Reprinted from Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. Origins is a monthly on-line news magazine published by the Public History Initiative and eHistory in the History Department at The Ohio State University.
The March Presidential elections in Russia look to be little more than a formality; a coronation for Vladimir Putin’s appointed successor Dmitry Medvedev. However, as Marlene Laruelle points out, this seeming simplicity masks a much more vibrant political process at work in this increasingly richer and internationally stronger former superpower. Laruelle, a highly prolific author and respected French specialist on Russia, shows how current Russian politics cannot be understood outside of the traumas of the 1990s when Boris Yeltsin was President, and have been characterized of late by shift to centrism and Russian patriotism.
The Russian Presidential elections on March 2, 2008 are unlikely to bring any surprises. Vladimir Putin, the widely popular President since 2000 and Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” for 2007, has come to the end of his legal term limit and must step down. He has anointed his successor in Dmitry Medvedev, currently the Vice-Prime Minister in charge of implementing so-called “projects of national priority” (such as housing and health) and the President of the Administrative Council of natural gas giant Gazprom. For good measure, Putin has announced that he is willing to stand as Prime Minister after his term ends, a position from which he will undoubtedly continue to wield substantial power.
The results of the recent parliamentary elections indicate the control that the Kremlin—Putin and his allies—has over Russian politics. On December 2, 2007, 64.3% of Russian voters endorsed Putin’s party United Russia, and the overwhelming margin of victory surprised few. The Communist Party came a distant second with only 11% of votes, followed by two parties who side with the Kremlin on all policy matters: the Liberal-Democratic Party (led by nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky) and Fair Russia (led by Sergey Mironov, who is President of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Parliament), both of which only just scraped over the 7% threshold. Meaningful opposition to the Presidency is as non-existent in the Parliament as it is in society at large.
For all their predictability, however, the March Presidential elections are extremely important for Russia and for the world. If we are to make sense of what will happen in this once-and-future superpower after the polls, it pays to delve deeply into the historical and social context in which they are taking place.
Common explanations of Russian politics that rely on the idea of unchanging Russian traits — that Russians by nature favor authoritarian regimes or that Western-style democracy does not work in the Russian context — do little to explain the events that we are watching unfold. Rather, to understand what will happen March 2 and after, one needs to look at what occurred in the 1990s in the wake of the Soviet collapse and to recall the fact that the past seldom returns. The current Russian political regime cannot be understood as a “return to the USSR.” Instead, it reveals a type of westernization and modernization that, paradoxically, is being pursued through authoritarianism and nationalism.
