Bad News for Liberals as Urals Ignore Polls

PERM, Ural Mountains -- Central Perm is covered in posters as the days count down to elections. There are posters for the ballroom dancing competition for war veterans, for the 1995 Perm boxing championships, for "psychological advice for small businesses" -- and there is one soggy, solitary election poster.


In this industrial city of just over 1 million at the foot of the Ural Mountains, the out-of-date poster for Nikolai Ryzhkov, head of the nationalist Power to the People party, seems only to emphasize the apathy felt by residents here about the polls Sunday.


While local journalists and the regional election commission predict that about 60 percent of potential voters will turn out to vote, hardly any of those interviewed this week could name a single Duma candidate for the Perm region, and many said they saw no point in voting at all.


That is bad news for Russia's liberals, because Perm and the Urals region in general was one of their strongest bases of support in the 1993 elections, and one of the regions in which ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky did least well.


In 1993, Yegor Gaidar's Russia's Choice came out on top here, with 20 percent of the votes, followed by Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party of Russia with 17 percent. The Russian Communist Party received 9 percent and Women of Russia and Yabloko each received 8 percent.


That was a significant result in a region that boasts about 17 million people, a large share of Russia's arms manufacturing plants, heavy industry, chemical plants and mineral mining.


But with productivity and wages plummeting, conversion of military industry stalling, and a devastated environment, many now believe the reformers' stronghold to be eroding.


The Moslem republic of Bashkortostan, which in 1993 voted for the Agrarians and Communists is perhaps the one Urals anomaly. Under the influence of its president, Murtaza Rakhimov, a supporter of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin's Our Home Is Russia, Bashkortostan is thought likely to move toward the center this time.


But even in the area's most progressive regions such as Perm -- where Russia's Choice got 26 percent of the vote in 1993 -- and President Boris Yeltsin's home region of Sverdlovsk, many believe that reformers will lose votes to the Communist Party of Russia, this time around.


"The democrats are definitely going to lose compared to 1993," said Michael McFaul, a senior research fellow at the Moscow Carnegie Center. "It's been two more years and there hasn't been much change. It's part of a general opposition vote, especially since they've been so loyal to Yeltsin."In Perm, observers echoed McFaul's opinion.


"Many factories have slowed down or are at a standstill now and that leaves many people who can swing either way," said Andrei Nikitin, editor in chief of the pro-government Perm News. "The Urals have generally been quite democratic and Russia's Choice came out on top at the last elections, but now it's more complicated and more people are ready to vote for the communists."


According to Yabloko candidate Vladimir Zotin, the inhabitants of Perm are democratically oriented but disappointed by what reforms appear to have produced over the past few years.


But in an election where low turnout is expected to operate in favor of the communists and ultranationalists -- who have dedicated, older followings -- it could be voter apathy that gives the democrats a coup de grace in the Urals.


In the Dzerzhinsky chainsaw factory, named after the infamous founder of the ChEKA, forerunner to the KGB, workers last week showed scant interest in the coming polls.


"When I get my list of candidates I'm going to cross them all out," said Vladimir Bulgakov, 41, a factory worker, standing under a huge banner that reads "Glory to working hands!"


"I don't think we need a Duma at all," he continued. "When you see it on TV it seems like a circus or an amusement show. The comrades are all out for themselves and they only deal with questions that deal with them personally."


Like many other potential voters, Bulgakov was unable to name a single local candidate.


"The campaigns are much quieter than in 1993," said Anatoly Lebedev, chairman of the regional election commission, "People call and ask us why they don't know who their candidates are, but the candidates themselves simply can't find the means to propagate their campaigns."


In an attempt to remedy this problem, the commission has distributed an election supplement in local newspapers, with information on all the candidates.


Zotin complained that while local television advertisements -- costing between 10,000 rubles and 37,000 rubles (between $2.15 and $8) per second -- are too expensive for most candidates to afford, less traditional forms of campaigning are equally unfeasible.


"People are so scared of criminals that they don't even open their doors anymore -- or they let their dogs out which is much worse. And unlike two years ago, you can never find the volunteers."