The Kremlin’s efforts to build fake parties alongside United Russia, however, continued.
The Kremlin needed a multiparty system, but only in the way the former German Democratic
Republic needed it: as a democratic façade. It should by all means be prevented from
developing into a real multiparty system and leading to what the Kremlin wanted to
avoid at all cost: political alternation. However, creating even a fake two-party
system could be risky for the Kremlin, because a big opposition party—even if it was
originally set up as a fake opposition party—could eventually develop into a real opposition.[30] This theoretical possibility seemed almost to become a reality in the summer of
2011, when the Kremlin promoted the billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, president
of the Onexim Group and third-richest man in Russia, to leader of the party Pravoe Delo (Right Cause). This party was founded in 2009,[31] but had no seats in the Duma. It was set up as a “liberal” party with the objective
of capturing the votes of the liberal intelligentsia, the urban middle classes, and
the business community. The Kremlin wanted the party to enter the Duma in the elections
of December 2011 to make its managed “multiparty” system more credible to the most
critical part of the electorate. Mikhail Vinogradov, director of the Petersburg Foundation
“Petersburg Politics,” announced that Prokhorov, a talented business tycoon, was “a
strong figure, not inclined to participate in imitation projects.”[32] His prediction came true. Prokhorov went to work energetically. He approached Yevgeny
Roizman, who had made a name as an activist, leading a nationwide campaign against
narcotics. The Kremlin administration was not pleased with this unexpected activism
and advised Prokhorov to sack Roizman. Prokhorov refused. This show of independence
could not be tolerated and on September 15, 2011, Prokhorov was forced out of the
party. Prokhorov did not mince his words. In Kommersant he attacked Vladislav Surkov, the deputy head of the presidential administration,
head-on, calling him a “puppeteer” who “privatized the political system and disinforms
the government of the country.”[33] Prokhorov asked for Surkov to be sacked—a rather provocative demand, because Surkov
the “puppeteer” was not acting alone, but had the full backing of his two masters
and “puppeteers-in-chief” Putin and Medvedev who, in reality, were pulling the strings.
An analyst commented that Prokhorov, “by refusing to bend to the petty wishes from
the Kremlin . . . has qualified as an ‘enemy of the state,’ and his fortune instead
of shielding him from persecution, makes it more tempting for the greedy siloviki to go after the loot . . . . Prokhorov is guilty of revealing how rotten Putinism
has grown.”[34]
