John RapleyRUSSIA WENT to the polls on Sunday, and elected a lower-house in the parliament which will be strongly favourable to President Vladimir Putin. Indeed, it will be the first time in Russia's post-communist history that any party will control a majority of the State Duma.
International observers were quick to condemn the elections. While judging that the vote itself had been free and fair, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, which assigned some 500 observers to the election, was more critical of the process leading up to it. In particular, pro-Kremlin candidates were allowed to run their elections from state offices, and were given privileged access to state media. This has to be set against an apparent Kremlin campaign against anti-government media outlets over the last few years. It was even reported that in some districts opposition candidates were prevented from campaigning publicly.
Western observers and Russia's liberals who were crushed in the elections are thus united in their concern for the future of reform. On the one hand, Putin has re-committed to economic reform. But his interest in political reform shows signs of waning. Putin's United Russia Party took about half the seats in the election.
XENOPHOBIC FIREBRAND
Following on its heels were the Homeland Party and the Liberal Democrats (who are in fact anything but liberal, being a far-right party led by a xenophobic firebrand). Between them, these two parties took nearly a fifth of the seats.
Homeland, for its part, is a new kid on the Russian political block. A populist-nationalist party, it was formed just a few months ago. Some analysts detected in its creation a Kremlin plan to split the communist opposition, seeing as the party was given plenty of access to state media.
Whether or not the Kremlin was behind Homeland's creation, the party did siphon considerable support from the communists with a programme of wealth-redistribution and Russian chauvinism. The communists, who once formed a powerful opposition party, appear to be imploding.
That the communists have lost support to the far right is not as surprising as it might seem. In part, this reflects the fact that extremists are united in their rejection of the centre: the same trend, of declining leftist parties feeding a resurgent far right, has loomed over west European politics for the last generation.
VICTORY OF STALIN
In addition, since the victory of Stalin over Trotsky in the factional struggles of the 1920s, Russian communism has always contained a heavy dose of Russian nationalism (which is kind of odd, considering that Stalin was a Georgian). It used to be quipped that communism did not conquer Russia; Russia conquered communism.
In fact, a recurrent theme in Russian history over the last few centuries has been the ongoing struggle that has pitted westernisers against so-called Great Russian chauvinists. The former tendency has sought to integrate Russia in Europe, adopting the norms of democracy and capitalism. Russia's liberals embody this trend today.
Great Russian chauvinists, on the other hand, avert their eyes from the west and look to Russia's eastern heritage. In particular, they place great stress on religious and political traditions that, among other things, have celebrated the strong state.
If Sunday's poll is anything to go by, the Great Russian chauvinists are in the ascendant. If capitalism is not yet in question, it may nonetheless come in for closer scrutiny. Liberal political principles may suffer, though, as the country comes under the sway of politicians with authoritarian leanings.
It is not even obvious that Vladimir Putin is the big winner in this. True, his United Russia Party controls parliament; furthermore, if the Homeland and Liberal Democratic blocs rally behind Putin, as some expect, he will further succeed in consolidating executive power, as he has been doing since he first came to office in 2000.
ECONOMIC POPULISM
But there is another possibility. Homeland and the Liberal Democrats could form the nucleus of a far-right political movement, rallying around a programme of economic populism and xenophobic nationalism. If that were to happen, the bloc could conceivably find some common ground with the communists.
The failures of economic reform to deliver a decent lifestyle to ordinary Russians may thus be coming back to haunt its liberal proponents. A new era in Russian politics may have begun.
John Rapley is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
