Please read a new essay by my Hoover colleague, Paul Gregory.<\/i><\/p>\n
Paul Gregory \/\/ Forbes<\/p>\n
Vladimir Putin has destroyed his liberal-democratic opposition led by Alexei Navalny and the late Boris Nemtsov through repression. The March 2018 election reveals that danger to the Putin regime comes from a communist left reconstituted along European lines. This takeaway from March 18 has been overlooked by foreign observers.<\/p>\n
The world press has trumpeted Vladimir Putin\u2019s \u201clandslide\u201d electoral victory. His March 18 re-election, they say, puts him on track to match Stalin\u2019s record of continuous rule.<\/p>\n
Stalin famously remarked that “the people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”\u00a0Under Putin, voters are nothing compared to those who decide who can be on the ballot. Indeed, Putin\u2019s Central Electoral Commission rejected Putin\u2019s main liberal rival (Navalny) on a technicality. Other potential contenders have been assassinated (Boris Nemtsov) or subjected to death threats (Mikhail Kasyanov).<\/p>\n
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There should be no talk of a Russian \u201celection\u201d when the sitting president chooses his opponents, controls mass media, and has all the instruments of power behind his campaign. With these advantages, the outcome is not in doubt. Only the turnout has symbolic importance. If voters stay home, the leader\u2019s image as a popular leader is tarnished. Lacking access to the ballot box, Navalny called on his followers to\u00a0boycott<\/a>\u00a0the election. Such boycotts rarely work.<\/p>\n The March 18 Russian presidential \u201celection\u201d was therefore a battle for turnout. Citizens were offered prizes, raffles, free phones, and other inducements for voting. Managers of state companies were ordered to get out the vote, and \u201ccarrousel voting\u201d and ballot stuffing were widely in\u00a0evidence<\/a>.<\/p>\n Putin\u2019s Central Electoral Commission approved seven \u201copponents\u201d for the presidential ballot. Two represented established parties that sit in the Russian parliament. The others were minor figures expected to get a percent or so of the vote. None would be allotted time on major networks, and they were expected to go through the motions and accept their \u201cdefeat\u201d without objection.<\/p>\n Apparently, the chosen candidate of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Pavel Grudinin, rejected his assigned ceremonial role. Grudinin, a dynamic and charismatic chairman of a successful agricultural company (named after Lenin), put forward an appealing \u201cLeft Patriotic\u201d\u00a0platform<\/a>\u00a0that called for free education and medicine, a more equal income distribution, and pictured Putin as a puppet of the oligarchs.<\/p>\n Grudinin signaled that he was serious about his candidacy when he stormed off the stage of the nationally-televised \u201cPresidential debate,\u201d calling it a\u00a0farce<\/a>\u00a0without the participation of Putin. The nonplussed commentator and the other candidates were in shock. Opposition candidates are supposed to feign a campaign not engage in a real one.<\/p>\n Grudinin\u2019s poorly financed and amateurish campaign was based on the claim that Russia is, at heart, a leftist-patriotic country run unfortunately by crooked and greedy oligarchs, who pull the strings on Kremlin politics. This ruling Kremlin elite cares less about the everyday lives of ordinary people. Putin, for his part, maintains his favorable ratings by playing the \u201cgood czar,\u201d who stands ready to punish bureaucratic wrongdoing that comes to his attention.<\/p>\n As a pre-election precaution, Putin ordered the largely independent Levada Center to\u00a0refrain<\/a>\u00a0from election polling, leaving only state-run Vtsiom to publish\u00a0public opinion polls<\/a>\u00a0on the election outcome. Vtsiom\u2019s polls pegged the March 18 turnout in the high seventies, Putin\u2019s share of the vote in the low seventies, and Grudinin in second place at seven percent.<\/p>\n To Putin\u2019s irritation, Grudinin posted on\u00a0\u00a0his primitive campaign website \u201cindependent\u201d\u00a0public opinion polls<\/a>\u00a0that showed him\u00a0tied<\/a>\u00a0with Putin at forty percent of the vote. These unsourced polls appear to be internet-based or gathered in such a fashion to guarantee anonymity. To buttress its figures, the Grudinin campaign cited early election results from remote regions that showed him and Putin neck and neck. They also cited an unsourced\u00a0poll<\/a>\u00a0from Omsk again showing Grudinin and Putin tied at forty percent.<\/p>\n Grudinin\u2019s campaign literature hinted at\u00a0panic<\/a>\u00a0in the Kremlin in reaction to Grudinin\u2019s reportedly strong poll results. According to unsubstantiated reports, Putin\u2019s team discussed\u00a0removing<\/a>\u00a0upstart Grudinin from the ballot, but his candidacy was seen as a counter to Navalny\u2019s call for a boycott.\u00a0\u00a0With the election around the corner, it was too late to go back on that decision.<\/p>\n Instead of removal, Putin opted for \u201cblack PR.\u201d Russia\u2019s mainstream press filled with accounts of Grudinin\u2019s illegal bank accounts abroad and of his mistreatment of employees. On election day, voters were greeted with\u00a0stickers<\/a>\u00a0affixed next to Grudinin\u2019s name stating that he had supplied \u201cunreliable information\u201d in the course of the election campaign.<\/p>\n