Apart from this massive fraud committed during the elections, there was also the fraud committed before them. Parties outside the “official opposition,” such as, for instance, Drugaya Rossiya (the Other Russia—a coalition headed by former chess champion Garry Kasparov), could
not participate. According to Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst with
the Moscow-based Mercator research group, “they are on the periphery, marginalized.
. . . They have no access to the media. They are not allowed to register as candidates
or even as parties, as players in the electoral process. They exist outside the system
that is called politics.”[26]
Putin’s goal, to create two pro-Kremlin parties and in this way to maintain a pluralistic
political façade, began to run the risk of being drowned in the “electoral successes”
of United Russia, which—helped by the careerism of the regional leaders, the manipulated
media, excessive financial funding, and, last but not least, massive, nationwide,
organized fraud—might become “the only show in town.” United Russia was in danger
of becoming a victim of its own success, undermining the very democratic façade the
leadership had been so carefully trying to construct over the years. That the Kremlin
was really worried about the turn of events became clear after the regional elections, which
took place on March 14, 2010. Despite widespread fraud,[27] this time United Russia did not repeat its success. It lost about 20 percentage
points across the board. In Sverdlovsk the party got only 39 percent, and Irkutsk
elected a Communist mayor with over 62 percent. One would have expected grim faces
in the Kremlin, but the opposite was the case. “A happy defeat for the Kremlin,” wrote
Julia Ioffe in Foreign Policy.[28] According to another Western observer it was a “Victory in defeat.”[29] The fact that the three “opposition parties” together had gotten more votes than
United Russia seemed to be extremely good news for the Kremlin: the democratic façade
had been saved without in any way jeopardizing United Russia’s power monopoly. Due
to the fact that the biggest party gets extra seats in the regional legislatures,
“loser” United Russia could quietly continue to rule the regions in tandem with the
Kremlin-appointed governors.
Mikhail Prokhorov’s Revolt against
the Kremlin “Puppeteers”
