The Accidental Russophile

Spiegel Online has an long and interesting article titled Portrait of a Reluctant Democracy. On the eve of the carefully orchestrated Duma elections, Spiegel provides a sort of cross-section of opinions and the political times in Russia. Their case study involves a series of cities across Russia, and by god, for once it doesn’t include Moscow. Ivanovo, Magnitogorsk, Tyumen, Bedime, and Vladivostok are chosen as representative of the successes and failures of Putin’s tenure as President of the Russian Federation.

Some of the more interesting tidbits from the article:

Vladimir Ryzhkov (whose Republican Party was dissolved in May by the Russian Supreme Court and after 14 years will no longer be part of the Russian Duma): “This is not an election, it’s a farce.” Ryzhkov states that the controlled multi-party system that is being formed in Russia reminds him of the former East Germany.

Boris Nemzov, a leading candidate of the “pro-business” SPS (but that protesters characterize as “Party of the Oligarchs”) is asked by a reporter if he could imagine cooperating with the dominant United Russia party.

“If you mix a kilo of cranberries with a kilo of shit,” Nemzov replies, “you get two kilos of shit.”

There’s the spirit of pragmatism and compromise upon which successful democracy’s are built! Nemzov’s SPS party is deemed unlikely to meet the minimum 7% for inclusion in the new Duma.

Another telling moment:

Nemzov says, to an audience at Ivonovo’s “Silver City” shopping center: “Do you want me to tell you what the cleanest spot in the country is? The ass of the president! That’s because someone is kissing it from morning to night.”

Three female students giggle. A furious-looking soldier turns red in the face. Putin is his idol. An agitated pensioner calls out: “You stole our pensions in the ’90s, you thieves!”

Nemzov is prepared for these accusations. He pats the angry pensioner on the back and responds to the attack with numbers: “When I was the energy minister, the price of oil was only $17. Nevertheless, Boris Yeltsin spent 7.5% of the national budget on pensions. The Putin administration spends only 4.2% on pensions.”

And didn’t Gazprom, the state-controlled energy giant, pay $13 billion for Abramovich’s shares in the oil company Sibneft? Thirteen billion dollars, says Nemzov, is more than the government spends on its “national projects,” much-touted programs devoted to healthcare and building low-income housing. “In other words,” says Nemzov, “the most important national project for Mr. Putin is the oligarch Abramovich.”

Ever since the arrest of oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky in 2003, Nemzov tells his guests, everyone who hopes to do business in peace knows “where they have to leave their money” — with United Russia.

In Magnitogorsk, almost 90% of the city’s tax revenues are derived from the steel mill Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Combine (MMK) owned by Viktor Rashnikov and operated by Andrei Morozov. Morozov and MMK have somewhat reluctantly decided to support United Russia. This support is not without its detractors among the workers in the city.

When it came out that the mill’s managers would support United Russia, critics in Magnitogorsk began parodying the party’s Russian name, Yedinaya Rossiya, calling it “Yedim Rossiyu,” or “We eat Russia.”

“They have learned nothing from history,” complains Gennady Grabaryev, a local opposition politician. [..] He sees a group of aging MMK veterans demonstrating on the square behind the city hall. Mariya Lyssenko holds a placard: “United Russia’s members of parliament have cheated the MMK pensioners.” She and her husband worked at the MMK for a combined 106 years, only to be pressured by management, following the privatization of the combine, to sell their shares at rock-bottom prices. Lyssenko and her husband were told it was their duty to save the plant from an outside takeover.

Lyssenko, whose shares would be worth €120,000 today, must now make ends meet on a monthly pension of about €100. According to a Russian proverb — “Nye poyman, nye vor” — those who are not caught are not thieves.

And yet in other regions of Russia, such as the booming city of Tyumen, travel agency entrepeneur Natalya Mironova, flatly remarks regarding United Russia:

“Why should we vote for anything else? We’re doing very well here.”

[..] Born during the Soviet era in the city of Asbest, {W. Shedd notes: Russian for asbestos, which should give you a clue what they mine there} an industrial hell west of Tyumen, Mironova worked as an English teacher in the 1980s and moonlighted as a tour guide for Intourist, the state-owned travel agency. The economy stagnated, while private business ownership was forbidden. “Not in my wildest dreams would I have thought that I would establish my own company one day,” says Mironova.

Update: Reuters reports that early results show that United Russia is winning approximately 63% of the voting.
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