Simple answers to unasked questions

[Cain]

Was the Russian election rigged?  Undeniably.  Every news station in practically every country on the planet is confidentally asserting this as a fact, and the evidence seems to bear it out.

Unasked question: would Putin have won anyway?  Yes, almost certainly.

[Deepthroat Chopra]

They rigged the poll! Is there still an opposition alive?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Man, fuck democracy anyway, who needs that shit?

[Cain]

I seriously doubt anyone would rule in a law-abiding and democratic fashion in Russia, either because the means by which one becomes the President of Russia preclude it automatically, or because Russia is not possible to rule in such a fashion.

On the other hand, 5% voter fraud, while substansial, still means Putin has a greater claim to democratic support than, say, the Tories in the UK do, with their paltry 36% support.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I seriously doubt anyone would rule in a law-abiding and democratic fashion in Russia, either because the means by which one becomes the President of Russia preclude it automatically, or because Russia is not possible to rule in such a fashion.

On the other hand, 5% voter fraud, while substansial, still means Putin has a greater claim to democratic support than, say, the Tories in the UK do, with their paltry 36% support.

Yeah well lets face it - russia only just got democracy a few years back so probably the novelty still hasn't worn off for them. Another couple of years in the uk and half a dozen votes will be considered a landslide.

[Oysters Rockefeller]

I love how Putin does crazy shit like that, but everybody is like...
"Ahhh...we can't stay mad at that guy. Look at 'im!"

He's kind of like a cartoon character.

ETA: You know what, I'm calling it now. I think the Russian Government is a Disney Production.

[Cain]

No, it's a Surkov production:

The key figure is a man called Vladislav Surkov. He is half-Russian, half-Chechen. He was born in the provinces, but like all the others he came to Moscow in the 1980s.

Surkov is shadowy and secretive, but he has given a very unusual window into his life and ideas. In 2009 Surkov allegedly published what seems to be an autobiographical novel under an assumed name. It is a cynical satire called Almost Zero and it tells the story of Egor, a disillusioned youth who comes to Moscow in the 1980s.

Egor can see through the fake ideology of the Soviet Union and he becomes a hanger-on of the Moscow underground movement - dabbling in avant-garde theatre. In the post-communist 1990s he then becomes a cynical PR man who will promote anything for anyone.

Egor is compared in the novel to Hamlet - someone who can see through the superficiality of the present age, but is unable to have any beliefs or even feelings about anything. In real life Surkov worked in the late 1990s doing PR for the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but then, in 1999 he switched and started working for Putin - and became a ruthless manipulator of modern politics.

Surkov created a modern and innovative way of managing the new democratic system - but in a way that his critics say has sidelined the mass of the people and completely diminished real democracy.

To do this Surkov created a constantly shifting political tableau. As well as being one of the architects of Putin's own party, United Russia, Surkov also allegedly helped to set up opposition parties the Kremlin could then use for their own purposes. And he copied Eduard Limonov - he set up a quasi-military nationalist youth group called Nashi.

Nashi claims to be an "anti-oligarchic, anti-fascist movement" but members have reportedly compared themselves to the Hitler Youth. And the Kremlin allegedly uses them to beat up opposition journalists.

At the same time Surkov writes lyrics for a rock group called Agata Kristi and essays on conceptual art.

A TV journalist who worked in Soviet television called Peter Pomerantsev has written a fascinating article about Surkov. You can find it here. In it he argues that Surkov has turned Russian politics into postmodern absurdist theatre. In a way, just like Limonov, Surkov is adapting avant-garde ideas to this new political world.

"The novelist Eduard Limonov describes Surkov himself as having 'turned Russia into a wonderful postmodernist theatre, where he experiments with old and new political models'.

There's something in this. In contemporary Russia the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away.

Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is indefinable."

Or was, at least:

http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/putin-after-the-elections/

So what does Putin do next?


Domestically, he's in better shape than many in the West suppose. The question is how Putin will respond to the opposition to his entire power edifice. Putin, together with advertising wizard Vladislav Surkov, erected a faux democracy ("Sovereign Democracy"). It worked quite well 2000-2008. The wheels came off in 2011. Russians were allowed to live some kind of stable lives in exchange for no real political voice and arbitrary government. Behind Surkov's televised stunts of Putin as action figure, Putin also bought off the siloviki (power ministers, bureaucrats and military) by looking the other way for corruption.

As we know, Dear Reader, Surkov's system crashed in ruins last December 2011. He was demoted. But what is to come next?

Putin never really was nor can he now be an authoritarian figure as traditionally understood in Russian history. Even during Surkov's noontide "Sovereign Democracy" action figure era, Putin and his circles often exercised power indirectly. The genius of the Surkov propaganda machine is that it taught independent actors how to please, accommodate or otherwise anticipate what Putin wanted. Eventually it all degenerated into a self-dealing crony class, rendering Putin sometimes as much a victim of his system over which he can sometimes preside and arbitrate but not really control. Whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s Putin could use corruption to achieve goals its metastasization is beyond even his grasp.

An old political science maxim is that healthy regimes take advantage of opposition. Better to co-opt the best ideas (think triangulation) and people. Hence the famous saying that every rebel is at heart a wannabe aristocrat. It's not in Putin's past nature to choose this course easily. His deliberately coarse public language, recent electoral appeals to xenophobia, denouncing so-called 'liberal media', the us vs. them, Borodino all make a volte face hard to see.

Still he has a unique opportunity. Russia's opposition is weak, fragmented, leaderless and without organization. Prospects for the opposition to coalesce and gain political initiative at this stage seem remote. Election rhetoric might harden sentiments. Still, a post-Surkov Putin 2.0 regime might find it easier to co-opt a few opposition ideas than return to failed theatrics of force, fear and coercion. At the least it will buy time.

We don't see Putin in any immediate political danger. Putin says he wants to prepare Russia geopolitically, socially and economically to be a bulwark between the U.S. and China. Hence his notions for strategic depth, etc. That kind of State-led (although with market forces involved like Bukharin's NEP) strategic development in time will need the creative, technical and educated contributions from many flirting with or in the opposition. Decisions, decisions.

[Cain]

http://www.sublimeoblivion.com/2012/03/05/provincialization-russian-fraud/

The most egregious discrepancies come from the Caucasus. Whereas the exit polling evidence does indicate that Putin has very high "true" support at 68.4% in the North Caucasus Federal District – when one discounts the ethnic Russian region of Krasnodar (where he got 65%) then perhaps as high as 75% for the Muslim republics, the official results – 90%+ in all the Muslim republics, including 99%+ in Chechnya – are nonetheless incredible.

Kireev has a very interesting post on the mechanics of voting in Daghestan, where officially there was 91% turnout and a 93% share of votes for Putin. An observer watched one polling station via the http://webvybory2012.ru/ website, and as the station was equipped with a voting machine, it allowed him to calculate both the correct turnout and share of votes for Putin (i.e. by excluding the people throwing in more than one ballot). The results of those who voted fairly, with turnout at just 36.3% with Putin getting 60.3% and Zyuganov getting 28.1%, differed substantially from the official tally of 94.3% turnout with 84.7% votes for Putin and 10.8% for Zyuganov.

Of the non-standard voters, there were many people who turned up there with 2 or 3 bulletins, i.e. they were not "mass" ballot stuffers. The possibility exists that they were simply voting for absent family members, and as such that not all the "stuffed" votes in this category were for Putin. Then there were a few people who came in with big packs of bulletins, who really did fit the characteristic of ballot stuffers.

In their case however, my pet theory is that it may not be quite so much a case of nefarious fraud as a reflection of Daghestan's and the North Caucasus ethnic republics' voting cultures; namely, the practice of voting not by individuals but by teips, i.e. the clans that form the heart of Chechen, Ingush, and Daghestani society. The teip decides on a single candidate for the teip to support; Putin would get the nomination in almost every case (after all, the exit poll shows ordinary Daghestanis giving him twice as much support as the next nearest candidate, Zyuganov); and the headman would send a representative to vote for Putin on behalf of everyone in the teip.

There is also a lot of good information on there concerning the exit polls and actual electoral outcome.

[LMNO]

No, it's a Surkov production:

The key figure is a man called Vladislav Surkov. He is half-Russian, half-Chechen. He was born in the provinces, but like all the others he came to Moscow in the 1980s.

Surkov is shadowy and secretive, but he has given a very unusual window into his life and ideas. In 2009 Surkov allegedly published what seems to be an autobiographical novel under an assumed name. It is a cynical satire called Almost Zero and it tells the story of Egor, a disillusioned youth who comes to Moscow in the 1980s.

Egor can see through the fake ideology of the Soviet Union and he becomes a hanger-on of the Moscow underground movement - dabbling in avant-garde theatre. In the post-communist 1990s he then becomes a cynical PR man who will promote anything for anyone.

Egor is compared in the novel to Hamlet - someone who can see through the superficiality of the present age, but is unable to have any beliefs or even feelings about anything. In real life Surkov worked in the late 1990s doing PR for the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, but then, in 1999 he switched and started working for Putin - and became a ruthless manipulator of modern politics.

Surkov created a modern and innovative way of managing the new democratic system - but in a way that his critics say has sidelined the mass of the people and completely diminished real democracy.

To do this Surkov created a constantly shifting political tableau. As well as being one of the architects of Putin's own party, United Russia, Surkov also allegedly helped to set up opposition parties the Kremlin could then use for their own purposes. And he copied Eduard Limonov - he set up a quasi-military nationalist youth group called Nashi.

Nashi claims to be an "anti-oligarchic, anti-fascist movement" but members have reportedly compared themselves to the Hitler Youth. And the Kremlin allegedly uses them to beat up opposition journalists.

At the same time Surkov writes lyrics for a rock group called Agata Kristi and essays on conceptual art.

A TV journalist who worked in Soviet television called Peter Pomerantsev has written a fascinating article about Surkov. You can find it here. In it he argues that Surkov has turned Russian politics into postmodern absurdist theatre. In a way, just like Limonov, Surkov is adapting avant-garde ideas to this new political world.

"The novelist Eduard Limonov describes Surkov himself as having 'turned Russia into a wonderful postmodernist theatre, where he experiments with old and new political models'.

There's something in this. In contemporary Russia the stage is constantly changing: the country is a dictatorship in the morning, a democracy at lunch, an oligarchy by suppertime, while, backstage, oil companies are expropriated, journalists killed, billions siphoned away.

Surkov is at the centre of the show, sponsoring nationalist skinheads one moment, backing human rights groups the next. It's a strategy of power based on keeping any opposition there may be constantly confused, a ceaseless shape-shifting that is unstoppable because it is indefinable."

Or was, at least:

http://www.stiftungleostrauss.com/bunker/putin-after-the-elections/

So what does Putin do next?


Domestically, he's in better shape than many in the West suppose. The question is how Putin will respond to the opposition to his entire power edifice. Putin, together with advertising wizard Vladislav Surkov, erected a faux democracy ("Sovereign Democracy"). It worked quite well 2000-2008. The wheels came off in 2011. Russians were allowed to live some kind of stable lives in exchange for no real political voice and arbitrary government. Behind Surkov's televised stunts of Putin as action figure, Putin also bought off the siloviki (power ministers, bureaucrats and military) by looking the other way for corruption.

As we know, Dear Reader, Surkov's system crashed in ruins last December 2011. He was demoted. But what is to come next?

Putin never really was nor can he now be an authoritarian figure as traditionally understood in Russian history. Even during Surkov's noontide "Sovereign Democracy" action figure era, Putin and his circles often exercised power indirectly. The genius of the Surkov propaganda machine is that it taught independent actors how to please, accommodate or otherwise anticipate what Putin wanted. Eventually it all degenerated into a self-dealing crony class, rendering Putin sometimes as much a victim of his system over which he can sometimes preside and arbitrate but not really control. Whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s Putin could use corruption to achieve goals its metastasization is beyond even his grasp.

An old political science maxim is that healthy regimes take advantage of opposition. Better to co-opt the best ideas (think triangulation) and people. Hence the famous saying that every rebel is at heart a wannabe aristocrat. It's not in Putin's past nature to choose this course easily. His deliberately coarse public language, recent electoral appeals to xenophobia, denouncing so-called 'liberal media', the us vs. them, Borodino all make a volte face hard to see.

Still he has a unique opportunity. Russia's opposition is weak, fragmented, leaderless and without organization. Prospects for the opposition to coalesce and gain political initiative at this stage seem remote. Election rhetoric might harden sentiments. Still, a post-Surkov Putin 2.0 regime might find it easier to co-opt a few opposition ideas than return to failed theatrics of force, fear and coercion. At the least it will buy time.

We don't see Putin in any immediate political danger. Putin says he wants to prepare Russia geopolitically, socially and economically to be a bulwark between the U.S. and China. Hence his notions for strategic depth, etc. That kind of State-led (although with market forces involved like Bukharin's NEP) strategic development in time will need the creative, technical and educated contributions from many flirting with or in the opposition. Decisions, decisions.

I never knew about Surkov (obviously), but holy shit.  That's fairly amazing.  It kind of opens up a new perspective into all this. 

[Cain]

Surkov is very good at not being noticed.  Hell, I think the first I heard of him was in 2006 or so.

As an aside, its things like this that make Russian politics, IMO, much more interesting than typical western politics.

[navkat]

It's like reading that story in Jr. H.S. about the strange culture of the Nacirema people and about a quarter of the way into the story, you go "Hey, wai..."

[hirley0]

3:50:50{MAYBE NOT