Monthly Archives: September 2007

I received the Fall 2007 issue of the Slavic Review in the mail yesterday.  While flipping through it, I couldn’t help admiring the accuracy of this quotation from Khrushchev that opens Timothy Frye’s review of Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, Resisting the State: Reform and Retrenchment in Post-Soviet Russia.

Khrushchev told Castro during the latter’s visit to the Soviet Union in 1963:

You’d think I could change anything in this country.  Like hell I can.  No matter what changes I propose and carry out, everything stays the same.  Russia is like a tub full of dough, you put your hand down in it, down to the bottom, and think you’re master of the situation.  When you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains, but then, before your very eyes, the dough expands into a spongy, puffy mass.  That’s what Russia is like.

Beautifully put Nikita Sergeevich.

The investigation into Anna Politkovskaya’s murder took another dramatic turn today as Novaya gazeta reported that the chief investigator in the case, Piotr Gabiryan, was replaced for a “more senior official.”  According to the Moscow Times, Dmitri Muratov, Novaya’s editor, said on Ekho Moskvy that Gabiryan’s removal was the “result of interference by the siloviki.  “The siloviki are achieving what they set out to achieve,” Muratov said. “They wanted to ruin the case, and now they will remove Gabriyan and finish that process.”

Muratov’s statements initiated a deluge of admonishments, speculation, and confusion.  RFE/RL reports that the Prosecutor General’s office has since denied Muratov’s claims, counteracting them with a statement that in fact more investigators were added to the team because of the “large amount of work involved.”  Case supervisor, Sergei Ivanov, who was also rumored to have been removed from the case, told Kommersant that there was no political or ..read more

We’ve seen rioting over WWII burials and protests against resurrecting a statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky. But a protest against a statue to Catherine the Great!? Yes. It seems in some quarters Russia’s history as a whole, and not just its communist past, is cause for nationalist outrage. Reuters reports that a plan to build a statue of the Tsarina in the Ukrainian port city of Odessa has sparked the ire of local Cossacks.

The modern-day heirs of the Cossacks, aligned with Ukrainian nationalists, vilify Catherine as a foreign despot who crushed Ukraine’s limited autonomy at the time, and disbanded units of their celebrated predecessors.

“We used to have communism. Now we are told how wonderful things were before the Bolsheviks. And people believe it,” said Serhiy Gutsalyuk, an “otaman”, or leader, of an Odessa Cossack group as preparations went ahead to restore the monument.

“City authorities will hear ..read more

The Russian electoral season is already unfolding like a stage performance.  Putin, who we might refer to as the Director, announced the date for his troupe’s first performance: the State Duma elections scheduled for December 1.  Kommersant Vlast’ has a thorough breakdown of its prediction of how the 450 Duma seats will be divided.  The first thing to notice is the expectation that the number of parties represented in the Duma will drop by 10 percent.  This is no doubt a result of two factors.  The first is the increase of the electoral threshold to 7 percent.  This along is expected to cut out 10 or 11 parties alone.  The other fact is multiple.  Namely, that Russian politics are a complex business, and the revamp of the electoral threshold matters most for parties already waining in influence.

To explain this complexity, Kommersant’s Dmitiry Kamyshev provides eight factors (with the number of ..read more

While the latest VTsIOM numbers demonstrate the continued collapse of Russian liberal parties, it seems that their not the only ones with a “dark cloud” hovering over their heads.  Political winds appear to be pushing Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party into the rocks.  As the Moscow Times summarizes:

One of its billionaire benefactors has jumped ship, while a second has disappeared and is wanted by the Prosecutor General’s Office, analysts say. In addition, Zhirinovsky’s right-hand man has left, and Alexei Mitrofanov, the party’s second most prominent member, announced last week that he was moving to A Just Russia, a pro-Kremlin party.

Still, Zhiri’s fervent nationalistic banter is expected to garner enough votes with among its mostly under 35 male demographic to slip into the State Duma.  Plus even without billionaire backing, the LDPR has enough cash to last through the election cycle.  This might prolong the LDPR’s collapse a little while longer.  ..read more

The date is set. Putin signed a decree designating 1 December election day to the State Duma. The vote opens up all 450 seats for election.

Russia’s Duma is based on proportional representation. For parties to gain seats they must get at least 7 percent in the polls–a slightly higher threshold than the previous 5 percent.

There are fifteen parties listed as eligible, but according to polls, only United Russia, Just Russia, the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party will win enough votes to gain seats.

Opinion polls are predicting nothing short of a United Russia landslide. According to a prognosis released by VTsIOM, United Russia is figured to gain 47.7%, the Communists 14.9%, Just Russia 11.7%, and LDPR 8.8%. The other eligible parties–SPS, Yabloko, the Agrarian Party, and the Patriots of Russia are all predicted to fall short of the 7 percent needed.

Once again, polls ..read more