Graham T. Allison, Directorwriter, Editor: Henry E. Hale

RUSSIAN ELECTION WATCH

No.4, November 4, 1999

Graham T. Allison, DirectorWriter, Editor: Henry E. Hale

Strengthening Democratic Institutions ProjectProduction Director: Melissa C. Carr

John F. Kennedy School of GovernmentAssistants: Ben Dunlap, Emily Van Buskirk

Harvard UniversityProduction Assistant: Emily Goodhue

OCTOBER’S TOP NEWS

Putin rides Chechen war to top of presidential polls
“Family” television smear campaign, targeting Luzhkov, Primakov, is working
Fear of future prosecution drives up demand for the “immunity” of a Duma seat
Zhirinovsky’s LDPR banned from party list race but reregisters under a new name
Central Election Commission registers all major parties for a total of 28 to be on December’s ballot
Yabloko accuses St. Petersburg governor of fraud for moving up election date
Leading Communist ducks head-to-head race with Stepashin for Duma seat
Duma considers new presidential election law, would move election to June 4

SEE INSIDE

On October’s Campaign Trail: October’s developments in the election campaign p.2
Insider Information: Some of Russia’s most respected political analysts explain the events of October, starting on p.7
Spin Control: Six leading Russian parties put their spin on key stories p.6
Special: Dramatic results from a Western poll on Russian views of the US p.3
PLUS: latest polls; important dates; which governors are on party lists; lists of party websites; and threats to “free and fair” elections

TRACKING THE POLLS (VTsIOM - POF)

PARLIAMENTPRESIDENT

October SeptemberOctoberSeptember

Communist Party26 - 1932 - 21Putin21 - 264 – 7

Fatherland-All Russia21 – 1822 - 29Zyuganov20 - 1627 - 17

Yabloko11 – 1112 - 10 Primakov16 - 1419 - 22

Unity5 - 6n.a.Yavlinsky 7 - 79 - 7

Zhirinovsky Bloc/LDPR3 - 54 - 3 Luzhkov8 - 510 - 10

Union of Right-Wing4 - 34 - 2Zhirinovsky 3 - 43 - 5

Women of Russia3 - 32 - 3Lebed3 - 35 - 4

Our Home is Russia2 - 14 - 2Stepashin2 - 33 - 6

Pensioners Partyn.a. - 1n.a. - 1 Shoigu3 - 2n.a.

Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion (VTsIOM) polls: October 15-19, September 17-21, 1999. Percentages are from the total of those who said they intended to vote (53%).
Public Opinion Foundation (POF) polls: October 23-24, September 18-19, 1999.

KEY DATES

December 19Duma Elections
June 4Presidential Elections (pending expected passage of new law)
June 25Presidential Runoff (if necessary, pending passage of new law)

ON OCTOBER’S CAMPAIGN TRAIL

If September was the month of party conventions, the Central Election Commission (CEC) stole the show in October. It used its gatekeeping powers to strike candidates from nearly all parties’ lists and to deal a major blow to one of Russia’s largest parties, Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR). The Fatherland-All Russia alliance came under heavy fire from both the Kremlin “Family,” which launched a major smear campaign against Luzhkov, and from political opponents in St. Petersburg, who accused one of the bloc’s leading governors of falsifying legislative records in order to gain an advantage in the upcoming gubernatorial election there. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Putin surged to the top of the polls thanks to his popular war in Chechnya.

PUTIN SURGES INTO PRESIDENTIAL LEAD

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (pictured) has skyrocketed to the top of Russia’s presidential polls, winning praise for his decisiveness in the military campaign against Chechnya. Responding to attacks on Russian territory by rebel Chechen commanders who aspired to create a new “Islamic state” in Dagestan, and to apartment bombings in Moscow, Russian military forces advanced steadily into Chechnya and began a selective bombing strategy to “eliminate terrorist bases” wherever they are. The military campaign has so far enjoyed success beyond most observers’ expectations, raising hopes of finally reasserting federal control over Russia’s prodigal province and providing a kind of catharsis for a Russian population fed up with all kinds of defeat. As a result, Putin’s approval rating has risen to 65% from a population that is as jaded as any found in this world. Though broad, this support is thin and could decline precipitously if Russia’s war effort starts to get bogged down and to cost large numbers of Russian lives.

AS LUZHKOV, PRIMAKOV SLIP

Putin’s rise contrasts with a steady decline in the presidential ratings of Luzhkov in the face of a withering assault from one of Russia’s most caustic political pundits, Sergei Dorenko (pictured). Using his highly popular prime-time Sunday show on Russia’s flagship TV station (ORT, controlled by Boris Berezovsky), Dorenko began by presenting documents he said proved that Luzhkov’s brother-in-law was receiving large payments from shady foreign banks. When Luzhkov provided conclusive evidence that the man in question was no relative but simply possessed the same last name as Luzhkov’s wife, Dorenko refused to retract the story, asserting more figuratively “familial” ties between the two men. Luzhkov has filed a libel suit against Dorenko, but much damage has already been done. These television attacks continue

NEW PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION DATES

The Duma has given preliminary approval to a Kremlin-sponsored bill that would, among other things, change the date of the Russian presidential elections from July 9 to June 4, 2000. A runoff, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote, would take place on June 25 and the new president would take office on August 9.

and have more recently targeted Primakov (pictured below), whose ratings have also shown signs of slipping. Many savvy observers had thought that the Russian population has become too jaundiced for the Kremlin Family to be able to “do another ‘96,” when the Kremlin mobilized the mass media to trash Communist rival Zyuganov and to bring Yeltsin back from the political grave of a 5% approval rating, successfully getting him reelected. But the perceived success of this negative campaign by Berezovsky’s hatchet man is making leading opposition candidates nervous. (Are Luzhkov’s presidential hopes dashed? Read Boxer on p.7)

The escalation of political tensions between the Kremlin and its opposition has prompted prominent personalities on both sides of the conflict to scramble for Duma seats since seat- holders have legal immunity against prosecution, be it a real criminal investigation or disguised political persecution. Those with money have been “buying” their way onto party lists, even reputable ones like Fatherland-All Russia. Likewise, those with connections have been using them to acquire this political insurance policy should their opponents win, even when they have no real desire actually to serve in parliament.

Strikingly, while Luzhkov and Primakov have sunk in the polls, their party, Fatherland-All Russia, has maintained a steady level of support, suggesting that the bloc now represents something greater than the combination of its two most visible leaders.

WHAT DO RUSSIAN VOTERS THINK?

On July 1, 1999, a respected American polling organization, Marttila Communications Group, conducted a survey sponsored by the Anti-Defamation League. It polled 1,525 citizens from across Russia. Although Russian public opinion may have changed between July and November, the results are striking.

Totally Agree / Agree / Disagree / Totally Disagree / Unsure
A majority of Russian officials are corrupt. / 35% / 50% / 2% / 0% / 14%
The last year or two have been the hardest of my life. / 26 / 45 / 23 / 2 / 4
Democratic elections should be set aside until order is restored. / 6 / 24 / 35 / 10 / 25
NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia is a crime against humanity. / 52 / 44 / 1 / 0 / 3
Russia should cooperate with the West to establish peace and stability in Serbia and the Balkans. / 21 / 63 / 5 / 2 / 9
US President Clinton is a real friend of Russia. / 1 / 9 / 55 / 20 / 16
There is nothing stopping NATO from getting involved in Russia as it did in Yugoslavia. / 29 / 48 / 11 / 2 / 11
Western countries hope Russia’s economy will completely collapse. / 19 / 50 / 20 / 2 / 9

THE CEC SWINGS INTO ACTION

Russia’s Central Election Commission, the state body charged with actually conducting the elections, began the month of October with a bang, banning Zhirinovsky’s nationalist LDPR from the party list competition. Although Zhirinovsky (pictured) brazenly flouted the CEC’s calls for a “clean” Duma by giving top spots on his party list to infamous criminal suspects in return for rumored millions of dollars, the LDPR was disqualified on the basis of a technicality. The CEC found that the number two man on the LDPR’s list, Anatoly Bykov, had failed to report a house on a declaration of property and income required of all candidates and therefore dropped him from the LDPR list. Since an oddity of Russian law disqualifies the entire party if one of its top three list candidates withdraws from the race, the CEC declared the LDPR ineligible. This kept other political parties on tenterhooks, wondering if they, too, would fall victim to a CEC ruling on the basis of some technicality. (How dangerous is this precedent? Read Markov on p.14. For how it helps the neo-nazis, read Golosov on p.12)

But the CEC demonstrated that it won’t be the Kremlin’s battle axe, at least not this time around. While it struck up to two dozen candidates from almost every major party list, it totally rejected only the candidate lists of the LDPR and three tiny movements (although many small movements had earlier failed even to get to the stage of nominating candidates).

Some of the stricken candidates were major figures, such as Nationalities Minister Vyacheslav Mikhailov, removed from Yabloko’s list for failing to report the tiny sliver of land underneath his car garage. Except in the LDPR’s case, however, the CEC overlooked technicalities that could have disqualified one of a party’s top three leaders and hence the party itself. For example, Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky (pictured) was found to have failed to report over $3,000 in 1998 income, but this was judged to be insignificant compared to his annual official income of nearly $40,000. (Read Nikonov on troublesome problems in Russian law, p.18)

By the November 3 registration deadline, the CEC officially allowed 28 “parties,” including all the major ones other than the LDPR, onto the ballot (although a finding of campaign rules violations could still disqualify any of them). Moreover, the LDPR quickly regrouped before the deadline and successfully reincarnated itself as the “Zhirinovsky Bloc,” founded on the basis of two microparties led by a Zhirinovsky relative and another LDPR member. But while the CEC did put the phoenix-like Zhirinovsky back on the ballot, the nationalist leader had to pare down his party list from 256 to 81 reliably “clean” candidates in order to avoid further problems with the CEC. (How do this year’s competitors compare with the last election? Read Gelman on p.10)

BACK ISSUES AVAILABLE ON THE WEB AT:

NOTABLES SCRAMBLE FOR DISTRICTS

Alongside the party list race, competition is heating up in Russia’s 225 single-member districts as national figures choose whether and where to run. Yabloko has already claimed one victory as Duma speaker and number-two Communist Gennady Seleznev (pictured) announced that he was pulling out of his head-to-head race against former Prime Minister and number-two Yabloko candidate Sergei Stepashin in one St. Petersburg district. Seleznev declared that he would instead seek to become governor of the region around Moscow.

Many players in the Kremlin-opposition struggle have sought insurance in the form of secure places on a party list, as described above. Those who cannot find safe spots there have sought out single-member districts where they stand a good chance of winning. Favorite venues are tiny ethnically designated districts, since Russian law gives them a whole Duma seat even if their populations are miniscule compared to other districts. This can explain why Kremlin “Family” members and powerful “oligarchs” Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich have suddenly become taken with the desire to represent the causes of conflict-ridden Karachaevo-Cherkessia and remote, arctic Chukotka in parliament. Similarly, Luzhkov’s wife, businesswoman Elena Baturina (pictured right), has rediscovered the plight of pastoral Kalmykia, where her brother was once Prime Minister. Likewise, Anatoly Bykov, one of several criminal suspects expunged from the LDPR’s list by the CEC, had sought to run in a district in his home region of Krasnoyarsk but was arrested in Hungary before he could register.

Several notables of bygone eras are seeking to regain some of their past glory in single-member Duma districts, including the USSR’s former second-in-command Yegor Ligachev (Tomsk), Yeltsin’s former Minister of Defense Pavel Grachev (Tula), and former parliamentary speaker and anti-Yeltsin rebellion
leader Ruslan Khasbulatov (Khabarovsk). While Mikhail Gorbachev will not run in December, he has announced the formation of the Social Democratic Party of Russia, which will hold its founding congress in February 2000, perhaps foreshadowing another run for the Russian presidency after finishing with under one percent of the vote in 1996.

A STOLEN VOTE IN ST. PETERSBURG?

A scandal erupted in St. Petersburg when supporters of Governor Vladimir Yakovlev (pictured), the number three man on the Fatherland-All Russia list, rammed a bill through the local legislature moving gubernatorial elections up from Spring 2000 to December 19, 1999, the same day as the Duma elections. Observers agree that the date change helps the incumbent since he will benefit from the federal campaign of Fatherland-All Russia and since his opponents will have little time to promote their candidacies. Yakovlev’s fiercest opponents in the legislature, including Yabloko, had managed to block the bill right up until the legal deadline for its passage, October 8, by boycotting sessions so as to deny the legislature the necessary two-thirds quorum.

Suddenly, on that very day, reports appeared that the Legislature had voted to reduce its quorum requirement and that the controversial bill had been passed and immediately signed by Yakovlev. Opposition legislators responded with outrage and journalists testified that Yakovlev loyalists had tampered with the electronic voting system so as to register a quorum, change the rules, and then record a passing vote for the early elections bill. Several boycotting lawmakers were surprised to find their names listed among those who supposedly had voted. A vote was even registered as having been cast by a legislator who is currently in jail. While this case is now in court, Yabloko is taking no chances and on October 30 nominated its St. Petersburg leader and former first deputy governor, Igor Artemiev, to challenge Yakovlev.

TRANSLATORS:

Katherine Foshko, Liliya Galieva, Keith Gessen, Olesia Jefferson, Marina Jovanovic, Emily Van Buskirk

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Vladimir Boxer, John Reppert, and Anya Schmemann

WILL THE ELECTIONS BE FREE AND FAIR?

A recent VTsIOM poll found that 43% of Russians believed the 1999 Duma elections will be less free and fair than the last Duma elections in 1995. The Kremlin’s opponents consistently warn the same thing. How might authorities gut the elections of real democratic content? Here’s a checklist of some frequently cited possibilities:

Outright fraud. Very difficult to get away with in most regions since party observers will penetrate most precincts. Regions with more authoritarian leaders, such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, are a different story, however.

Media manipulation. Pro-Kremlin forces control two of Russia’s biggest TV channels (ORT and RTR) and a host of print media. Governors typically have great influence over local television and print media since they can threaten and greatly harass those they do not directly control. While these media are likely to adhere to the letter of the law in granting all candidates the free airtime promised to them by law, they often skew other coverage so as to benefit certain candidates and to hurt others and are highly likely to keep doing so. Nevertheless, the Luzhkov-Primakov opposition also has formidable media resources on its side, making it much harder for the Kremlin to win a media war.

Disqualifying parties. State authorities could find pretexts to remove parties they don’t like from the ballot. The easiest way would have been for the CEC to deny registration to undesirable blocs, but

it rejected only the LDPR among major parties. Another option includes buying off or coercing one of a party’s top three candidates on its list, convincing him or her to withdraw from the race, since this would automatically disqualify the party from the race under Russian law. The government and regional authorities can also monitor the election searching for technical violations that could serve as grounds for disqualification. For example, the Ministry of Justice has filed suit to strike proto-fascist “Spas” from the ballot by showing that it is not a “nationwide” organization.

Administrative pressure. The Kremlin can threaten to punish regional leaders who do not produce good results for its candidates. The regional leaders can pass the threat along to district, village, and rural governments or make their own anti-Kremlin threats. Such pressure is most effective in rural areas where monitoring is difficult, information is more limited, it is easier to tell how particular work collectives voted, and compact groups of people are more dependent on the state for their livelihood. Rural bosses can warn their collective farms that if their farm district does not produce a vote for the right candidates, they might not get necessary supplies.

ASSESSING ELECTION IMPLEMENTATION

The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) is issuing a report assessing Russia’s performance in administering the early stages of the election process. Some edited excerpts follow. For more information, see :