Nikolay Petrov is a scholar-in-residence and chair of the Carnegie Moscow Center Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program.  Previously, he served as chief organizer of the Analysis and Forecast Division in the Supreme Soviet (1991-1992) and as advisor and analyst for the Russian Presidential Administration (1994-1995).  Most recently, he is the author of a joint publication with Michael McFaul and Andrey Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform.

Washington Profile: What kind of an impact can the upcoming parliamentary elections in Russia have on the future of the country?

Petrov: We can evaluate the elections by answering two questions: How substantive are the elections, and how important are the results?  First of all, the weight of the results of the parliamentary elections depends on the political significance of the State Duma and on its ability to make decisions. Unfortunately, in this respect, the Russian Duma has a very small role to play.  The problem is that it doesn’t function as a parliament should.  It neither monitors the executive branch and its decisions, nor weighs in during the decision making process.   As a result, the Kremlin has free reign to implement a number of half-baked legislative projects, and then has to pay for its mistakes ten times over.   

The election process lacks substance, because there is only one real political party. All the elite’s various factions, which hate each other and fight constantly, have been thrown together into one group. As a result, there is no public discussion in Russia, nor could there be.  United Russia says that it doesn’t see the point of conducting pre-electoral debates, which means that once again these elections aren’t going to be a forum for addressing strategic issues or proposing solutions to pressing problems.  These elections aren’t about promoting a competition of ideas.  They are simply a method for solving the technical issue of ensuring a 70-80 percent presence for United Russia in the next Duma, which of course, means a 70-80 percent presence for the Kremlin itself.

Nevertheless, the elections do have the potential to promote some limited public participation, perhaps through an airing of grievances toward the government for past decisions.  The elections may also promote some form of dialogue between the authorities and the people. It is a different matter that this dialogue is not conducted on an equal basis.  In any case, some promises have been made which appeal to the needs and desires of the electorate. In this sense, the elections are beneficial.       

Washington Profile: Do you think that the level of voter turnout can make a difference?

Petrov: The new electoral system, which has yet to be tried on a country-wide scale, is set up to encourage a greater numbers of votes, not just a certain voter percentage. The number of “physical” votes determines which names end up on regional electoral lists, which then determines the Kremlin’s attitude towards governors and regional elites. 

So the goal is to achieve a maximum voter turnout.   This means encouraging voter participation by all means possible-- legal, quasi-legal and not legal methods. Sociological surveys show that if Herculean efforts are not made to bring in the desired 90 percent of votes, there will be not more than 50 percent of eligible voters going to the polls. This is fine, especially considering that the elections are going to go forward no matter how many people turn up to vote. 

Washington Profile: Supposing that the results of the elections bring some surprises, can their outcome lead to any significant changes?

Petrov: Yes and no. Neither the Union of Right Forces (URF) nor Yabloko could make it to the Duma in the last elections. This time around it is going to be even more difficult. Even if we suppose that, for example, 15 people are elected to the Duma from Yabloko, they still wouldn’t be able to effect significant change. However, even Lenin called for the use of the King’s Duma as a platform for public statements, forcing the authorities to react in some way to popular concerns. In that respect, the appearance of Yabloko members could have a positive impact on developments in the country. Based on poll results, now there are only two parties that can make it to Duma: United Russia and the Communist Party (CPRF). If for some reason United Russia appears in Parliament with any other party besides the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), that could make a difference. However, the chances of that happening are very small. 

United Russia is set to gain the majority of seats in the Duma and to strengthen its presence there. The Communists will probably also get in, although with fewer seats, but they will still remain a real force. The situation will be much more problematic for Just Russia and LDPR. Putin’s participation in the elections raises the popularity of United Russia and lowers the chances that the other political parties will get the necessary number of votes to enter the Duma. This is particularly true for the parties that announce themselves to be for Putin but against the “bad bureaucrats.” As for the liberals, they didn’t stand a chance even before Putin announced his intentions to run with United Russia.

Washington Profile: Russian party politics revolve heavily around the prominent politicians who head them.  Does anyone pay attention to party platforms?

Petrov: Even if certain parties don’t have real chances to get representation in the next Duma, the campaign could be a time for the examination and discussion of different policy ideas. Unfortunately, during the last regional elections, we saw that the parties did not offer real solutions to the problems at hand.  Not because they are inept or bad, but because whether they have any policy solutions or not, they lack the capacity to implement them.  That is the main fault of elections in Russia: not bad parties or people, but the absence of opportunity for all, including the winning parties, to put their ideas into action.  This helps explain why populism is so widespread in Russia. If a political party is not in a position to implement its program, it makes sense to present the platform which will most appeal to the voter base. That’s why, for example, in the last regional elections, URF operated under leftist slogans. These kinds of messages are often targeted at retirees, who always go obediently to the polls. One could say that modern Russian political parties are competing over who will offer the higher pension increase. 
 
Unfortunately, elections in Russia have come to resemble a political show -- a show that lacks depth, because we know beforehand that there is nothing serious behind it.  If a party offered a serious and well thought-out program, it would not get additional political points.    Rather, it would likely get the opposite, and that is exactly what we are seeing now.   All of the parties are trying to involve the most well-known public figures; inventing all sorts of slogans…One could say that we are seeing an ad campaign for a soap the quality of which no one cares about, because no one is going to get to use it.

Washington Profile: The elections to the State Duma are held every four years. Is there a party life in between?

Petrov: I would place the parties into three different categories. The first is the party of power, United Russia, whose party life is rather active. It centers around the battle for influence at the regional elections and the battle among the regional groupings for a place on the federal lists. It is an active, but not entirely political, fight. There was a time when one of the main goals of United Russia was to assume control of the political situation in the regions. To a certain extent, the leaders of United Russia were the representatives of federal power and stood in opposition to the governors.  Now they have an intricate love-hate relationship. And the fact that all the leaders of regional and federal levels are supposed to coexist in harmony within the framework of United Russia detracts from it being a real political party. There can be no ideology there, nor any unity. The people who joined it are united only by their desire to grab and hold on to power.      

The second is the CPRF. They have an established political presence on all levels of government with a large number of activists and enthusiasts ready to work for an idea. They are a rather powerful group, but nevertheless do not have the ability to influence the political process even at the regional level. The heads of the regions, which were once proposed by CPRF, are now not at all different from their colleagues. However, the Kremlin is inching them out bit by bit. In that sense CPRF has lost some administrative influence, and United Russia has co-opted many of their populist slogans. That means that the Communists are now in a more difficult position then they were previously.  It is unfortunate that the only truly established political force did not coalesce in the last 15-20 years, but is a relic of the Soviet times.

It’s not really clear what the other parties are doing in between election cycles.   They might be much more important in the regional political context but their influence there is also very minimal, since United Russia is not only the main, but the only party of power.  Basically, that’s why all political parties without exception are in deep crisis. The political hierarchy is sorted out not during the elections in the public space, but by the lobbying groups in certain Kremlin cabinets. Party competition exists, but it is distorted and less effective.  I do believe, though, that the Kremlin is interested in having several concurring political parties. So if Yabloko or URF is able to get through these difficult times, then in there will be a need for them in the future. The question is how they will manage to get through the hard times and not just become an old forgotten brand.  

Washington Profile: Recently Ukraine transitioned from a presidential republic to a parliamentary state, which is a rare example in the region. How do you think this political metamorphosis will impact on party life in Ukraine?

Petrov: Ukraine has never been a presidential republic as the parliament has always been rather independent.  It was a conglomerate of different political forces and was always difficult to control.  It was not so much of an ideological mixture as a reflection of the complicated regional and social divisions in the country. Whether under Kravchuk or Kuchma, the Rada has never been a puppet parliament. 

Various prominent business figures are involved in Ukrainian parliamentary politics.  In the upper house, no one party dominates. The parties have no choice but to build consensus, to create coalitions, which by the way are not set in stone, but are constantly changing. Most importantly, there is real pluralism. All of the political parties have realized that they can only get something done if they are able to get along with their neighbors. It is a rather democratic process which as a whole is more democratic then some of its individual parts. We could draw attention to how “dirty” everything is in the elections, on the behavior of political technologists, on the abuse of administrative resources, but we still end up with one indisputable fact that no one party is able to dominate.  In this regard it is interesting to follow the Ukrainian elections, which for a second time were conducted using the proportional voting system that is to be tried in the upcoming elections in Russia, and which was already used in the August elections in Kazakhstan.

Russia is clearly between Ukraine and Kazakhstan.  Ukraine has a three percent barrier and an active political life.  Kazakhstan, on the other hand, announced sweeping political reforms which were ostensibly intended to transfer power from the president to the parliament. But the elections gave the opposite result.  Right before election day it seemed like Nur Otan, the party of power headed by the President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbayev, was going to receive about 70 percent of the vote, with the two other elite-based parties set to get seats as well. But only Nur Otan passed the barrier and is now the only party in parliament.  What’s more, each parliamentarian who got to Mejlis from Nur Otan can be called back any time by a party committee decision. 

The question now is whether the elections in Russia are going to more closely resemble those in Ukraine or in Kazakhstan.  Russian law stipulates that there must be more than one party serving in the State Duma. But if it so happens that United Russia is the only party able to pass the seven percent barrier, and the second party, most probably CPRF, gets to the Duma only because of this law, then we will have a situation that won’t be much different from the one in Kazakhstan. This is rather dangerous because it has the potential to lead to instability.