Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

On October 28, 2006, a new party was introduced into the Russian party landscape. Its name was Spravedlivaya Rossiya, or A Just Russia^[10] —at first sight a promising name, because many Russians deplored the loss of the former socialist model of the defunct Soviet Union and craved a more just and fair society.^[11] What was A Just Russia? A new opposition party? A party that would challenge the near monopoly of United Russia? One should forget this illusion. According to the Moscow Times, “Russia . . . [has] become possibly the first country in history with a two-party system in which both parties share the same overriding principle, that the executive is always right.”^[12] In a report for the American Congress, Stuart D. Goldman wrote: “The platforms of United Russia and A Just Russia consisted of little more than the slogan, ‘For Putin.’”^[13] He added that the “second pro-Kremlin party, A Just Russia—[is] widely believed to have been created by Kremlin ‘political technologists’ . . . to draw leftist votes away from the Communists.”^[14] Goldman was right. The instigator of the new party was Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s deputy head of the presidential administration and a prominent Kremlin ideologue. Surkov was the inventor of the new political concepts of the Putin era, such as the “power vertical” and “sovereign democracy” (which had nothing to do with democracy, but meant merely that no foreign power had the right to define what democracy is). Anna Politkovskaya characterized Surkov as follows: “The deputy head of Putin’s office is a certain Vladislav Surkov, the acknowledged doyen of PR in Russia. He spins webs consisting of pure deceit, lies in place of reality, words instead of deeds.”^[15]

Surkov’s “master idea” behind the creation of A Just Russia was to establish a two-party system as existed in the United States, but with one important difference: neither party would embody political alternatives, nor would they lead to an alternation of governing elites. Instead, they would guarantee political continuity by supporting the Putin regime. The hidden aim was that A Just Russia, as the new “left wing” party, would draw votes away from the Communist party. However, even circles close to the Kremlin were not convinced. One of them was former prime minister Primakov, who wrote “proposals can be heard to create in Russia a two-party system. The center left party A Just Russia could aspire to the role of lead second party. But the realization of this project, the idea behind it being attributed to the Kremlin, presents great difficulties. When United Russia was created, the administrative potential was used to the maximum. Many regional and local leaders felt obliged to become members of this party. Might they this time take at least a neutral position, or even support A Just Russia at the Duma elections? And that while V. V. Putin has become leader of United Russia?”^[16] Primakov’s skepticism was justified. In the December 2007 Duma elections the strategy did not work out as was planned. Although A Just Russia was secured a place in parliament, the Communist Party resisted better than expected. However, we have to take into account that the Communist Party, although an “opposition party,” did not play a serious opposition role. The party “knows its place” in the existing system and does not transgress its (narrow) limits, as it is dependent on the government for registration, fund-raising, and access to the state controlled TV channels. The same is true for Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party, of which it is said that “according to insider accounts [it] was established by the Soviet KGB to serve as a nationalist pseudo-opposition.”^[17]