In Campaign Against Putin, Opposites Attract

It would be hard to find two people who have less in common than Nataliya Azarova and Valery Zimin.

Azarova, 34, is a psychologist, intense, stylishly dressed, her hair a mass of wavy, blond curls. She helped organize parliament elections last year for Yabloko, one of Russia’s leading pro-business, pro-democracy political parties.

Zimin drives an old military van around town and looks as if he could be her disapproving father. A former bus company director, Zimin, 58, is a member of the local Communist Party council. He is as far to the left of the political spectrum as Azarova is to the right.

In normal times, Azarova and Zimin would be working overtime trying to figure out how to obstruct each other. On Friday, though, they were having lunch at the fashionable Petrozavodsk Cafe, recounting the joint protest actions, pamphleteering and lobbying campaigns they have undertaken in recent months through a formal agreement of cooperation.

Their common target, for the moment, is the increasingly authoritarian government of President Vladimir V. Putin, which has marginalized both ends of the political spectrum through strict controls on the broadcast media and tight limits on who can run for office.

On Dec. 5, the Communist Party and Yabloko brought 4,000 people into the streets in a joint rally against recent government cuts in social benefits. Yabloko supporters in the business community provide the cash to print leaflets that are distributed by hundreds of rank-and-file Communist volunteers -- who are “more disciplined,” Azarova said. And a Yabloko-run newspaper provides printing facilities for the Communist Party journal.

“If I would have been told about this in the past, I never would have believed it,” Azarova admitted. “It’s like a fairy tale, this cooperation. You take one twig, you join it with another twig. So together, it’s easier to oppose the authorities in the region. We unite our resources with their resources.”

Today, more than 1,200 pro-democracy opposition leaders from across Russia will convene in Moscow for a similar exercise in cooperation. For the first time, the Communists will send up to 15 unofficial representatives to join the proceedings.

With neighboring Ukraine in the middle of a popular uprising that succeeded in mandating new, fair presidential elections, a spotlight is also shining next door on the long-divided and ineffective political opposition in Russia. Democracy activists here are hoping the events in Ukraine will inspire a popular backlash against Putin’s centralization of power and clampdown on political dissent.

Faced with a spate of guerrilla attacks, a stalemate in Chechnya and worsening poverty in rural areas, Putin’s popularity has declined over the last year, and public frustration is palpable. In a survey last month by the Levada Center in Moscow, two-thirds said they regarded the situation in the country as “critical and explosive.” Only a third said they favored continuing Putin’s present course of market reforms.

“I would say that in the current situation, Russia will either become a democratic state, or there will be no Russia,” said Georgiy Satarov, president of the INDEM Foundation in Moscow, which is co-sponsoring the opposition conference. “And furthermore, I’m afraid there’s no direct and simple way to achieve this. I can’t rule out political cataclysms on this road.... And in Russia, they are likely to be much more unpredictable and much more dangerous than in Ukraine.”

Few expect any big developments at today’s conference. What is important, many say, is that it is happening at all -- that the opposition for the first time is focusing less on sniping at each other and more on moving ahead in a coordinated path.

“The authorities everywhere are bad to the extent to which civil society allows them to be. And if we don’t like their actions, we first of all should ask ourselves, what’s wrong with us? Where are we inefficient? What are we doing the wrong way?” Satarov said.

Both right-wing, pro-democracy parties, Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces failed to win the 5% of votes needed to secure representation in parliament during elections a year ago. The Communist Party -- a reincarnation of the formidable institution that ruled the Soviet Union for seven decades -- has been the leading opposition force in Russia since the Soviet collapse in 1991, but the party won only 48 of the 450 seats in the 2003 elections.

United Russia, a pro-Putin party, won 306 seats. The group also prevails in most regional parliaments. Here in the Karelia region, the Communists hold one seat and Yabloko holds three.

Yabloko and the Communists launched their first national cooperative action this year, when they filed a joint lawsuit claiming that some of the same election tactics allegedly used in Ukraine, including improper counting and blocking opposition candidates from campaigning properly, were used by Putin’s government in the parliamentary elections.

Because the courts are controlled by the government, few expect the Russian Supreme Court to act as Ukraine’s did this month, overturning the results of the Nov. 21 presidential election. It is on the street level, opposition leaders say, that more gains can be achieved by working together.

In a joint statement signed in October, Yabloko and Communist leaders listed a range of issues upon which they agree: the preservation of democratic freedoms and social guarantees; health, education and housing as priorities in regional budgets; and fighting corruption.

Their first joint action was in response to a bill in the regional parliament, a mirror of a proposal on the federal level, which replaces historic benefits such as free bus rides, electricity and heating for pensioners with small cash payments.

Lobbying together, they at least were able this week to gain a one-year transition period for phasing out the payment of utilities and raise the monthly benefit stipend from 200 to 250 rubles a month -- about $9.

“We came to the conclusion that our positions as to the evaluation of the problems in this region are either similar or identical. As a result, we knew we had to unite our actions,” said Pavel Khyamyalyaimen, the Communist Party leader in Petrozavodsk, the regional capital.

Opposition political leaders here say they hope that joining forces now can prevent the situation from deteriorating to the point that Russians become as politically divided as the electorate in Ukraine.

“People have said it’s Ukraine first, then Russia. But we didn’t want cataclysms to shake this country once again,” Khyamyalyaimen said.

“We would like the country to emerge from the crisis situation with smaller losses. But for this to happen, we have to unite forces with people of different views.”

First, the political groups have to address the source of the public’s discontent.

Unlike Moscow and St. Petersburg, which are awash in oil cash and full of plush restaurants and luxury boutiques, Petrozavodsk’s first supermarket opened only a few months ago. But few of the city’s nearly 300,000 residents can afford to shop there.

Here, 465 miles northwest of Moscow, the historic factories built as early as the 19th century have either closed or are operating at a fraction of their former capacities. Breakdowns in the region’s crumbling boiler systems has left some neighborhoods freezing for months at a time through recent winters, and a reduction in government farm subsidies has had a cascading effect: the closure of a formerly subsidized poultry farm this year sent egg prices skyrocketing by 50%. Fuel prices have risen 40% over the last year.

“What do we do? It’s life,” said 70-year-old pensioner Nikolai Petrov, who said he would be unable to ride the bus if he had to pay for it.

“My work was 50 years. How can they do this to me?” he said.

“When I saw what was happening in Ukraine, I envied them. I envied them that they have people like this. I think people are sleeping here,” said Tatiana Prokofieva, 44, a store clerk.

Prokofieva and her husband live in an apartment with no running water, and they heat it with a 40-year-old wooden stove. A community woodshed that was recently built by city authorities is falling apart, after residents ran out of firewood and began stripping the shack for fuel.

“Everything is falling apart, and it’s no secret that it’s because of corruption and stealing on the part of the government. And people hide from taxes,” Prokofieva said. “Putin can do very little.”

Ironically, local opposition leaders here have applauded Putin’s recent moves to effectively appoint local governors and restrict candidates for the parliament to those on official party lists. Both measures -- widely criticized internationally as anti-democratic -- will make it easier to get rid of corrupt local officials and will strengthen the ability of small parties to gain seats in parliament, they predicted.

“In our republic, a lot of money simply disappears. For example, money is allocated to build a road. In the end, we have no money and no road. That’s why our strongest argument is with the local authorities,” said Alexei Mosunov, a local newspaper editor and an independent deputy in the regional parliament.

But citizens, he said, have been reluctant to vote out the local authorities in recent elections.

“People in recent years have learned to be afraid of changes,” Mosunov said.

“People say this government is bad, but they already stole their fill. If a new government comes, they will have to begin stealing again.”