Kremlin Ploy Is a Winner at the Polls

Sick and tired of this country’s leadership, Russian voters cast their ballots this weekend in protest--and handed a powerful victory to the same leadership they were protesting.

The contradiction demonstrates the extraordinary cunning of the clique of insiders who run President Boris N. Yeltsin’s Kremlin. Just four months ago, their influence was under threat by growing popular support for a rival alliance led by former Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov.

But in Sunday’s elections, through clever strategy and media manipulation, the Kremlin managed to transform the protest vote into a ringing endorsement of the current leadership, and especially of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

“The Russian political [system] is still unformed and open to manipulation,” said Sergei A. Markov, director of Moscow’s Institute of Political Studies. “I think it’s not too soon to say that what we have in this country is manipulative democracy.”

Votes were still being counted Monday, but the outlines of the Kremlin’s victory were already clear.

Unity, the party formed by the Kremlin to counteract Primakov’s alliance, had become the first party in years to equal the Communist Party at the polls. With 84% of the ballots counted, Unity was within a single percentage point of the Communists’ 24% share of the vote. Primakov’s once-fearsome Fatherland-All Russia coalition, meanwhile, had garnered a mere 13%.

The percentages on the party slate ballot determine only half the composition of the 450-seat Duma, parliament’s lower house. The other half is made up of directly elected district representatives, and frenzied bidding is expected by the various political factions for the 133 deputies listed as independents who appear to have won such seats. Building on its electoral momentum, Unity is expected to attract a significant proportion of the independents.

That’s remarkable success for an organization that didn’t exist three months ago. It’s even more remarkable for a political movement with no ideology, no party platform, no experienced politicians in its top ranks, and only one policy position--supporting Putin and his war against the separatist southern republic of Chechnya.

Putin’s popularity and Unity’s electoral success are two aspects of the same phenomenon, one that taps into Russia’s frustration with its post-Soviet impotence. Many Russians are weary of Yeltsin’s fitful leadership and increasingly irritated by what they see as the West’s smug prescriptions for Russia’s ills.

In these circumstances, a robust, take-charge leader is exceedingly attractive. And if by taking charge he also needles the West, so much the better.

The fact that Putin, a former chief of the successor agency to the KGB, has no apparent political philosophy is hardly a drawback for most Russians--it’s an asset. For the last four years, Russians have watched the parliament’s fractious politicians debate endlessly, provoke constitutional crises and even come to blows in the chamber. Many Russians would just as soon have a leader who isn’t a “politician.” Putin’s popularity ratings are above 70% at the moment, an astronomical number for any leader in any country.

Unity, which is also known by its Russian acronym--”Bear”--was deliberately created in Putin’s image. The three top leaders are all nonpolitical “men of action”: Emergencies Minister Sergei K. Shoigu, a former wrestler named Alexander Karelin and Gen. Alexander Gurov, former head of the Interior Ministry’s organized crime investigations. The party’s main slogan is not subtle: “Masculinity,” it promises. Its electoral success is to a large degree a vote for a Putin presidency.

But other than its masculine image and endorsement of Putin, Unity is a cipher.

“They do not seem to know who they are themselves,” said Vladimir P. Lukin, a leader of the liberal Yabloko party. “They know very well that they want to support Putin, and that they are--as they call themselves--the ‘Party of Power.’ They love power, it appeals to them. They would like to be close to power. But what else?”

Many other observers find Unity’s rapid success troubling.

One reason is that it is the brainchild of Boris A. Berezovsky, the scheming oligarch believed to have been behind many Kremlin power plays. After an earlier attempt to form a pro-Kremlin alliance foundered this summer, Berezovsky went on a cross-country tour in September and cobbled together a coalition of governors not already signed up by Fatherland-All Russia.

For the most part, they were second-string governors from troubled provinces. Some media reports have accused the Kremlin of paying the regions’ debts in order to sign them up. Fatherland officials have accused allies of the Kremlin of offering bribes directly to governors to get them to defect.

Berezovsky’s influence on the elections goes still further. It was the ORT television network, which he controls, that led a blitzkrieg propaganda campaign against Primakov and his political partner, Moscow Mayor Yuri M. Luzhkov, that seriously eroded their popular support. Luzhkov, however, was only slightly damaged in his stronghold and was reelected mayor of the capital Sunday with more than 70% of the vote.

Alan Rousso, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, finds it disturbing that Russian voters so easily lend their support to an artificial political movement such as Unity.

“What else might the Russian electorate go along with if they went along with this so willingly?” Rousso asked. “We have to keep in mind that radical nationalist parties have been voted into power. They don’t always seize power.

“I don’t think that’s what’s happening in Russia right now,” he continued. “But when you have an electorate that can be swayed easily to support an agenda that so far is made up entirely of a war against your own people, then I think we have to be slightly concerned.”

Another Carnegie analyst, Michael McFaul, was more sanguine. Despite Unity’s success, he pointed out that nearly 50% of the electorate voted for parties that are committed to legislative goals: the Communists, Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces and the Zhirinovsky Bloc. The other two parties--Unity and Fatherland-All Russia--were never really focused on parliament, just the presidency.

As a result, he said, Fatherland might not be prepared to be an opposition party in the Duma and might fall apart.

Meanwhile, it remains to be seen whether Putin, his Kremlin backers or the generals bombing Chechnya will be able to sustain the prime minister’s giddy popularity until the presidential election in June.

“It’s pretty hard to hold a 70% approval rating for six months, and when it starts to fall, there could be panic,” McFaul said.

Indeed, if nothing else, the swift surges and collapses of political fortunes during this campaign demonstrated how unstable Russia’s political landscape remains, and how quickly it could shift in the coming months.

“In Russian politics,” said Rousso, “six months is an extremely long time.”