http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137622664/some-russians-happy-to-back-status-quo-in-election
by David Greene
July 7, 2011
Sixteen months out from the 2012 election, U.S. presidential campaigns are already in hyperdrive. There have been debates, stump speeches and attack ads, and the candidates are obsessed with winning over voters.
Russia also has a presidential election next year, but it's a very different kind of democracy. Russia will choose a president sooner, in March, but right now there's no visible campaign. And it's no secret that President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will essentially decide the winner behind closed doors.
Content With The Status Quo
Russia is like the U.S. in one way, though: For a true sense of what people are thinking, it's better to leave the capital.
Two hours outside of Moscow, in the industrial city of Tver, Russians have their own opinions about the state of their democracy, and what should — or shouldn't — be done about it.
Tver isn't just a railroad town; it also builds the railroad. The town's pride and joy is a sprawling factory that produces rail cars.
Mikhail, a 42-year-old who would give only his first name, works in that factory. He says he sleeps better the less people know about him.
Mikhail sounds like a holdover from Soviet times, and in many ways he is. He still lives in the apartment assigned to him by the Soviet government, so there's no rent or mortgage. Mikhail supports his wife and two daughters making $700 a month building rail cars. Life isn't easy, but Mikhail says he lives by a lesson: Change can only be for the worse.
So in this March's presidential election, he's happy to support the status quo, either by re-electing Medvedev or voting for Putin. It's just a matter of those two men deciding which name goes on the ticket.
"If I could, I would vote for both of them. It doesn't make sense to vote for anyone else. It's better to have someone who is tested, or else someone new will come along and start making a mess," Mikhail says.
Little Opportunity For The Opposition
Chances are that nobody new is coming along. Putin, who served eight years as president before stepping down, is considering a comeback. As for Putin's protege, Medvedev has been mum about his plans. The assumption is the two of them will decide together who gets the nod.
As for anyone else? The government routinely bars opposition parties, and organized rallies are against the law unless sanctioned by the government. So whoever jumps on the ballot — Putin or Medvedev — is expected to coast. That doesn't sit well with everyone.
A 28-year-old named Pavel, who feared that giving his last name in an interview would get him punished at work, says Russia's leaders have done little to brighten the future for young people.
Pavel does not live in Soviet-era housing and says he has a costly mortgage on his apartment because the government lets interest rates climb out of control. He works as a government veterinarian but says he has to drive a cab on the side to survive. He could make a statement at the ballot box, he says, if Russia had a truly fair election. Instead, opposition leaders who might speak for him are blocked out.
"This is just not right. It's time for us to have new leaders. It's time for us to look at how other countries choose their rulers. Here, these people are in power too long, and they're starting to get brazen," Pavel says.
Support For Stability
As much as people like Pavel want change, though, something has kept Russia from exploding with outrage. Everyone has his own explanation: Maybe too many people fear the authorities, or maybe enough citizens are satisfied with their wages and the state of Russia's economy.
Whatever it is, Russia probably won't see full-scale demonstrations for democracy until people like Julia Repich are driven to act.
Repich is a 35-year-old chef at a restaurant in Tver that plays American country music. Repich herself spent years in the U.S. attending cooking school and tasting American democracy before returning home to be with family.
When asked if she missed the political system in the U.S. when she moved back to Russia, she says no — she missed the food.
Repich said the idea of a real election in March is a farce. Yet these days feel stable, compared with the tumult at the end of Soviet times. So she's happy to support Putin or Medvedev and isn't interested in joining some opposition group.
"It's [nicer] to just go to work and take care of my family and [that's] just it. I think we don't have any time for this," she says.
No time, she says, for a pro-democracy movement that might only create chaos.
Putin and the Slimmer, Sleeker, Slimier Soviet State
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/07/08/putin-and-the-slimmer-sleeker-slimier-soviet-state/
Posted by Seth Mandel on Jul 8th, 2011
In Vladimir Sorokin’s dark new novel, set in the year 2028, Russia has traversed the slippery slope from Putinism back to czarism. The main character, Andrei Danilovich Komiaga, a member of the oprichnina—the czar’s elite federal enforcers—catches one of his men reading a banned book and reprimands him. “You understand, you idiot, we’re guards. We have to keep our minds cold and our hearts pure.”
Stephen Kotkin, a professor of history at Princeton who is writing a book on Stalin, immediately recognized that the more you follow Putin’s Russia, the less ridiculous the book, called Day of the Oprichnik, sounds.
“So it is in Putin’s Russia, where a gang of police officials, the siloviki, lord over not just the richest private citizens but also other parts of the state,” Kotkin wrote in the New York Times Book Review. “Sorokin’s imaginative diagnosis of Putinism further grasps that the officials’ looting is driven not by profiteering alone, but by their conviction that they are defending Russian interests. Everything Sorokin’s oprichniks do is a transaction, but their love of country runs deep. They may give in to temptation and tune in to foreign radio (‘enemy voices’), but these moments of weakness vitiate neither their pride in their work nor their code of honor. They have ideals.”
This is all worth keeping in mind as Putin prepares to retake the presidency. Most analysts agree that Putin is really in control now despite Dmitry Medvedev’s position as head of state. There aren’t many practical reasons, therefore, for Putin to lift the curtain on his puppeteer act and reveal the farcical nature of his premiership during Medvedev’s presidency.
It also doesn’t make much sense to stop attempting to fool NGOs and proponents of demokratizatsiya by so boldly rebuking the accepted social norms of modern statecraft, an essential element of which, for postcommunist states, is to pretend your people are much freer than they actually are.
But it makes perfect sense if you understand the importance of national identity. Putin’s decision to return to full power is mostly a symbolic one—but that symbolism, like the photograph of Putin after he supposedly shot a charging tiger with a tranquilizer gun, saving an entire camera crew, is an essential element of the projection of power for the state, not just its leadership. Medvedev may be something of a reformer, but those reforms are not only modest but also irrelevant if they must be acquired through the depletion of national pride. Putin recognizes this, and understands that if he can provide stability and security, the rest won’t matter.
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