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The parliamentary parties are in no hurry to press their advantage, however. The Communists are in the throes of such a serious crisis that they couldn't manage to come up with a respectable candidate. The party's recent congress and plenum were a parody of the U.S. primary process. A host of names were bandied about for several days, but in the end the party leadership -- not its members and activists -- made their decision behind closed doors. The press was banned from the deliberations along with members and staff of the party's Duma faction. Under these conditions, the old bureaucratic penchant for choosing the worst of the available options won out.
Young Communist activists had pushed for the nomination of Valery Melnikov, the independent trade union leader from Norilsk who recently prevailed over the Norilsk Nickel corporation to win a brutal mayoral campaign. Nominating Melnikov was meant to show that the party had learned the lessons of its disastrous showing in the Duma elections, when voters turned their backs on a party list stacked with businessmen and notably light on workers and peasants. It is indicative that the Communist Party leadership didn't even include Melnikov's name on its shortlist of possible candidates. Initially they settled on wealthy businessman Gennady Semigin, but Zyuganov dismissed him as bourgeois and proposed instead the former governor of Krasnodar, Nikolai Kondratenko. Journalists covering the deliberations noted caustically that the party congress was being asked to choose between a bourgeois and an anti-Semite. When Kondratenko withdrew his candidacy, the party nominated Agrarian Nikolai Kharitonov, who in political terms carries about as much weight as Masyanya.
The only serious player in the Duma who is really itching for a fight is Rodina bloc leader Sergei Glazyev. But he is the exception that proves the rule. And before Glazyev can go toe-to-toe with Putin he'll have to overcome opposition within his own bloc. Rodina, you see, has nominated former Central Bank chief Viktor Gerashchenko.
The parliamentary parties know full well that the best guarantee of their continued survival in Russia's new political climate is to stay on good terms with the Kremlin. An aggressive presidential campaign by its very nature involves conflict. Since Putin is the obvious favorite, his competitors will have to attack him or no one will take any notice. It seems clear that the parliamentary parties prefer public disgrace to the wrath of the presidential administration.
The Kremlin's political masterminds are now confronted with an unsolvable riddle -- one they evidently didn't foresee. The Kremlin will not stand for serious opposition, because any politician who takes on Putin will attract public opinion and sympathy. But the prospect of Putin contesting a presidential race with no serious opposition is no more appealing, for it would turn his triumph into a farce. Neither option is acceptable, and there is no third way.
The president's men have painted themselves into a corner by destroying and humiliating the opposition in the Duma elections. The opposition is licking its wounds and it's not yet spoiling for a fight. Everything's going swimmingly for the administration, with one exception: Dealing with the consequences of its own successes is proving far trickier than crushing its adversaries' resistance.
Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.
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