Democratic Forces in Full Retreat

The most important aspect of this month’s Duma elections was not the trouncing of the Russian Communist Party or the Liberal Democratic Party but the virtual elimination of the Yabloko group, led by Grigori Yavlinsky. Yabloko has been far and away the most consistent supporter of democratic values in Russian politics. Yavlinsky had stood up for universal human rights, for incorrupt politics and administration, for the rule of law and social justice. Although he never came close to winning the presidential races against either Boris Yeltsin or Vladimir Putin, his participation at least meant that decent values were conserved in the country’s discourse.

In putting an end to the roller-coaster uncertainties of the Yeltsin years, Putin has introduced an authoritarianism that bodes ill for Russia’s future. United Russia, the big winner in the elections, will not challenge it. Putin encouraged the party’s formation without actually joining it. On television, he was visibly delighted with the election results, though his words were scarcely emotional. With the icy calculation of a martial-arts champion, Putin looked forward to a more orderly future for Russia. He contends that a period of political stability is needed for the current phase of economic growth to be made permanent. He has earned golden opinions from President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. On foreign trips, Putin never fails to assert his credentials as a practitioner of democratic values.

The case for Putin is built on the fact that United Russia defeated the threat posed by extremist forces. The second-biggest party in the Duma is the Russian Communist Party, but it has lost voters since the last election, and its leader, Gennadi Zyuganov, has the charisma of a stiff-shirt schoolmaster. Its electoral appeal is heavily tilted toward the older generation, and as pensioners die off or get disappointed by successive defeats at the polls, the Communists look like a spent force.

It is true that Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, has seen a resurgence of support. But he is more clown than serious contender for supreme office. No one seriously expects Putin, who remains popular in the polls, to have trouble in securing a second term as president.

Undoubtedly, Putin has reason to assert that the mega-rich businessmen whom he has been pursuing through Russian and foreign courts took unfair advantage of the privatization scheme introduced by Yeltsin in the 1990s. The Russian Federation is immensely rich in natural resources. Oil, gas and timber exist in superabundance. Ostensibly, every Russian citizen was meant to have an equal pack of shares. In reality, those with political influence or with a sharp eye for opportunity elbowed the rest of society out of the feast of assets undergoing redistribution. Privatization was accompanied by massive fraud and vicious violence. Yeltsin condoned this, especially after he came to need the businessmen’s funds to win reelection in 1996.

Putin has been less indulgent. First, oligarch Boris Berezovsky had to flee to London to escape arrest. Then, mogul Vladimir Gusinsky was locked up before taking refuge in Greece, whose judicial system refused to extradite him to the mercies of Moscow prosecutors. Most recently, the oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky was thrown into prison, charged with malpractices that may yet earn him a long sentence.

Putin’s hunt for the financial oligarchs is one reason why his extraordinary popularity has persisted. In poll after poll, Russians express resentment of the “theft” of national assets that occurred in the 1990s. For them, Putin has proved to be the tough leader they craved.

It is also pointed out by Putin’s friends that the oligarchs consistently strove to turn their economic muscle into political power. Berezovsky never ceased boasting about his influence over Yeltsin and his family. Gusinsky’s NTV television network repeatedly poked fun at Yeltsin and Putin. The puppet show “Dolls” caused intense offense to po-faced Putin and was among the reasons for Gusinsky’s temporary incarceration. Khodorkovsky bragged about subsidizing political parties hostile to Putin. These businessmen were not noted for their civic-mindedness in their early rise to prominence. The belief got around that while they pulled the strings of their political puppets, the continuing drama of Russian public life would not have a clean denouement.

Most people in Russia think they got what they deserved.

Yet, the West’s continuing deference to Putin’s image of his regime deserves a stronger critique. It is tragic for today’s Russia that Yavlinsky has lost his personal seat in the Duma. Like other defeated democrats, he faces a depressing future. Usually, the first step is to found a think tank without effect on either the government or public opinion. Then, foreign lecture tours beckon. It is a road already trodden by former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev and former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. Eventually, the defeated democrat loses the capacity to damage the incumbent president, and the official media stop bothering to criticize him. Yavlinsky has reached this last stage without having gone through the previous ones.

The canker in Russian politics is tumescent. Putin has done a brilliant job of schmoozing Bush and Blair and of gulling his electorate. The basic reality, though, is still diseased. Putin’s former police cronies are not notably more conscientious than those whom they have replaced. Elections are determined by huge manipulation of TV news reportage. The rule of law has yet to be realized. The disgusting treatment of Chechnya continues; the towns of that small, mountainous republic on Russia’s southernmost rim have been reduced to a Mars-like landscape. All this matters not just for the Russians but also for the rest of us. Criminal gangs rooted in Russia no longer confine their ambitions to their country. Money laundering, drug smuggling and prostitution rackets are increasing. Nor is it guaranteed that Russian nuclear arms -- and the science and technology that underpin them -- will not be exported.

Russia, until it shakes off its legacy of arbitrary rule, will continue to have an unsettling influence on world affairs. It has never been justified to accept Putin’s airbrushed image just because he cooperated with the U.S. and its allies over the war in Afghanistan. Pragmatism as well as moral considerations make a change of policy urgent.