Ordinary Russians are powerless against the party of 'thieves and crooks'
The parliamentary election results are in from Russia. Vladimir Putin's United Russia party has suffered a setback. Its vote is down from the 64% it registered in Duma elections in 2007 to the 49.67% it received yesterday. That means it will have 238 rather than 315 seats in Russia's parliament.
This result is despite evidence of coercion and fraud. Seven opposition parties were disqualified from standing on technicalities. That left United Russia, the Communists, the Liberals (a neo-Fascist party) and Yabloko, the liberals in any meaningful sense.
Despite sneak cyber attacks on websites monitoring electoral 'irregularities', the election included a 146% (!) turnout in some regions, while 90% of patients in state mental hospitals in central Russia enthusiastically voted for Putin's party.
Tough guy: Vladimir Putin's United Party polled below 50% in Russia's parliamentary elections
The former KGB/FSB officer Putin originally came to power to clear up the shambles of the late Yeltsin presidency, when President Boris was often too drunk to get off a plane and shady oligarchs ran riot with the country's considerable assets of oil, gas and gold.
Putin was a tough guy with a typical KGB officer's hard stare. He did not believe in much beyond a 'non ideological patriotism', clouded with incense by the highly conservative Orthodox Church. Being similar to US Southerners, ordinary Russians liked the macho stuff: the judo, the sedating tigers, horse-riding, transnational motorbike odysseys and so on.
But ten years on, and after the novel tandem with Dimitry Medvedev as PM/President, many Russians are bored, or actively fear Putin's authoritarianism. The corruption has worsened too. United Russia is known as the party 'of crooks and thieves', many ensconced in suburban Moscow mansions costing millions to build. One lot of oligarchs have been exiled or locked up (e.g. Boris Berezovsky) and replaced by those who enjoy Putin's favour (e.g. Roman Abramovich). Although Putin's personal salary is a mere £41,000 a year, the value of one watch he wears, he is rumoured to be worth US $40billion.
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Ordinary Russians feel powerless. As well they might since in addition to flooding central Moscow with troops, Putin organised a 30,000-strong 'manifestation' by his youth claque Nashi, just in case any opponents were thinking in terms of holding their own Russian Spring.
He will almost certainly win the presidential elections this March, which could mean another twelve years in power, making him Russia's longest-lived ruler since Stalin.
As far as the West is concerned this means more trouble ahead. For Russia's default reflex in international affairs seems to be sticking a large finger in the West's eye. What stance to take with Iran or Syria is one problem. A Russian fleet pointedly docked in the Syrian port of Tartus last week after years of never visiting it. Russian fear that any US missile shield (intended to deter a nuclearised Iran) in eastern Europe will undermine its nuclear deterrent is another. The top Russian military commanders have already started issuing dire threats. Chinese commerical encroachment across the far eastern borders into a fast depopulating Russia is a third. Billions have been poured into the remote Pacific port of Vladivostok to counter this last trend. And the spreading of the Eurozone's turmoil into Russia is a fourth.
Apart from the problems of Russian democracy, it seems unlikely that Putin will do much to diversify Russia's mono-economy (basically oil and gas) or the fact that in about fifty years Russia may have fewer people than Britain.
Britain also tells us one final point about contemporary Russia. Conditions there are so dodgy that anyone with any real money has sunk it into fancy properties in London or the English countryside. Until that wealth starts being repatriated, rather than being used to corrupt England's own elites, nothing much will change inside Russia.
Read Michael Burleigh's RightMinds blog here
