Cold Political Wind Blows Across Russia

In just a month, Russian voters will elect their next president in what would appear to be a welcome sign of the consolidation of Russian democracy. But beneath the surface of electoral politics -- not very far beneath -- there are disturbing signs that the foundation of Russian democracy is beginning to buckle.

One measure of democracy’s health is the fate of dissenters. Russia does not fare well in this respect. Harassment and assault of journalists have become routine, and sometimes they have been killed or narrowly escaped death. Elena Tregubova, the author of a bestselling book that contained an unflattering insider’s portrait of President Vladimir V. Putin, narrowly avoided being killed this month by a bomb planted outside her apartment. Ivan Rybkin, one of Putin’s leading critics and a candidate for the presidency, mysteriously disappeared for six days and just as mysteriously resurfaced last Tuesday and later claimed he was kidnapped.

Was the Rybkin incident a dumb publicity stunt or something sinister? The latter interpretation is based on the fact that Rybkin is linked to Boris Berezovsky, the exiled oligarch and arch critic of Putin. Rybkin has no chance to defeat the president, who enjoys enormous popularity and dominates the state-controlled airwaves, but Putin has been systematically going after the oligarchs. In addition to Berezovsky, another tycoon, Vladimir A. Gusinky, is in exile, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of Yukos Oil, languishes in prison on corruption charges.

Russians have little sympathy for the oligarchs, seeing them -- not without reason -- as the corrupt beneficiaries of ill-gotten gains. But what drives Putin’s campaign against the plutocrats is not how these men became rich but the fact that, upon doing so, they either acquired political ambitions or started funding political parties and civic organizations.

Putin has no tolerance for criticism or rival centers of power. Indeed, in a now-famous meeting he told the oligarchs that he wouldn’t look into their financial history providing they stayed clear of politics. And under his watch, private Russian television networks have ceased to exist and newspapers and magazines that were once fearless critics of the government have been subject to legal harassment and are now resorting to self-censorship.

There are other troubling signs about Russia’s future. The nasty war in Chechnya begun in 1999 continues without end. It has been waged with little effort to safeguard noncombatants and has therefore taken a horrific toll on Chechen civilians. After the destruction of their homes and even their livestock, many either have been driven into squalid refugee camps in Ingushetia or have been left to survive amid the rubble.

The war has also corrupted Russia’s military. Soldiers -- demoralized, ill equipped, poorly fed and badly led -- have engaged in torture, rape, pillaging and hostage-taking. Few have been brought to account.

As a result of all this, there are more and more young Chechens -- particularly women who have lost their husbands or children -- who are willing to engage in suicide bombing and other acts of terror in Moscow and other parts of Russia.

The terrorism has not only killed many innocent Russians, it has further imperiled Russia’s fragile democracy by enabling law enforcement agencies to act without restraint. Police on Moscow’s streets routinely abuse, shake down and arrest Chechens and other nationalities from the North Caucasus. Xenophobia is growing among Russians, who are not troubled by such police violations and even see them as appropriate.

Demagogues from the far right, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the ultranationalist and the curiously named Liberal Democratic Party, advocate the wholesale expulsion of Chechens from Moscow. By asserting immediately after the Feb. 6 subway bombing that he knew Chechens were behind it, even though, by his own admission, he had no evidence, Putin stokes this intolerance and bigotry. And dismissing all suggestions for a political settlement in Chechnya, he in effect guarantees that innocent Chechens and Russians will continue to die.

Despite these conditions, the West has been silent for the most part. Russia’s war in Chechnya, in which its army behaves more like a marauding mob than a professional fighting force, is rarely criticized. The White House sees Chechnya through the lens of 9/11 and focuses on Russia’s battle against terror. The G-7 industrialized nations and the Council of Europe continue to welcome Russia, even though the rationale for giving it membership was to promote and reward its democratization.

The reality is that Russia’s democracy is under severe strain, and the chances of its survival are beginning to look pretty bleak.