By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Between September 1 and January 12, voters cast their ballots in elections for the top executive posts in more than 50 of Russia's 89 provinces, territories and ethnic republics. In slightly more than half of these races, incumbents placed in their jobs by President Boris Yeltsin were dumped.
Both the federal authorities and their main opponents claimed victory. According to the Kremlin, the "party of power" triumphed because most of the men — and the sole woman — who won office were people with whom the federal officials believed they could collaborate.
The Popular Patriotic Union of Russia (NPSR), the Communist-led bloc that is the country's largest single electoral force, claimed victory because a majority of the Kremlin appointees facing election were tipped from office. Most of the new executive chiefs were people the NPSR had supported.
On both sides, the claims of clear-cut victory were strained.
The new provincial governors and republican presidents whom the Kremlin officials count as friendly may do the federal government's bidding, or may not.
Meanwhile, commentators have noted that Yeltsin-appointed incumbents lost despite massive practical advantages. Not only did they run the provincial administrative machines, but they generally exercised tight control over the local news media.
The Communists and their allies may have a basis for claiming that the Kremlin lost, but it does not follow that the left opposition won.
NPSR support to a candidate said little about the candidate's policies. Simple opposition to a pro-Yeltsin incumbent often seemed to be enough. In Pskov province in western Russia, the NPSR gave its backing in a run-off election to a supporter of ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Where local economic conditions were especially bad, candidates aligned with the left opposition generally won. Thus, NPSR members and sympathisers performed strongly in the run-down industrial regions of central European Russia and the north-west. In the latter region, incumbents lost everywhere elections were held, with the single exception of Arkhangelsk province.
Where economic conditions were less dire, incumbents were usually returned. If they were defeated, it was by "strong managers" from the local business or administrative elites.
The campaigning was rarely "ideological". Unlike the federal presidential elections in mid-1996, incumbents made little use of "red scare" tactics.
NPSR-backed candidates, for their part, rarely called for defending state property ownership. Almost always, candidates tried to present themselves as experienced managers able to solve local problems.
It was also rare for candidates to seek votes with tirades against Moscow. Even candidates regarded as left wing clearly decided that voters wanted regional executive chiefs ready to work with the Kremlin to try to extract a better deal for local interests.
Thus the Communist-backed candidate in the Altai territory of Siberia, one of Russia's poorest regions, won his race while stressing his influence in Moscow and pledging "a non-partisan administration".
Another striking feature, which Russian commentators failed completely to note, was the almost total absence of the labour movement as an interested force. Russia's main left formation, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, has little coordinated impact inside the trade unions.
Successful Communist-backed candidates, the Open Media Research Institute noted, "were quickly invited to consultations with Kremlin officials, and most quickly found a common language with the federal authorities". Mostly representing heavily depressed regions, the more left-wing of the new executive chiefs depend on subsidies from Moscow to keep their administrations functioning and local employees paid.
For the left, the months of the regional elections have been a period of lost opportunities. The only popular gains that have been scored are on the level of formal democratic procedure: almost all of the regions are now headed by elected officials.
For Yeltsin's authoritarian-centralist administration, even this limited shift toward democracy is fraught with headaches.
Now that regional chiefs have been elected, they can no longer be summarily dismissed. When the interests of regional elites collide with those of Moscow, even former Yeltsin appointees are now in a position to mount greater resistance.
The most self-assertive among them, observers anticipate, will not be those identified with the left, but the heads of the 10 to 15 "donor" regions that contribute more to the federal budget than they receive from it.
This increased leverage of provincial economic elites will make itself felt directly in Moscow through the Council of the Federation, the upper house of the federal parliament.
Anxious to ensure a tame legislature, Yeltsin after his 1993 presidential coup set in place a structure under which the council would be composed directly of the executive and legislative heads of the administrative regions. He evidently calculated that the regional chiefs, conscious of their dependence on Moscow, would place a heavy brake on radical tendencies within the parliament.
This ploy has had considerable success. But now that the upper house members are secure in their posts, their legislating may take on a more independent cast.
The powers of the Council of the Federation are not great — Yeltsin made certain, for example, that an impeachment motion would require no less than a three-quarters vote in the council in order to pass.
But in a time of grave economic distress, the tensions between the federal authorities and regional elites are formidable. The council is now likely to become an arena in the battles by the provincial authorities to extract concessions from the centre.
The ordinary inhabitants of provincial Russia could be excused for asking whether there is anything for them in the wrangles between local power-brokers and the economic and political elite in Moscow. Voter participation rates in the regional elections were well down on those in the federal presidential polls.
The right of voters to throw presidential favourites out of the regional executive offices is, of course, a right worth having. Although the elections will do little to put money in the hands of the largely unpaid work force, the idea has at least been reinforced that the choice of rulers should belong to the ruled.
But there are more vital conclusions to be drawn from the polls. These lessons concern the limitations of formal democracy where there is little popular organising or participation and, in particular, where the labour movement is absent as an organised force.