Free flightHERE IS TO THE FEW TRUE FRIENDSBy Valeria Novodvorskaya
September 2006
SourceThis year has been good for “crops”, i.e. the elections. All thorns and Daphne have sprung up on the allotted electoral areas, and the electorate has come down from the democratic sky back to the solid autocratic-people’s earth which it was lifted off of Yeltsin’s will in 1990: if you are a Soviet stick in the mud you belong back there.
Regarding Our Home - Russia, voters could have still had some doubts. It was the party of mayors, prime ministers and vice-premiers, but Yeltsin didn’t pull it out of its hole. And the non-presidential (but simply Chernomyrdin’s) party cannot be a full-fledged pro-Kremlin party. It is a semi-finished product, at best.
So have the 2003 elections. They’ve become a classic. Or a clinical case, if you like.
From the view point of geographical location, technics used and ideological underpinning, the first two examples stand very far apart from each other. Sometimes by hook or by crook. In one case a stick was used, in the other a carrot. But in both cases the “the administrative resources” were crammed into the throats of the constituency until it submitted to the inevitable and learned the lesson by heart. So, what did the elections in Grozny and St.Petersburg have in common? The one thing they had in common was that they were held in one country where the people’s choice was guaranteed either by pointing a finger or the use of a prompting prod. They were characterized by the maniacal desire of the authorities to do things their way forgetting about propriety, logic or whether there was a need to go to such lengths at all. I don’t think that the contenders for the Chechen presidency (save Kadyrov), having gotten the top job in the republic, would have been willing to share the lot of Dzhokhar Dudayev. But the wealthy businessman and the well-known deputy would have obediently toed the line under the guided occupation, not making bold to negotiate with Maskhadov or any of his people. Perhaps, they would have felt sorry for their people and would have given them some funds from the Kremlin coffers for “reconstruction” and occasionally would have interceded for them with the federal authorities after the mop-up operations. And, once in a while, would have helped somebody out of trouble. But Kadyrov being the only fish in the sea, the authorities, with the impertinence of the upcoming serial dictatorship, got all his rivals out of the minion’s way. They were disposed of cruelly at the eleventh hour.
Chechens, even those living in Moscow, learn fast. They have been taught on the genetic level, and the ruins, for that matter, of the rebellious republic are also very instructive. So, when “the extra pigs at the trough” pulled out of the race, they did it out of fear. It was the old Soviet fear to a T. By the way, the Chechen human rights advocate who protested against holding a referendum during the war has not been found since his disappearance. And he never will be. The fear, consequently, is extremely well founded. Harassed to within an inch of their lives, the republic’s civilians ( the guerilla constant, according to the Kremlin, is 1500 people) obediently voted for the Constitution, for the Republic’s staying in the Russian Federation and for Kadyrov.
There is a book titled Les armes de la nuit (The Weapon Of Darkness) by Vercors. That weapon has been used in Russia since 2000 and has already brought some results. The electoral mop-up operation in Chechnya helps us better understand “the electoral waltz” in St.Petersburg. There is nothing ominous about the beautiful Valentina Matviyenko who often changes her beautiful attire (if one forgets her attack on Andrei Sakharov at the Congress, which was remembered by long-time democrats from St.Petersburg who rose up in arms against her nomination as mayor). What was ominous is the pressure brought to bear by Moscow, and the “preferences” publicly demonstrated by the president, although there are no grounds for one to suppose that Markova, for one, would have stood in the Kremlin’s way. But it was Matviyenko whom the authorities wanted! And they succeeded in “implanting” her. The St.Petersburg residents countered the coercion (even if verbal and TV transmitted) with minimum turnout and the “against all” vote as a protest. After such a dose of the administrative resource, that city’s constituency ignored the Federal elections with such diligence that Seleznyov won in Galina Starovoitova’s electoral district.
Another example of the sickening lack of freedom and coercion is the elections in Bashkiria.
The honourable Rakhimov, who is called simply “babai” by the local democrats, has been carrying the heavy burden of almost feudal power for 13 years now. It’s high time to take an undeserved break (although it is not the worst case: at least in Bashkiria the administration did not chant like the one did in Nazdratenko’s patrimony: “the opposition in the Maritime Territory is no more”). But Bashkiria had its problems, too: attempts to take the rivals out of the race and the sensantional find of a huge amount of false ballots. But the banker Veremeyenko held out and had a real chance to win. But there and then, a team of grave-diggers of democracy appeared from Moscow with Sergei Kiriyenko, a young, sort of educated westernist as one of its members (his lot is also the consequence of temptation coming from a non-western and non-liberal government). Veremeyenko, facing the threat of the loss of his business (and maybe freedom, too, for the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky is also a part of the Kremlin election campaign – the reprisal was as public and demonstrative as the shooting or gallows on the Semionovsky parade-ground in the same city of St.Petersburg), abdicated and disbanded his campaign staff!
Remember, that it was in this election year that Sergei Yushenkov, one of the few radical democrats who stood his ground, was gunned down in broad daylight, and although his killers have allegedly pleaded guilty, they have not yet been brought to trial like the allegedly found and confessed killers of Galina Starovoitova.
So, both the candidates and the constituencies felt a chill running down their spines. Hence, it’s not yet clear what the startling percentage of votes gotten by “the bears” from the Russian apiary is due to – love for the president or fear. It seems that governor Khloponin stated clearly why he was joining United Russia: in order not to hurt his province. In other words, there is the clear perception that money, electricity, heat, and other good things in life will be delivered to the provinces depending on the party affiliation of the governor. And one can only wonder whether the Liberal Democratic Party’s savage messages and the nationalist Rodina’s malicious reactionary statements of an imperial hue were read as the new state policy, as a dictum from the top: “Shoot them like mad dogs” (meaning the reformists, democrats and westernists). It is a dictum which one would be well advised to subscribe, or else...
Just before his death, Bulat Okudzhava put it like this: “We had just come to the point when we could take a deep breath and choose the path we’d like to follow, and straighten our backs a bit, but, alas, we had to bend them once again”. And yet, even in that twilight, in spite of recollection of the past terror and the predictions of political analysts about the terror to come, over 8 percent voted for Yabloko and the Union of Right-wing Forces!
“I raise my glass to the few true friends. The friends who are not prone to the temptations of the changing times...”
Perhaps, Russia is not destined for freedom; but it is not destined to forgo the struggle for it either.