The Putin Elections, Part II

(See: Part I)

Boris Yeltsin’s presidency was a garbage fire. He had five different prime ministers in the course of two years, and the last of these was Vladimir Putin. Putin was unknown to the public before this appointment, but he became acting president when Yeltsin resigned months before the March 2000 election.

One thing I find striking about Putin is that he has never participated in a presidential debate, even in the 2000 elections when he was a relative newcomer. Of course, he was already acting president and had the resources of state television and support from within the oligarchy. But it still shows an enormous amount of confidence and cunning to refuse to engage with other candidates on their level. And it seems to work better every year.

Russian opinion polls leading up to the election

This is how Putin relates to everyone. I see a similarity between Putin and Trump in that they both have the brashness and confidence to do and say whatever they want to. But whereas Trump does not seem to care or want to predict how others will react to him, Putin seems to take great pleasure in exploiting the constrained reactions of others to his actions. Trump makes decisions, people are outraged, and Trump gets right down in the dirt to fight with them, and then he moves on to his next debacle, leaving everyone so confused that consequences have trouble sticking. Putin, on the other hand, simply smirks at the outrage. Why argue when you’ve already won?

He annexed Crimea knowing full well that the West would have a hissy fit, but that they wouldn’t be able to take any meaningful action to stop him.

He casually mentioned, among many other possibilities, that maybe Jews were the ones who interfered in the 2016 US presidential elections, knowing that it would infuriate American liberals and journalists.

The only person who seemed briefly to get to Putin was Alexei Navalny, who became the opposition leader in Russia throughout protests beginning in 2009. However, Putin’s advisors eventually told him to stop mentioning Navalny’s name, in keeping with the general strategy of not dignifying the opposition with a response. Putin now responds to direct questions about Navalny in completely generic terms, even when being interviewed by Megyn Kelly for US television. Meanwhile, Navalny is on house arrest and barred from running in the elections.

This leaves the official opposition to be led by the Communist Party (whose leader, Gennady Zyuganov, called in 2010 for the “re-Stalinization of Russia”) and Vladimir Zhirinovsky (who has said so many outrageous things that it is impossible to pick out just one). In any case, Putin has won again, so he will continue to play his games for at least the next six years.

Portrait of the author with a clock bought ironically at a Moscow market in 2007

Clock shows Putin looking suave, with the caption “President of Russia Putin V.V.”

Photo by Hannah Samuell

The Putin Elections, Part I

“Chaos or stability?”

Billboard photographed by author in Vladivostok, February 2012.

Russians tell a lot of stories about their elections, none of which involve the ideas of “free and fair.” In March of 2012, I was staying in Irkutsk with a young woman named Valya – an idealistic, countercultural 20-year-old. I went with her to cast her vote for president. Valya believed that Putin was the best man for the job, but she didn’t like that the election had a foregone conclusion. She had heard countless tales of coercion and fraud. She voted for Prokhorov, a billionaire businessman. She thought that enough people would vote for him to force Putin into a runoff. He would still win, of course, but he wouldn’t get more than 50% of the vote in the first round, at least.

When we woke up the next morning to read that Putin had won outright with 63% of the vote, she was shocked.

Earlier that year, I had been in Vladivostok, on Russia’s east coast, staying with a young married couple who were hoping to emigrate to Canada. One night Marina and Alex took me to a sauna with a bunch of their friends. Somehow they had managed to gather a group of people, no three of whom had the same opinion about the upcoming elections. Except, of course, that they all knew who was going to win.

Pasha wanted a return to Soviet days – a job and an apartment for everyone. However, he didn’t want to vote for Zyuganov, the Communist Party nominee. He decided to vote for Zhirinovsky, a bombastic nationalist, instead.

Masha said that communism was bullshit, and Zhirinovsky was a clown.

She and Anton supported Putin. Things had generally been going better for Russia since he became president, so why change now?

Sasha said, “Look kids, Putin will not be our next president.” — “If not Putin, then who?” everyone asked him. — “Prokhorov,” he said, but immediately backtracked. “I mean, of course Putin will win, but only because he has the money and connections, and he’s smart. But Prokhorov has popular support.”*

Marina and Alex did not plan to vote at all. They felt it was useless.

Results of 2012 Russian Presidential Election by Federal Subject

Source: Wikipedia**

I have always found it remarkable how well-regarded Putin is within Russia. Of course there are plenty of activists who want radical change and are staunchly opposed to him. However, most people I have spoken to, from middle-aged or elderly people who complain about the government being out of touch, corrupt, and ineffective, to younger people with generally liberal social views who want more popular participation in government, the general attitude seems to be grudging respect for Putin and a sense that, though he may not be perfect, he is the best leader they can hope for.

This was put concisely by Dima, a man I met on my first stay in Russia, in fall 2007, just before the end of Putin’s second term. I asked him who he thought would be Russia’s next president, and he said, “We don’t have any other president. Putin is our president.” He told me that their constitution had been made in the American style, but that it didn’t really fit Russia’s needs, so it would have to be changed. At the time I didn’t give his views much credence, since he had also told me that if Barack Obama became president of the US, then things would be very difficult for the white man, like in South Africa.

The Russian constitution still limits presidents to serving no more than two consecutive terms. However, there has never been a limit on the number of total terms that can be served. And indeed, during Dmitri Medvedev’s brief stand-in as president before Putin’s return, the Russian constitution was amended to extend presidential terms from 4 to 6 years. Thus, after Putin is re-elected this year, his final (as it currently stands) term will bring him to the age of 71.

Russians will vote again this Sunday, March 18. There is plenty to say about the current elections. Aleksei Navalny, the main opposition leader, is barred from running. Ksenia Sobchak, daughter of former St. Petersburg mayor and Putin crony Anatoly Sobchak, left her career as actress and reality show host to get involved in politics, and is now Putin’s most vocal and active opponent in the current elections. There are six other official candidates, but nobody really cares about them.

We know who will win, but the real question is, what happens in 2024?

*The final results were Putin 63%, Zyuganov 17%, Prokhorov 8%, Zhirinovsky 6%, others negligible

**By MB298 – Own work. Derived from File:Blank map of Russia-gray.svg., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48352200