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But in today's terms, none of these elections was truly democratic. The unbridled anarchy of general elections did not arrive in Russia until Nov. 25, 1917, but the resultant Constituent Assembly existed for just a couple of days before it was dissolved by the Bolsheviks. Russia's second experiment with general elections, launched at the close of the 20th century, has lasted for nearly 15 years, but it, too, is coming to an end.
In the late 1980s, Mikhail Gorbachev suddenly decided to use elections to force Communist Party apparatchiks out of power. The first more or less free election in the Soviet Union, held in 1989, was for the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies. The restrictive election law allowed for candidates to be vetted by district electoral nominating conferences whose delegates the party tried to appoint in secret. But average voters who dreamed of bringing down the old regime became so active that in big cities, the party lost control of the process. In our district of Moscow, for example, we built an organization to back "democratic" candidates that had a coordinator in every locality. People driven by idealism alone would come in off the streets to join. My brother and I, along with other eager volunteers, found out where the meetings were being held to choose electors, printed up notices on our primitive home computer, rounded up our friends and crashed the meetings, spoiling the district apparatchiks' plans. This kind of thing happened all over Moscow, Leningrad and other major cities. Thanks to the efforts of average voters, a significant number of "democrats" were elected to the Congress despite the regime's brutal campaign to discredit them.
The elections to the Russian Congress of People's Deputies and local government offices in 1990 were the freest since the time of the Constituent Assembly. The party was practically paralyzed by this time and the opposition organized huge demonstrations across the country. Restrictions on the nomination of candidates were removed. The press split its support between the "democrats," "patriots" (conservative critics of reform) and the party line. Our organization, dubbed the "District Association of Voters," grew in size and strength. We managed to get a majority of our candidates elected to the district council and to elect "democrats" to the Moscow Soviet, myself included, and to the Russian Congress of People's Deputies.
My campaign expenses were limited to a few reams of paper. My "staff" consisted of my brother and our cousins. My stiffest competition came from fellow "democrats," including philosopher Igor Chubais, elder brother of UES CEO Anatoly Chubais. The official candidates didn't pose much of a threat. "Our people" on the election commission reported no attempts to rig the vote despite the absence of election observers.
The presidential election in 1991 was less than democratic. The Kremlin backed the official candidates and the television stations did their best to discredit the "democrat" Boris Yeltsin. On the whole the situation was similar to the election in 2000, but the outcome was entirely different: The Communist regime was so discredited by that time that all of its dirty campaign tricks only increased Yeltsin's popularity. Not all of the mudslinging was inaccurate, of course, but the voters were euphoric and didn't want to believe the stories of Yeltsin's drunken exploits or the fact that most of his pronouncements were pure demagoguery.
The 1993 parliamentary election, held after the "democratic" dissolution of all representative government bodies, revealed a number of dangerous trends. Elections were becoming a professional activity. Having registered as a candidate for the State Duma, I immediately realized that my brother and our home computer wouldn't do the trick any more. A proper campaign was needed: A headquarters with staff, cars, fliers, radio appearances and time on local cable television at the very least. All of this would cost thousands of dollars, well out of reach of most people. At the same time, the mayor of Moscow had tightened his grip on power and was throwing his support behind selected candidates. In the end, I lost out to one of the mayor's deputies.
Despite my defeat, however, I was generally satisfied with how the election was conducted. My opponent was better known than I was, and the "democratic" vote in my district was split as usual. Though the regime certainly intervened in the election, it was too preoccupied with other matters, like rigging the constitutional referendum and the Duma election, to exercise full control.
In 1995, the intervention in the electoral process intensified as Yury Luzhkov and other regional leaders saw the Duma election as a chance to install their own people at the federal level. I ran and lost to a famous economist who apparently had Luzhkov's full support. It was in 1995 that observers and party representatives first took part in the process. They were given copies of the official reports filed by local election commissions. It soon became clear that nearly all of the reports contained violations of the law. I didn't see a single one where something hadn't been erased, whited out or corrected. There were cases where an election commission filed false reports simply because it hadn't been able to finish the count. But on other occasions, thousands of votes went missing or appeared out of nowhere. There was no point in contesting the count, however: Election commissions didn't even respond to complaints, and the courts generally ruled that individual violations had no impact on the overall result.
Much has been written about the 1996 presidential election. In the Duma election a few months earlier, regional leaders had been responsible for most government intervention in the electoral process. Now the Kremlin weighed in to rout the Communists. Negative campaigning came to the fore as the state-owned media stoked fears of a Communist revanche, thereby boosting Yeltsin's popularity as the only man capable of stemming the red tide. Massive vote-rigging also occurred, as demonstrated by the Communists' observers in Tatarstan. But pointing this out did no good. The courts and election commissions, controlled by the regime, consistently ruled in its favor.
By 1999, elections had become a real industry. Hundreds of agencies across the country offered to get anyone elected for a fee. Contesting a gubernatorial election now cost you a couple million dollars; a single-mandate seat in the Duma ran in the hundreds of thousands. Everything was for sale: TV airtime, newspaper space, billboards, spots on election commissions and the cooperation of local officials. Official campaign accounts registered no more than 10 percent of actual spending. The realization that elective offices were going to the highest bidder led to voter apathy and low turnout. Most of those who did vote cast their ballots for stability and order, just as they always had.
Even back in 1990, a "democratic" candidate for the Russian Congress of People's Deputies narrowly defeated an Interior Ministry general who ran on a platform of executing criminals and traitors and restoring order. Had just 10 or 15 percent of the electorate become disillusioned and stayed home, the general would have won. This finally happened in 1999. In my Moscow region constituency, the election was first declared invalid because a majority had voted for "none of the above." When a by-election was held, the chief of the local police special forces unit won. The same basic thing happened in the 2000 presidential election, contested by two legitimate rivals, Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Primakov, with very similar platforms. Though Primakov looked the sharper candidate, the Kremlin stopped at nothing to get Putin elected. In the end, Primakov was forced out before the race began.
The Duma election in 2003 made clear that the time for fun and games was over. The entire state machine, from the president to the janitor, was mobilized to back official candidates. The media did their dirty work and unsuitable candidates were struck from the ballot on the flimsiest of pretexts. Vote-rigging was widespread and scarcely concealed. Even the Central Elections Commission admitted that in some regions voter turnout had exceeded 100 percent and that a majority of ballots failed to pass muster. Did the commission take action? Of course not. The right people won.
What can I say about the presidential election? There was only one candidate. As commission head Alexander Veshnyakov said recently, the only question was who would come second.
So Russia's second experiment with free elections is now over and there are three main reasons for this. First, no one in Russia has ever regarded free elections as a goal, an institution essential to the effective functioning of the social system. They have always been viewed as a means to an end: the "democrats" used them to remove Communist apparatchiks from power; the oligarchs used them to keep Yeltsin in power and to install friendly governors and deputies; and now the bureaucracy uses them to expand its own enormous power. The only people unhappy with the outcome of elections here are the losers, but they're more than happy to use the same tactics themselves the next time around. Chubais may be grumbling today, but back in 1996 he was running the show. Many of Yeltsin's former cronies are out of favor today, but back in 1993 they were rigging the constitutional referendum.
Russia's history leaves no doubt that elections quickly descend into farce in the absence of a clear-cut separation of powers. When the election commissions and the courts are controlled by the executive, there is little point in putting yourself out to win on election day. The result will be corrected in any case, and no one can contest it.
Finally, disillusionment with the policies of the "democrats" and the obvious rigging of elections has produced a change in the mood of the electorate. The Russian voter today is passive, skeptical and cynical, and has every right to be. But this passivity will not last forever. When voters inevitably get fed up with the policies of the regime, changes will occur similar to those in the late 1980s. People will once more take to the streets and demand regime change. At that point, no state intervention will be capable of containing the pressure of public opinion. This process will lay the foundation for Russia's third experiment with free elections. When it comes, we can only hope that it will last a little longer than the last two. In the meantime, as the poet Naum Korzhavin put it back in 1956, we'll just have to "wait for other times."
Alexander Lukin, an independent political analyst, contributed this comment to The Moscow Times.
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