors more uniquely present (one hopes) in the transitional, soft- or hard-authoritarian political systems that Wilson writes about - actual ballot-rigging, the use of law enforcement to muzzle political opponents and domination of the media space by the government.

I also take issue with Wilson's assessment that Moldova became one of the post-Soviet world's "serious potential democracies" only in 2009, but that's another story...

Song for Sarah, and other Election Day bits

In honor of the election watched 'round the world, here is this mildly entertaining contribution to the online body of material (growing fast, but probably with a short shelf life) poking fun at Sarah Palin. It seems to be by a couple of faux Russians, presumably based somewhere in the Lower 48:

If actual Russians could vote, it appears that they would support Obama but be somewhat indifferent, unlike the rest of the world, which seems to favor Obama by a landslide - well, except for Georgia (but see here) and Israel.

The preference for Obama is not shared by Russians who have emigrated to America, reports Ekho Moskvy - they overwhelmingly support McCain. Eugene Ivanov of the Ivanov Report eloquently presents the minority perspective of a pro-Obama Russian-American.

And yes, I know the difference between online polls and actual polls - RIA Novosti has a more advanced take on the traditional online poll, providing visitors with an opportunity to vote "Yes" or "No" on certain key campaign statements supposedly made by the candidates (you vote on each statement without being told which candidate made it).

Users are then told which of the candidates their responses suggest they support. What's interesting about the statements presented is that I doubt some of them ever passed either of the candidates' lips as presented, and a couple even seem a bit like "push-polling" questions. Plus, most of them deal with the US-Russian relationship, which wasn't exactly the focus of the campaign (though I understand why it's the focus of RIAN's fun app). Anyway, the RIAN thing can't be right, because it told me I am torn between McCain and Obama:


On a tangentially related note, by strange coincidence this is the second (presidential) Election Day in a row I'm spending in London. This morning we went to the US Embassy to receive some unrelated American Citizen Services and dropped off our absentee ballots for delivery to the motherland. Unfortunately, no matter who the next president is, I doubt he'll be able to reinvent the world so that our diplomats in friendly nations no longer feel they have to live in bunkers.

And on a barely related note, I wanted to send a congratulatory shout-out to the good people at Global Voices, who received a much more substantial shout-out last week - from the Washington Post - for their excellent Voices Without Votes project.

[update Nov 5] Thank goodness for MSNBC's internet-accessible election coverage. Without it, there is no way I would have been able to stay up into the wee hours of the morning to see McCain concede and Obama orate. Chris Matthews may be annoying, but he's nowhere near as annoying as watching Brits try to fill airtime talking about US politics with D-list "experts."

Here is further confirmation that there is "no Obamamania in Russia" (and I'm not referring to Medvedev welcoming Barry to president-elect status by announcing missile deployments). And some thoughts about the contest from Ukraine.

[update Nov 7] Here is an interesting compilation of Russian elite opinion soundbites from Kommersant-Vlast.

Echoes of Victory Day and the Inauguration

I happened to catch a re-run of the Daily Show a week or two ago and saw Jon Stewart's hilarious and surprisingly on-point riff on the Victory Day parade and Medvedev's inauguration ceremony. Transcribing selected sound bites from the clip wouldn't do it justice - just watch it and laugh:

That - as well as the return of the outstanding Darkness at Noon, which is back on line and has posted an original video of the V-Day festivities in Moscow, inspired me to corral a few links to online material on the events in Moscow of four weeks or so ago.

CSIS's Sarah Mendelson wrote a "critical questions" brief about the significance of the re-militarization of the Victory Day celebrations, which included a brief digression down memory lane, as Mendelson recalled attending a Soviet military parade in late 1990.

Global Voices Online had roundups about both the inauguration and Victory Day. And the always interesting Wu Wei has an interesting account of what it was like to watch Medvedev's inauguration on Georgian TV.

[Update June 15: I wanted to direct readers as well to this link which fell through the cracks - Oleg Panfilov's brief comments stating that the question of who has the upper hand as between Putin and Medvedev will become clear when one of the two begins to enjoy an advantage in TV coverage.]

День Победы...Путина?

Does the way this photo was shot remind you of anything? [image source]

An interesting thing about this era of "tandemocracy" that seems at least for the moment to be upon us - even more than usual, everything can be seen (at least) in two ways. Putin's policy-laden speech to the Duma could be (a) a way for him to show that, in contrast to Medvedev, whose inaugural speech seemed relatively empty (notwithstanding the banalities about human rights and freedoms and the law; mentioning these things is not necessarily indicative of a change or "thaw," after all the idea of "free people in a free society" was prominent in Putin's 2004 inaugural speech and "dictatorship of the law" was a theme dating back to early in Putin's first term), Putin will continue to be the policymaker-in-chief; or (b) a soon-to-be Prime Minister making a speech about domestic policy fully appropriate for someone in his position.

The proposal of an oil tax reduction could be (a) Putin's way of showing the oiligarchs that he is the one who can continue to provide them with goodies (and, again, a way of underscoring who calls the shots on the issues the elites are really concerned about - hint: those issues are not "freedom" and "law") or (b) a thoughtful way to help President Medvedev's first term get started off on a note of optimism. Putin's uncontrolled laughter at Zhirik's silliness in the Duma on May 8 (truly, the court jester amusing the sovereign(s)) could be either (a) the relieved laughter of a man who has had the weight of governing Russia lifted from his shoulders, or (b) the nefarious chortling of a man who finds himself amused by the high position occupied by such a clown within the system he has set up and intends to continue to control.

Allowing Zyuganov's critical speech to the Duma to appear on Channel 1 could be (a) a good way to demonstrate the existence of an opposition while not giving media time to anyone who could actually be a viable independent contender for the presidency in the future or (b) an actual indication of some sort of "thaw" with respect to criticism of the government appearing on the major TV channels. I could go on, but I've probably already lost even my 10 regular readers by this point.

Only time will tell if Medvedev turns out to be his own man as President or simply a "Prezik" to be used by Putin like a condom ("prezik" in Russian slang) to stay safely inside the Russian body politic and later disposed of. Please forgive the metaphor - I'm hardly the first to think of it, and doesn't it work, at least to a point?

[image source]

It's possible that May 8, 2008, will come to be seen as the day Putin began to fade from the scene; at the moment, though, it seems more likely that we'll look back on it as the day VVP changed chairs but kept pulling most of the same strings. The focus of the endless Kremlinoputinology will now turn to the relationship between Vova and Dima and will no doubt include much speculation about when VVP might start thinking about returning to the Kremlin.

One bit of speculation so far has been that the calendar of elections might be changed so that the parliamentary and presidential elections don't fall in the same year, which could entail a new presidential election in 2010, by which time the Constitution could already have been amended to allow for 7-year presidential terms. Putin could serve two of those and be ready for a hard-earned retirement. It's all idle speculation at this point, though.

In any event, from outside Russia, there seems to be hope for a change, hope that the dyarchy will eventually reveal rifts within the ruling elite and the result will be some sort of pluralism - or at least a lurch in the direction of a more cooperative posture towards the West, one that recognizes that interests can coincide and that "defending Russia's national interests" does not always have to mean playing the spoiler to America or resisting what Western countries want. From inside Russia, this prediction seems as good as any other I've seen:

In the circus they only keep the little bears until they're three years old, after that they mature and are unmanageable and extremely aggressive.

There's no doubt that "Operation Successor" has up to now been as successful as its authors could have hoped. If one takes the maximally cynical view of Putin, one must assume he'll be watching Dima like a hawk to make sure the latter doesn't "pull a Putin" and develop a mind of his own. If one believes that Putin is contemplating fading from the scene in a couple of years, well, his first appearance as PM doesn't really suggest a man who's thinking about hanging it up, but perhaps there will be a trend in that direction.

In any event, the country will have a chance to contemplate all of these things today while celebrating the victory over Germany 63 years ago. All seems set for Victory Day. By happy coincidence (actually, the date of Medvedev's inauguration is consistent with the past two inaugurations, so the timing wasn't specially arranged for this year), Putin's confirmation as PM came just in time for the country to celebrate with a long weekend.

It's a well-known fact that Moscow doesn't believe in tears. Apparently,
though, Moscow does believe in gigantic, man-made phallic symbols.
[image source]

So, after convincing the nation to "slit'sia v ekstaze" and vote overwhelmingly for Medvedev, Russians will have the chance to "spit'sia v ekstaze" while enjoying what will no doubt be wall-to-wall TV coverage of the military parade in Moscow. One has to ask whose victory is really being celebrated, especially given the somewhat controversial decision to return this year to the Soviet practice of displaying missiles and other hardware in the Victory Day parade.

Photo from Nashi's 2007 summer camp at Lake Seliger.
The banner says, "There will be sovereign democracy!"
[image source]

Adding to the impression that Putin & Co. are celebrating their victories in the 2007-08 elections is the fact that, just like after a military victory, various heroic veterans have recently been rewarded for their service to the fatherland (or, as Gazeta headlined its story on this, "For Servicing the Fatherland"):

KREMLIN AWARDS POLITICAL SUPPORTERS (RFE/RL, April 28, 2008)
President Putin has signed a decree awarding state orders to a number of Kremlin-friendly analysts, political commentators, and media figures, "Kommersant" reported on April 26. According to the decree, which was reportedly signed earlier this month, the order For Service to the Fatherland, first degree, was given to IMA public-relations group head Andrei Gnatyuk.

The same award, second degree, was given to All-Russia Center for the Study of Public Opinion Director Valery Fyodorov, former Nashi leader and current State Youth Affairs Committee Chairman Vasily Yakemenko, and Effective Politics Foundation head Gleb Pavlovsky. The same decree bestows honorary certificates on Channel One head Konstantin Ernst, All-Russia State Television and Radio Company (VGTRK) head Oleg Dobrodeyev, NTV head Vladimir Kulistikov, Center for Political Forecasting Deputy Director Vitaly Ivanov, and a number of activists in the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi. According to "Kommersant," the awards are directly tied to the contributions the recipients made to the victory of Unified Russia in the December 2007 Duma elections and Medvedev's victory in the March presidential election. Gazeta.ru reported on April 25 that Gnatyuk's IMA group oversaw the implementation of both election campaigns.

This should reinforce the conventional wisdom that VTsIOM polls on Russian domestic politics should be taken with a grain of salt. With respect to the executives from state-run TV channels, it simply underscores the obvious: they are the President's colleagues, his valued partners in the important task of keeping the masses properly mis- and underinformed; and they have been given a little pat on the head for smoothly managing the media environment during the recently concluded electoral cycle. Never mind that what Putin likely perceives as the main "victory" - the avoidance of a "colored revolution" - was, given his government's substantial genuine popularity, probably such a remote possibility as to really only exist as "cockroaches in his head," to use the Russian expression about personal hang-ups.

Anyway, the Kommersant article cited by RFE/RL digs deeper and describes the Putin Administration's recent tradition of taking care of the friendly journalists at state-run TV channels by bestowing government awards upon them (my translation):

In November of 2006, for the first time in the history of television President Putin gave a large group of TV employees (more than 100 people) awards phrased "For making a large contribution to the development of Russian teleradiobroadcasting and for long-time fruitful work." The formal reason for the awards was the 75th anniversary of broadcasting in the country. Among those receiving awards were predominantly employees of the three federal TV channels - Channel One, Rossiia, and NTV.

"For Services to the Fatherland" orders of the fourth degree were awarded to six people, including Mr. Ernst and Mr. Dobrodeyev. Mr. Kulistikov also received an Order of Honor. Half a year later in June of 2007, almost as many employees of the federal TV channels, mostly from Rossiia, NTV and TV Center (TVTs) received orders and medals of various ranks with the same phrase as the one used the year before for their colleagues.

The tradition actually seems to go back at least three years now - back in March 2005, I posted about Sergei Ivanov giving awards to then-ORT reporter Margarita Simonyan and her colleague from RTR. Simonyan's real reward, of course, turned out to be her chance to head up the Russia Today project. After all, nothing says "thank you" - in any language! - like the chance to manage the cash flowing into a government project. Kommersant also notes that Yeltsin officially thanked several hundred people after the 1996 elections, including members of the media, but there was no "For Service to the Fatherland" award at that time (it was introduced in 1999).

Regrettably, I haven't had much time in recent weeks to browse around and see what the Russian blogosphere is saying about all of this. Ilya Barabanov had a simple "no comment" about the awards story.

My photo, taken in late Dec. 2005 in Moscow.
An explanation of the meaning for non-Russian-speakers is here.
The photo is part of a large set of my photos of Moscow stickers,
graffiti and other "street art" which can be viewed here.

Notwithstanding the criticism which must be present in the RuBlogosphere (though as I mentioned, I haven't had time to survey it recently as much as usual), I doubt too many Russians really feel as negatively about Putin's latest victory as the folks who made the sticker shown above; certainly opinion polls suggest the percentage of people who view the current state of affairs negatively is quite low indeed. For the time being, that's true even of polls conducted by pollsters who haven't received awards for services rendered to the fatherland.

Why Putin is like Mugabe*

Zimbabwe's President Mugabe has been accusing his political opponents of intending to return farms to their dispossessed white owners.** Where have I seen similar populist rhetoric recently? Oh, right:

[image source]

The Nashi pamphlet this page comes from is an old story, but it is a good illustration of the Kremlin's main anti-Kasyanov talking point throughout the 07-08 election cycle - that he would surrender Russia's oil wealth to "the West" and take things back to the bad old days of the 1990s.

Here is a translation of the quotation attributed to Mikhail Kasyanov (under the banner headline, "This is what betrayal looks like"):

Having received the approval of American businessmen to enter the Russian presidential campaign, I have decided to sell Russian oil for three times less than the current market price.

And here is the actual quotation which appears to have served as the basis for the misquote above:

In his first interview with foreign media since announcing his candidacy, Mr Kasyanov said he would use the huge surplus from high oil prices to improve pipelines. He said: "Such projects would help lower the price of oil and gas on the market." A "fair price", he said, is $20-$25 a barrel. The price is now $63. "The world needs to think about alternative sources of energy, but use what we have now."

As Russian campaign spin goes, this is actually a pretty minor distortion, and no doubt Kasyanov would have been more accommodating, for example, to Western participants in the Sakhalin projects (in fact, one could argue that such accommodation would actually be in Russia's interest, since Western investment and know-how will likely be needed to maximize development of Russia's oil & gas sector). It's worth noting, though, that when Kasyanov was PM, he appeared to at least make a show of driving a hard bargain with Western investors in Russian oil projects.

Nevertheless, it served the Kremlin's interests to portray Kasyanov not only as the corrupt "Misha 2-percent" (a nickname acquired when two percent was enough of an alleged skim to seem offensive; never mind that the only proof of Kasyanov's corruption offered up to the public was a shady dacha privatization involving a sum which the barons of Rosneft and Gazprom would not bend down to pick up off the sidewalk on Tverskaya) but also as an agent of Western corporate interests. Similar nefarious intentions to forfeit Russia's oil wealth were ascribed to Vladimir Ryzhkov (apparently solely on the basis of a meeting with Dick Cheney).

Of course, the myth-making about Russian traitors would be nothing without the creation of a parallel mythology of Western politicos salivating at the prospect of carving Russia up and feasting on the oil wealth. Exhibit A in that book of fairy-tales is the infamous false claim that Madeleine Albright once stated Russia was unworthy of Siberia's oil wealth.

Unlike Zimbabwe, Russia is not a former colony of the West and has never been in danger of losing control of its natural resources. Apparently, Putin & Co. realized that the rhetoric of xenophobia and class hatred travels well to any country.

* Presumably one could fill many blog posts with why Putin is unlike Mugabe. I know almost nothing about domestic politics in African nations, so I would be on shaky ground trying to write such posts (as indeed I may be in trying to draw the comparison which provides the lede for this post). If you feel strongly about the distinctions, feel free to sketch out such posts in the comment section. Let me begin: Putin almost undoubtedly has more genuine popularity in his country than Mugabe does in his; on the other hand, Mugabe's political opponents seem to have actually made it on the ballot, an indignity which Putin refused to suffer.

** For all I know, this may be a valid accusation. My guess, however, is that Mugabe is attempting to spin a more conciliatory stance on the part of the opposition toward the farmers into some sort of treacherous behavior which goes against the interests of the state.

More on the power of two

[image source]

The cover of the latest issue of the New Times calls the current (and perhaps future?) period "Междуцарствие" - which I might translate as something like "interkingdom" or "interregency," although that doesn't really capture it which means "interregnum" - and, rephrasing Snoop's classic query, has several articles on the general theme of the subhead on the cover: "Whose chair is tougher."

And in an intriguing development which suggests that finely honed Russia-watcher skills might soon become transferable to US politics, a recent article in e-magazine Slate discusses how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "could run together and take turns being president" for the next 16 years by "creatively using the constitutional rules created by" the little-known 25th Amendment to the US Constitution.

Tandemocracy, DIMAcracy, and other neologisms for a new era

Note the presence of "Iron Felix" in the background.
[Image source]

Tandemocracy (which I first saw as the headline of this Kommersant-Vlast' cover story, "Тандемократия") - this is certainly a more warm-and-fuzzy term than the archaic-sounding двоевластие (usually translated into English as the even more archaic-sounding "dyarchy").

DIMAcracy (or ДИМАкратия, which I first saw mentioned on Veronica Khokhlova's blog as "DIMAkratiya") - this is a witty pun on the nickname of the new president, but we'll have to see if it remains popular - as of now, Yandex blog search provides a number of results for the term but nevertheless comments, "Typo? You may have meant 'democracy'."

Putvedev - this is a nice way to refer to Russia's two leaders with a single term. The term occurred to me - and no doubt to many others - in February, but I believe the first use of it in the English-language press was in a Guardian column on March 3rd (translated into Russian by InoSmi under the headline "All Power to Putvedev"), followed closely by Sean Guillory's Pajamas Media piece the next day; and Lenta.ru headlined its March 3 roundup of Western press coverage of the Russian elections "The New Russian Putvedev."

Since people have started referring to the dyarchs - sorry, the tandemocratic leaders; tandemocrats, if you will - collectively as Putvedev, there is at least some possibility that if the tag-team arrangement continues and things happen to go south in the new era, it could come to be known as the time of Путведевщина.

[image source]

[update 3/19] - I realized that I omitted a few good ones.


ДАМ - The new president's initials, which turn out to be very punnable. The three-letter word formed by them is the genetive case of the word for "ladies"; it's also the first-person singular, future tense, of the verb "to give." For example, blogger kotoeb complained that the traditional Women's Day toast "за дам!" ("to the ladies") became "100% political as of March 2nd." And a witty commenter on the NYT's LiveJournal community suggested that the new "Damskaya" vodka (intended for ladies) is just a rebranding of Putinka vodka.

Диммовочка (so far this has not come into wide usage) - this is a play on the word "дюймовочка," which is what Thumbelina is called in Russian, and the new president's nickname"Dima" (для тех, кто не в курсе, it's also a reference to his height).

МДА - The new president's initials, arranged in a more traditional Russian order (ФИО, or last name, first name, patronymic). As it turns out, this is also a commonly used word in Russian internet-speak, meaning something like "uh, yeah" (to the extent such things can even be translated, and of course the meaning in any given case is highly dependent on context and inflection - you can read inflection on a computer screen, right?). Anyway, it seems like it's often used in online discussions to express skepticism or weariness. Here's where I saw it used in reference to Medvedev:

Некоторые думали он ДАМ (свободу дам, тв дам, оттепель дам),
а он просто МДА

It's funny because it's true...

This video has over half a million views on YouTube (is that a lot? I confess I don't know...but it seems like a lot, so I apologize if this post is the equivalent of an email forwarding you a joke you've seen five times already) and has been up since last month, but I first saw it today thanks to someone emailing me the link. It is by a KVN team from the city of Perm'.



So basically, a bunch of guys in Perm' got together and - using a comedy skit uploaded to YouTube - did a pretty good job of making the same basic point as Human Rights Watch did in its 2008 World Report about the problem of a "democracy charade" in many countries (see also here for a discussion putting Russia in the context of that report).

An Echo of Moscow

Tverskaya, Feb. 23, 2005 - from this set

Shortly after the Duma elections last December, I saw this article and wanted to translate it. I didn't have time then, and in truth it's a fairly challenging text to translate, since it is all about mood and atmosphere. The furor around Putin's Luzhniki speech has faded, but Nizhny Novgorod, where part of the article is set, is still in the news as the location of Medvedev's one official day speaking as a candidate and (perhaps less significantly) as the region singled out by the New York Times in a controversial article about the Kremlin's (ab)use of "administrative resources," so this seems like a suitable item to post as we await the inevitable result on March 2.

By way of background, this piece was supposed to appear in the Moscow weekly Bolshoi Gorod, but the head of the publishing house that prints BG decided not to print it as written, and BG's editor chose to publish it on his ZheZhe rather than edit it. The comments on the blog where it was posted suggest a range of assessments of that decision - mostly praise for the article, but also some averring that it was proper not to publish it, because it's not "journalism" and is more suitable for a ZheZhe post, or that it's an "empty" tale describing a political reality that has existed for years but is just now being noticed by the creative intelligentsia (it is indeed something one could see hints of a few years ago).

Comments elsewhere (and there were many, at the time) speculated about censorship or self-censorship and led in some cases to soul-searching online discussions among old friends divided by their opinions of Russia's path... but I should let the piece speak for itself.

An Echo of Moscow
by Roman Gruzov
c. December 3, 2007

The city before the elections

In late November it was cold in Nizhny Novgorod, and the people handing out United Russia fliers on the streets were bundled up in scarves against the chill. Nizhny covered in snow feels oppressive to a person unused to the Russian provinces. The industrial areas which die out towards the evening and the touching wooden downtown, restored in some places and lop-sided and half-abandoned in others, seemed like some sort of different, unknown, incomprehensible and thus not entirely safe country. There were campaign banners on every corner, so the word "Putin" was always visible from several angles at once.

I stopped a car on the banks of the Oka and thought about those banners and about why they seemed different in Nizhny than at home. To be honest, I always paid attention only to the most odious images. For instance, on the corner of Liteiny and Nevsky, on the building where the editorial offices of Afisha used to be, there's a gigantic group photo that covers up the entire facade, with the caption "Putin's Petersburg." The second lady from the left has such a ghoulish smirk that it looks like she's promoting the next of the "Dozor" vampire movies and not the Presidential line. Not far away, a poster on a pillar reads, "You are in Putin's plan," and my gaze has been stopping on that pillar for a month, too, but only because it's odd - he's not in my plans, but I am in his. In Nizhny the quantity of these pictures is something qualitatively different, perhaps because based on the way the locals look, it's hard to understand what they have to do with these banners.

I was picked up by a green Moskvich with a driver of indeterminate age wearing yellow wraparound shades and a shabby sheepskin coat. The radio was bellowing frightfully, and I thought the speaker's voice sounded familiar. But as we drove alongside the still unfrozen river, I had a moment of doubt - the rhetoric of the person shouting from the ragged car speakers about jackals and foreign embassies was just too coarse. I thought, "Could it be Zhirik?"

The driver turned the volume up louder - louder than was proper, so much louder that it became unpleasant to be in the car. After a couple of minutes I was sure that it really was the President speaking - the radio was picking up the TV broadcast from Channel One. I felt uneasy - at any other time I would have asked the driver to turn it down, but I kept quiet. The voice coming from the radio was too insistent, the city too incomprehensible, and the driver's murky gaze from behind his yellow glasses too unpredictable. I had absolutely no desire to argue with him about politics - practically for the first time in the last seventeen years I decided that it would be better to hold my tongue. It was unpleasant, strange and somehow radically new, all at the same time - to be driven around a dark, cold city, listening to the stadium responding to the speechmaker, and to feel that you are living an a new, different time, a time when if you don't know your interlocutor's mindset it's better to stay silent. And we did stay silent - we drove along and listened as various not-so-picky people made speeches at the stadium. Then the driver drew his hand out of his tattered cuff and sharply turned off the radio. It got quiet. Then he said:

"Those assholes!"

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye, opened the window and spat angrily into the frosty evening.

In Moscow the next day I learned that many of my friends had been through something similar during the past few days, and that for almost all of them the feeling of a qualitative shift was surprisingly connected with something trivial - not with the Luzhniki rally, but with some silly story. One friend's kid got sick from paint fumes, because they were painting the school starting first thing in the morning, rushing to beautify it in time for the elections. Another got into a fight with drunken teenagers on the street, and at the police station noticed they had "I'm for Putin" scarves around their necks. And in response I told everyone how to my own surprise I had been afraid to ask the driver to turn down the radio.

When I returned to St. Petersburg a day later, there were heavy trucks with barred windows parked by the train station. There were more police on Nevsky than there were pedestrians, and the farther I went the more men in uniform surrounded me. Closer to Palace Square, when the police turned into riot troops, I realized that it was because of the dissenters. There was no march whatsoever - a dozen or so pensioners stood by watching the hundreds of soldiers who had secured the square. Then they came up to me, looked at my press card, and put me in a police bus.

"You have a laptop in your bag," said a calm, mustachioed officer, "and today only journalists accredited by the Main Internal Affairs Directorate [ГУВД] are allowed to be here. Let's take a ride to the precinct, and we'll take a look at what you've got in your computer."

In the new era this was normal, and I climbed into the dark freight box of the truck without a fight. Inside were about six dejected Tajiks, a gray-haired old man with a hearing aid and teary eyes, and a radical who looked like a sad demon with horns of hairsprayed dreads. They drove us around the city for a long time, and tears flowed down the old man's cheeks from the wind blowing through the cracks in the truck. It was unpleasant to see, so we looked out through the cracks - at the police, roaming about on Nevsky among billboards showing "Putin's Petersburg," and at the people avoiding the billboards and the policemen. Everyone was silent, but this time I knew for sure what everyone else was thinking. And after three more hours or so they photographed us and let us go - all but the radical, who didn't want to hold a number up to his chest for the camera. My number was 809.

"Assholes," said the Tajiks, stepping out into the fresh air.
"Assholes," I agreed.
The old man said nothing.

That was the winter; let's hope the spring will be different. Some observers seem hopeful.

By the way, the imprecation that is repeated in the middle and at the end of the article is "суки" in the original (literally, "bitches," which somehow didn't seem to fit in English), so I took a bit of license with it - though not much license, actually. According to my trusty Русско-английский словарь ненормативной лексики (М: Астрель, 2002):

Сука ж. [...] 3. груб.-прост. Употр. как бранное слово Cf. bastard, shit, asshole (used as a term of abuse).

[Update 3/5] According to many election-day reports, Medvedev likes the metaphor of a change of seasons as well:

"Mood is good, spring is here," Medvedev said. "Though it is raining, it's a different season. It's pleasant!"

Or maybe he just didn't want to talk about anything more substantive than the weather; that, at least, was the conclusion of the NYT's Clifford Levy, who suggested that talking about the weather on election day - as opposed to, I guess, the election - was "a reflection of the tenor of the campaign." The optimist in me wants to believe he missed the subtlety of Dima's metaphor.

A dog-and-pony show, starring a Bear

From officially approved "democrat" Andrei Bogdanov's wikipedia page:

In the summer of 1992, after a visit to Pridnestrov'e as part of a delegation of the youth union of the DPR [Democratic Party of Russia], he qualified Moldova's actions as "genocide against the people of Pridnestrov'e." The DPR's youth union condemned the position of the Russian government on this issue and called for immediate action by the Russian military "to save the people of Pridnestrov'e." [Bogdanov] blamed the Russian mass media for spreading lies about the events in Pridnestrov'e, and called the Russian government "sellouts." He immediately established a charity, "The Youth Chooses the Future," which collected money, medicine, equipment and food reserves for the defenders of the PMR.

This episode - far from the most bizarre one in Bogdanov's eccentric political career, which also included campaigning for pyramid scheme mastermind Sergei Mavrodi - is also mentioned briefly in his bio on anticompromat.

Amazingly, such a history of dedication to the PMR's cause doesn't seem to have won Bogdanov the support of politicians in this breakaway part of Moldova. Everyone seems to be supporting Medvedev and the continuation of Putin's course. This was the conclusion reached at an "international conference" which took place in Tiraspol last week, titled "Forward with Russia":

The conference was organized by the Patriotic Party of Pridnestrov'e. Participants included representatives of a number of other PMR socio-political organizations, as well as pro-Russian organizations from Ukraine, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia, a representative of St. Petersburg veterans, the president of the "Planet of Children" foundation, and others.

A policy declaration adopted at this conference can be seen here.

Bogdanov also failed to win the support of the politically active youth of Transdniester, who are 100% behind Medvedev:

"PRORYV!": Demonstrations in support of Dmitry Medvedev will be going non-stop
Lenta PMR [reprinted verbatim from the PRORYV! website], Feb. 26, 2008

The week remaining until election day will be filled with many demonstrations organized by the International Youth Corporation / People's Democratic Party [ММК-НДП] "PRORYV!" [trans. - the name of this group means, "Breakthrough"] in support of Dmitry Medvedev's candidacy.

Young people from "PRORYV!" are working simultaneously in practically all of cities and towns in Transdniester. In personal talks with citizens, the "Proryvians" are explaining the importance of participating in the voting [голосовании], providing information about the location of election precincts and giving out calendars with Dmitry Medvedev's picture and an inscription calling on the recipients to come to the ballot boxes on March 2. According to PDP "PRORYV!" leader Aleksandr Gorelkovsky, March 2nd is a genuine national holiday for the 120,000 Russian citizens who reside in Transdniester.

"On this day we can come and vote for the president of our 'Greater Homeland' [«Большой Родины»]. Each of us understands how large Russia's role in Transdniester's existence has been: economic assistance, security guarantees, and the uninterrupted cultural-historical connection which allows us to maintain our national identity. The Russian authorities' attitude toward us in the future depends on voter turnout. That is why 'PRORYV!' is doing everything possible to increase the turnout and is endorsing Dmitry Medvedev. Unlike other parties, we do more than make political statements, and 'go to the people' in the fullest sense of that phrase. I am certain that serious political success can result only from direct interaction with citizens," emphasized Aleksandr Gorelkovsky.

More recently, it seems that one of the people behind PRORYV!, a shady guy named Dmitry Soin, decided to try to manage expectations, at least with respect to turnout:

"Turnout will be above 50%, but it will not be tremendously high. This is because many Russians [residing in Transdniester] are currently outside of Transdniester, and the ones who are here are certain of D. Medvedev's victory. 97 percent of the Russians we surveyed believe he will win. The lack of a sharp battle or intrigues will lower the turnout. From 88 to 92 percent of voters are prepared to vote for the main candidate, depending on the region surveyed. Mr. Bogdanov has the lowest rating, about one percent. V. Zhirinovsky and G. Zyuganov could get from 4 to 7 percent each

[all items translated by me - links to originals in Russian]

Nash Feminizm?

OK, so this is quite visually arresting:

[image source]

The young lady - or at least part of her - is proclaiming, "VOVA! I am with you!" This was part of a Nashi-sponsored fashion-show-cum-rally (at least, that's what it looked like, judging from other pictures, which are replete with Nashi's alarm-clock logo, something the Nashisti casually appropriated from their ostensible ideological opponents, Ukraine's Pora). Commenters on the post where I saw the picture above had a variety of reactions, including:

Is MTS rebranding again? (in reference to the red-and-white color scheme shared by Nashi and a major Russian mobile telephony provider);

I get it, I get it! They're a mixture of pioneers and cheerleaders.

Nice panties, what does Putin's wife think of this?

Our answer to Uggs. (in reference to the young lady's striped valenki)

Other commenters noted that it's time to change the label - to Dima, or to Medved - or responded with variations on the olbansky word песдец - and one noted that the placement of the label was "If we consider the symbolism....not very proper."

The antics of Nashi can hardly startle one anymore, but this is sort of a new level of tastelessness, fetching though the ladies involved may be. It got me thinking about feminism, truly a dangerous road for me to go down, so I'll admit right away that I'm out of my depth in such topics and apologize ahead of time in case I offend anyone.

The thing is, feminism is one of those "Western" ideas that many Russians condemn based on a flawed understanding of the concept. The Russian stereotype of feminists can probably be summed up as "manly-dressing, unattractive women who get offended when you try to open doors for them." Now, much of this has to do with the wonderful fact that Russian women are brilliant at maintaining dignity and power even while observing certain gender roles and playing along as though they really believed it were a man's world.

But I would venture to say that at least some of it has to do with the fact that many people are uncomfortable with this "foreign" idea - feminism and female empowerment - and the changes it might represent, the aspects of essential "Russian-ness" it might leave behind, and therefore feel the need to discredit such a threatening, new, "Western" idea. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the idea of feminism* in Russia may even be as discredited as the idea of democracy.

Thus, while "feminism" in Russia conjures up (false) images of militant, asexual shrews, who in actuality represent an extreme and perhaps imaginary fringe of the movement, "democracy" also conjures up (false) images of people who mainstream Russians have been taught by the mainstream Putin-era political discourse to refer to as the "demshiza" (democratic schizos), "dermokraty" (shitocrats), or "demokrady" (demo-thieves) - in other words, the people who allegedly** brought the country the collapse and poverty of the 1990s.

As I said at the outset, I'm out of my depth here, and perhaps it's a fool's errand to try to turn a T&A pic with a suggestively placed label into some kind of pseudo-thoughtful discussion. But I figured I'd give it a shot.


*Not that there's just one "idea of feminism" in the rest of the world. Actually, this Nashistka's choice of outfits, which might get her blackballed from some feminist circles in the US as a traitor to the sisterhood who allowed herself to be objectified in the service of a male-dominated political system (I mean, talk about "the personal is political"!), might also be hailed by "stripper feminists" - no doubt this Putinista was thinking, while freezing onstage in that bikini, "By deploying femininity as a tool I [am] exposing it as a construction."

Seriously, though, I have no idea about these ideologies, and probably not much room to speculate on as a guy, even as a "sensitive, caring, romantic 90s kind of guy" (anyone else remember that funny turn of phrase?). So I decided to ask Natalia Antonova, the first person I thought of when I pondered who a reliable source about post-Soviet feminism might be. I've emailed her and asked her to respond in the comments here. We'll see if she can take time away from her own writing, commenting, and general saving of the world with the written word to pontificate in this space.


**I say allegedly because in fact the initial collapse and poverty of the 1990s was largely a carryover from the overprinting of rubles and price controls which were in effect in the USSR right up until 1991. What happened later in that decade is often blamed on people like Chubais, but why then is someone like Medvedev - who policy-wise seems like basically a market liberal like Chubais (actually, an ultraliberal like Chubais, according to Maxim Kalashnikov :-) ) - being designated Putin's heir?

Seriously, is it just me or is it kind of funny to hear Gryzlov talk about the Chairman of Gazprom being the "most socially oriented candidate" (I wonder if he meant, "from among the group acceptable to Putin"?) leading a government focused on raising people's quality of life. It's almost as funny as the idea of that famous "statist with a US passport" (and founder of a "youth movement" that's both less famous and less Soviet than Nashi, one with pre-Soviet roots) Boris Jordan "consider[ing] the life of an average citizen" from his near-oligarchic height.

Preved, Medved - the new apparent heir apparent**

VVP makes Dima an offer he can't refuse.*
[image source]

Much as Putin called for a resounding victory for United Russia in the Duma elections, he has arranged a resounding endorsement for his apparent heir-apparent, Dmitry Medvedev. At a televised meeting between involving four of the parties that participated in the recent elections - party of power United Russia, Kremlin creation Fair Russia, the Agrarian Party, and the Civil Force party - as well as Putin himself, Medvedev received an endorsement from all present.

There is, of course, lots of reaction to this news already. The Russian stock market has surged - Gazprom, where Medvedev is Chairman of the Board, is up 3% - and I have to say that in the imperfect world of Russian politics a smooth transition to a Medvedev administration may be the best possible outcome for anyone concerned about continued growth and stability in Russia. Medvedev's involvement in corporate Russia predates his involvement with Gazprom - he was head of legal affairs at SPB-based timbercompany Ilim Pulp for most of the 1990s - and fits with his the "moderate liberal / technocrat" label generally applied to Medvedev's politics.

The market's favorable reaction to this news may also reflect a sense of relief that the succession process is moving forward. There have been a lot of rumblings about unseemly "under-the-carpet" battles taking place among top officials lately (with baffling and disturbing public manifestations like the affair surrounding the Shvartsman interview, and the arrest of Storchak), and perhaps having a successor-designate in place reduces the sense that Putin's departure is leaving a huge vacuum.

Who will be leading the way after March?
[image source]

Looking ahead, this may also be good news for the future of the US-Russian relationship, both because making money is one thing both countries agree on and because of who Medvedev is not - a hawk like Sergei Ivanov. But who knows - the past few months have been all about surprises and the expectation of more surprises, so this apparent outcome (an anointed successor from among the two candidates who have been in play for at least a year now), because it's one which might have been expected six months ago, is in itself a bit of a surprise.

On the other hand, there's still plenty of time for more twists and turns as the "2008 question" works its way to a resolution. And perhaps Medvedev in the Kremlin would be ideal - young and easily packaged for voters, palatable to big business and to the outside world, and apparently very manageable. According to Limonov (not that he's an unbiased, or even sane, source):

It is well known that within Putin's entourage Medvedev is called "son," apparently, because of his obedience to Putin. The fact that he has practically been appointed president means the continuation of chekist-oligarchic rule in Russia.

From the Moscow Times profile of Medvedev, titled "A Soft-Spoken, 'Smart Kid' Lawyer":

None of Dmitry Medvedev's friends can remember hearing him bark an order. If he ever did, it would sound forced, they said.

Soft-spoken and a full 10 centimeters shorter than the diminutive President Vladimir Putin, Medvedev is a far cry from what the public expects in a leader, political consultants said.

Lenta.ru recalls the shifting fortunes of Medvedev and Ivanov over the course of 2006 and 2007 in this commentary - perhaps we shouldn't be to quick to pronounce Medvedev the successor, since he already looked to have it in the bag in 2006, only to seem surpassed byIvanov earlier this year. But time is running out another twist of fortune. From the Lenta piece, which is titled, simply, "The Successor" (my translation):

Observers by now were expecting all sorts of surprises. Few believed any longer that the successor would be from the group of long-discussed candidates. Some thought that Zubkov would become a "technical" president, who would stay in office for a year or two and then resign so that Putin could once again head the government. But as it turned out a different scenario has played out. [...]

If nothing extraordinary happens, Medvedev's victory in the presidential elections is, of course, guaranteed. Experts agree that this would mean the very continuation of the course of Russia's development that Putin and the members of United Russia have been talking about so much. Gryzlov called Medvedev the "most socially oriented" of the potential candidates, and United Russia representatives had earlier said on multiple occasions that in the Fifth Duma they plan to focus on social issues. Economic analysts call Medvedev a liberal, which, in theory, should be appealing to Western investors.

The New Times asks, "Who is Mr Medvedeff?" in an article which headlines his intelligentsia background and traces his rise to power in 1990s St. Petersburg and later in the Putin administration (my translation):

According to many accounts, during those years [the early '90s] people often thought Medvedev was Putin's personal secretary and did not take him seriously. According to Stanislav Belkovsky, "Dmitry Anatol'evich, who is pliant, soft, and psychologically dependent, was psychologically always absolutely comfortable for Vladimir Vladimirovich, and for [Putin] that is extremely important." [...]

Medvedev's new life begain in November 1999, when he became the deputy head of the government administration while Putin was Prime Minister. Immediately following Boris Yeltsin's historic speech and his "abdication of the throne," Medvedev became the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, with the idea that he would later replace Aleksandr Voloshin. Voloshin and Roman Abramovich, according to Stanislav Belkovsky, proposed Medvedev for the job, and when Voloshin was stepping down three years later as head of the administration (in large part in protest over the Yukos case), he insisted that he be replaced by Medvedev (who also talked about the authorities' actions in the Yukos case as "not thought all the way through").

Putin himself has admitted that he planned to make Medvedev head of the Federal Securities Commission (according to some accounts, he wanted to have Dmitry Kozak head up the administration). If that had happened, Dmitry Anatol'evich could have gotten his hands on some "real" work, like his friend and partner Anton Ivanov did. It's no accident that Medvedev resembles a young top manager or financial director... And then today there wouldn't be the official Medvedev, there would be Medvedeff, the head of a division of some large Western investment bank. And he would have parted ways with Putin once and for all, not counting Christmas cards sent from Moscow to London and from London to Moscow.

But Putin needed a reliable person in the Kremlin, moreover Medvedev did not irritate the Yeltsin-era elite either. That's how the idea emerged to make him the president's heir: Medvedev was chosen as a compromise and practically ideal figure, acceptable to everyone. By many accounts, the idea took shape in the fall of 2005. By November of 2005, Medvedev was appointed first deputy Prime Minister, and in the spring of 2006 he was supposed to become Prime Minister. However every action, as is well known, leads to an equal and opposite reaction.

New Times then talks a bit about how Igor Sechin and his allies in the administration worked against Medvedev, but that part of the story is not very well developed. No doubt there will be copious speculative accounts about how this is a "victory" for this or that faction of the Kremlin elites.

Other internet resources about the apparent heir-apparent (I like that phrase, can you tell?):

Vladimir Pribylovsky's Anticompromat has a thorough bio and a clippings file. Just yesterday, Pribylovsky had speculated that Valentina Matviyenko might be the designated successor.

Robert Amsterdam has posted excerpts from Medvedev's "most official 'keynote' address."

NewsRu.com has an interesting agglomeration of stories about Medvedev, including his comments on the use of "olbansky" (a corrupted version of Russian used on the internet) and his affinity for Deep Purple. It also cites a fresh joke from the website Dirty.ru, which also has this picture of a stunned Medvedev:

"Independent observers from Turkmenistan, Belarus, and Kazakhstan have already declared that the Russian Presidential elections were a free and open expression of the will of the Kremlin."

Indeed, the news did not take long to make it on to the Kremlin's website (which, interestingly, does not seem to have a text of Putin's scathingly anti-Western Luzhniki speech) and United Russia's website (which does have the Luzhniki speech), with both accounts including Putin's comment:

As far as the candidacy of Dmitry Anatol'evich Medvedev, I can say that I have known him for more than 17 years, we have worked very closely together for all of those years, and I wholly and entirely support this choice.

*Believe it or not, I wrote this Godfather reference before seeing Sean's similar reference in his post about the anointing of Medvedev - I guess it's not a surprising reference, given the context.

**Upd 20 minutes later - This story seems to be generating unoriginal thoughts - I just saw that Mr. Shedd, the Accidental Russophile, beat me to the punch in using the "Preved, Medved" headline in his post about the news, although I think we were both beaten by hundreds or thousands of Russian bloggers. Sorry to step on your toes, Wally! By the way, in case there's anyone on the internets who still doesn't know the "Preved" story, Wikipedia seems to have it covered.

***Upd another 30 minutes later (clearly poking around on the internet in the guise of "following a breaking story" is more fun than studying for exams) - I had forgotten about this story, but maybe Medvedev's designation means that Putin has worked out a way to stay in power, and it will be as the head of a new Russia-Belarus Union, which could be announced while Putin is in Belarus this week. That is just one of the versii put forward in Reuters' speculative "fact box" about what job(s) Putin might find for himself once he has removed the monomakh's hat of the presidency.

Actually, regardless of the details, if the announcement Medvedev as successor turns out to be the last word, and Dmitry Anatol'evich takes the Kremlin in the first round of elections, it's pretty likely that today's announcement was the consequence of some deal finally being struck - just like big-time politics anywhere else, right?

Also, I can't not post this reaction to the news, apparently created back in 2006, the last time that Medvedev was heir apparent:

[image source]

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.