RUSSIA UNDER PUTIN:
gubernatorial elections as seen through the eyes of a political consultant
Igor Mintoussov

Dear ladies and gentlemen:

I’d like to talk about two problems which, I gather, are of practical importance to political analysts and political consultants both in and outside Russia.

Number one -- are radical changes going to take place in post-Yeltsin Russia?

Number two -- what role is going to be played in Putin’s Russia by our colleagues, the political consultants?

The first of the questions posed may sound somewhat vague.

However, the subject matter makes it quite possible to answer it.

Discussing, as we intend to do, the results of gubernatorial elections we are bound to puzzle out the entire range of tangled relations between the governors and the Kremlin. The way these relations go largely determines Russia’s stability as a system and as a nation.

It was in the early ‘90s that President Boris Yeltsin gave the governors free rein telling them, “Take as much sovereignty (i. e. power) as you can carry”. Well, such magnanimity could have surely done a lot of good to democracy. Provided, of course, the governors share at least part of what was “carried” with the others. First, with the legislative and judicial branches in their regions and, second, the local governments and heads of city and district administration.

In reality, the governors proved rather stingy in that respect. And in some regions, such as the Caucasus, they didn’t do any sharing at all, which was one of the initial reasons leading to the current Chechen tragedy.

By the time Boris Yeltsin stepped down the power accumulated in the hands of most governors had become truly humongous. Suffice it to say that in the Volga area the laws passed by some of the republics have hundreds upon hundreds of articles running counter to Russia’s federal laws.

Moreover, as a rule, the regional president -- that by the way is often his official status! -- is able to keep a tight rein on the legislature, the government, the law enforcement bodies, and the mass media.

Small wonder that on New Year’s Eve, as Putin formally received the presidency from Yeltsin before the year 2000 was to be ushered in, the question on the minds of those who knew the man well focused on just one thing.

And that thing was: would he or wouldn’t he be in a position to get the upper hand in an ongoing tug of war with the unruly regional barons? That a confrontation was a-brewing there were no doubts whatsoever, what with Vladimir Putin’s basic political philosophy. A retired KGB officer, he would seek Russia’s integrity and the nation’s unity at all costs --

Speaking of gubernatorial elections, our analysis should hardly concentrate on those held in the January-March period of the year 2000. It stands to reason that, largely focused on his own election campaign, Vladimir Putin couldn’t have had then any decisive influence on the regional campaigns.

In passing, let me mention one thing, though.

During this so-called interregnum, practically all the governors, with even the slightest legal claim to reelection, were reelected. As a matter of fact, governors in five of Russia’s regions were being elected on March 26, the very day of presidential election.

The result? All the five who won were incumbents.

Today the main question is this: now that Vladimir Putin has become a full-fledged president, will he be able to overpower the governors at last? Or, to put it in another way, the question is: will president Putin prove to be able to attain his political goals by democratic means, e.g. through elections? In other words, what does the man prefer -- a democracy or bureaucracy with its backstage wheelings and dealings.

That President Putin is a past master at administrative methods in political struggle is hardly questioned by anyone these days. One of the first steps he took last summer to keep a rein on the regional barons was to order a new institution of his own interregional emissaries -- one envoy for a dozen or so regions.

The next move the Kremlin made quite recently also falls into line. It drastically changes the status of the upper house of Russia’s parliament, as a result of which it will no longer be composed of governors and heads of regional legislatures, as automatically was the case in the past.

So, here’s Putin the Judoka, who is seen emerging from the darkly lit wings of a sports stadium onto the spotlighted tatami mat of democracy...

His potential adversary #1, in last May’s elections in St. Pete, was Vladimir Yakovlev, the incumbent mayor. That Yakovlev was Putin’s adversary political analysts didn’t have any doubts at all.

First, it was he who in the mid-’90s won the mayoral race over Anatoly Sobchak, Putin’s ‘godfather’, who is credited with introducing his onetime student Vladimir Putin to the world of big politics. Later on, Yakovlev is said to have persecuted Sobchak and, albeit indirectly, been even involved in the latter’s untimely death.

Second, Yakovlev became one of the leaders of Fatherland movement, main rival of pro-Putin Unity at the 1999 parliamentary election.

So, naturally, everybody was waiting for the young president to revenge himself with a dazzling display of judo techniques.

No way!

All Putin allowed himself to use were several threatening moves -- outside the tatami mat.

One of such moves was the appearance of Deputy Premier on social issues Ms Valentina Matvienko, the only lady in Putin’s cabinet, as Yakovlev’s rival in the May elections. However, she pulled out of the race almost at once. As for Putin himself, he never appeared in person to challenge Yakovlev on a tatami mat.

Small wonder, that because the black-belt Putin chose to skip the games the final result was a foregone conclusion. With Union of Right Forces’ Igor Artemiev, a political amateur, left to do the battle against a true professional, Yakovlev was able to capture 73% of the vote as against a mere 15% for his opponent.

The next episode in the same series came about two months later, in July, when gubernatorial elections were held in Samara oblast. The incumbent Konstantin Titov, too, wasn’t liked by Putin and his entourage. Head of a relatively well-to-do region, Titov had long since been considered one of the country’s most independent governors, not necessarily toeing Moscow’s line.

Moreover, last March he even dared enter the holy of holies, that is become a presidential hopeful himself.

True, he didn’t stand a chance to win the race, but chances were he could nevertheless steal some of Putin’s votes.

It was in Samara we could witness for the first time how the Kremlin made an attempt to run its own candidate against the incumbent. That candidate was Vitaly Tarkhov, onetime head of the oblast government. In fact, under the guise of an aging, unblamable Tarkhov opposing the energized, smiling Titov, was none other than Vladimir Putin himself.

However, a barrage of anti-Titov criticism in the Moscow mass media, as well as ‘black-and-red’ pro-Tarkhov advertising posters in Samara -- ‘red’ because he tried to woo the communist electorate -- didn’t work.

Titov’s consultants proved to be far more efficient counteracting Tarkhov’s imagemakers with time-honored hand-shaking tactics of meeting with the electorate. Besides, regional mass media, too, proved to reach out to more voters than their Moscow-based counterparts. Last but not least, Titov’s program turned out to be more detailed and realistic compared to his rival’s.

The result -- 53 percent of the vote for Titov and merely 29 for Tarkhov -- was another defeat for Putin.

Electoral cycles in Russia are such that some thirty governors are to be elected by the end of the year 2000, which is to say that roughly every third regional head will be elected. So it looks like now or never for Putin, who is set on changing the correlation of power between the Kremlin and the nation’s governors in his favor.

The big question is: will he be able to?

Here are the results of three election campaigns fought in the month of October. Those are important in that they are paving the way for Russia’s coming political battles in the fall:

Table

Two of the above-mentioned elections, namely in Udmurtia and Sakhalin oblast, may be said to have closely followed the pattern set in St. Petersburg. That applies to both winners -- former speaker of parliament turned president of Udmurt republic Alexander Volkov and Igor Farkhutdinov, incumbent governor of Sakhalin oblast.

Both are experienced and flexible regional politicians who are not exactly a birthday present for the Kremlin. Under the circumstances, however, Putin and his aides weren’t able or, rather, didn’t quite want to hold their own against those two persons.

Furthermore, they wouldn’t even seriously try to run pro-Kremlin candidates in opposition to the incumbents.

The Kursk scenario was a different matter.

The incumbent governor was locally considered a most likely winner. The Kremlin, on the other hand, considered him detestable.

Small wonder, as Alexander Rutzkoy was one of the leading personalities in the tragic standoff between the Kremlin and the Russian parliament way back in 1993. What happened was that on the eve of election day, at 7 PM, Rutzkoy was barred from running in the election by the local court alleging he’d violated electoral rules and, besides, submitted faulty data on his property.

Similar legally-oriented technologies are now being increasingly used in Russia’s electoral campaigns. In this case, however, they were first used against a prospective governor, which made the presence of the hand of Moscow crystal clear. There was no mistake about it!

What, for some reason or other, seems less talked about is that for all its political toughness displayed in Kursk, the Kremlin has proven unable to score a victory there as Kremlin-backed Victor Surzhikov, Kursk chief federal inspector, failed to win the gubernatorial race.

Moreover, to all intents and purposes, the second-round winner in Kursk is Duma’s communist deputy Alexander Mikhailov, who represents even a more intransigent left opposition force. Once again, as we can see, Putin couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) have his man squeezed into governorship.

Having said that and departed rather far from question number one posed at the beginning, I’ll finally try to answer it now.

And the answer is:

No radical changes are likely to take place in Russia under Putin in the near future.

Analyzing “the Kremlin vs. the governors” standoff leads us to believe that even if the new Russian President does want to make those changes he’s so far proven unable to do it.

As for Putin’s style as President, what’s been seen more clearly is Putin the KGB officer, Putin the bureaucrat rather than Putin the democrat and Putin the Sobchak ally. It looks like administrative moves and backstage political maneuvering are closer to his heart than democratic transparency with its reliance on civic initiative, NGOs, and mass media.

However, Russia today is totally different from what it was a mere decade or so ago.

And even if such bureaucratic policies might possibly do to preserve the status quo they are of little use to push through serious reforms, whether they be political or economic.

Having said that, it’s much easier for me now to answer question number two asked earlier. That’s the question relating to the role played by political consultants in today’s Russia.

With Russian society changing ever so slowly, their ecological niche, so to say, remains practically unchanged. That means that, given a moderate degree of politically heated campaigns, the need for competent consultants remains both constant and considerable.

At the same time it would be a mistake to believe that conditions for our colleagues’ work in Russia aren’t undergoing any changes whatsoever.

Their work, it must be pointed out, has some peculiar features.

One of those is that the working conditions of the consultants who are employed by the powers that be (presidents, governors, etc.) drastically differ from the conditions for their counterparts working for the opposition.

Those in power are able to keep control over the subordinate executive branches, economic structures, and mass media.

In our country that is sometimes referred to as administrative resources. Such resources often carry more weight than personal charisma, political potential (of a given party or movement), and PR technological know-how.

I’ve gone on record already, complaining of mass media in some regions being totally engage’. Not too long ago, in the mid-’90s, each region in Russia could boast of relatively numerous independent TV channels, radio stations, newspapers, etc. Today there are fewer and fewer of those left.

Needless to say it puts a political technologist in a rather difficult position.

First, he or she is effectively barred from an important source of information about the way things are in a given region.

Second, there’s no possibility of waging a normal PR campaign to represent the client’s interests.

Another peculiarity you’re bound to come up against in Russia is grossly outdated electoral laws. Some of the norms incorporated in them clearly date back to the times when the communist nomenklatura would lean over backwards to stop democratic development, barring the Yeltsinites from coming to power.

Let me give you just one example concerning the clause that allows up to some 40% of the voters to go to the polls a day or two ahead of time. That’s exactly what happened in Karachaevo-Cherkessia in 1999. When the votes cast (or allegedly cast!) in such early elections are examined you’re sure to find 90% of them favoring the candidate not of the opposition but of the powers that be.

Last but not least, right before our very eyes the effectiveness of some PR technologies, often those time-tested and quite successful in old democracies, is a-changing.

For instance, the so-called door-to-door techniques are proving less and less rewarding in Russia’s election campaigns, gubernatorial races included. The electorate is aware that the person knocking on their door does it for money. Small wonder they treat such people as junk mail usually thrown unread right away into the garbage container.

Strangely enough, at the same time direct-mail approach is as effective as it was or even more effective today.

This technology -- as well as the term itself -- has been borrowed from the West and proven quite acclimatized to Russian soil.

In conclusion, let me say this.

On the whole, Russian experience confirms an old rule that the more administrative resources are brought to bear on electoral campaigns, the less fair play can be seen among political consultants. Therefore we, Russian political technologists and consultants, are much looking forward to real steps by President Putin towards democracy.

Not only as citizens but as professionals.

Thank you.