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It is a hypocritical shell game where Kremlin political strategists dragged political heavyweights onto the ballots to serve nothing more than a decorative function. Then, after the elections, they were replaced by others who are unknown or even unpopular with the voters.
Russia-watchers breathed a sigh of relief Monday with the news that Vladimir Putin had selected his successor. Finally, we knew the name of Russia's next president: Dmitry Medvedev. The initial consensus was, it could have been worse. But what we learned on Monday is dwarfed by what we still do not know about Russia's immediate future.
For the last eight years of Vladimir Putin's presidency, friends of mine who either worked for or were simply sympathetic to the Kremlin have argued at various times that Russia was a "managed" democracy, a "sovereign" democracy or an autocracy like China on the long road to democracy via the autocratic-modernizer path. Western observers of Russian internal developments, including the U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, have echoed this third argument, emphasizing that Russia's transition from communism to democracy would be a long one but that it is nonetheless under way.
Carnegie Senior Associate Michael McFaul takes on the conventional wisdom that Vladimir Putin's tight-fisted rule has been behind the economic growth and stability over the past seven years. "The emergence of Russian democracy in the 1990s did indeed coincide with state breakdown and economic decline, but it did not cause either," McFaul writes.
During the campaign, United Russia released a document called "Putin's Plan" that became the party's main message. Although Mr. Putin's actual plan for the future remains a mystery, his plan for the parliamentary election has been carried out.
Using the disguise of parliamentary elections as a way to have his authority reconfirmed should help Putin get around the requirement that he step down in 2008 and should allow him to remain in charge -- in whatever capacity he would carve out for himself -- even after his second presidential term ends. This transformation of Duma elections into a referendum may explain why the Kremlin is behaving with such nervousness about a vote it is sure to win and why it is raising the specter of new enemies facing Russia.
The State Duma election campaign will reach its end next week. Looking back, the entire process has been little more than a struggle among various pro-Putin candidates vying for Duma seats.
European, American and Russian diplomats continue to work against the December deadline for Kosovo’s pre-announced unilateral declaration of independence (UDI). However, few hope for an agreement. Belgrade and Pristina have not budged. Washington and its major allies are adamant that Kosovo can not be held indefinitely in the protectorate limbo and must be given independence.
Russia’s economic boom of recent years has placed it firmly back amongst the world’s most powerful nations and the nation goes to the polls on December 2 to elect the State Duma. The result appears almost inevitable-a landslide victory for the Putin-supported United Russia party and a continuation of the ‘Putin plan’. What does this mean for Russia and for the international community?
This old debate ought to sound familiar, for we have been having it again over the surprising resilience of autocracy in China, Russia, Venezuela and elsewhere. It wasn't supposed to be this resilient.
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