By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Yes, there are to be parliamentary elections in Russia in December. After repeated indications that the authorities wanted the polls put off indefinitely, or run in conjunction with the presidential election due for June 1996, sources close to President Boris Yeltsin now say they expect him to sign new electoral legislation passed by the Russian parliament on May 11.
These reports are seen as indicating that, despite the isolation and unpopularity of the government, the regime is resigned to meeting the election schedule which it set out in its constitution of December 1993.
Yeltsin appears to have been forced to sanction the polls by survey results which showed the public to be overwhelmingly against any postponement. Also, blocking the elections would imperil the financial aid on which Russia now depends heavily.
But it is clear that the government has not agreed to these polls in order to suffer a defeat. Since mid-April, Russian state authorities have begun a forceful effort to dictate the political script for the rest of the year. The most striking initiative has been an attempt, evidently by Yeltsin himself, to manoeuvre his supporters and the more docile of his critics into pro-government and "loyal opposition" electoral blocs.
In the government's preferred variant, electoral disaster in December would be averted quasi-legally. Intensive campaigning backed by near-blanket control of the television industry, control over the state apparatus, and limitless financing would ensure majorities for pro-government candidates.
But there is good reason to think such "legitimate" methods will not be enough. Among liberal opposition groups in particular, there are fears that the authorities will resort — not for the first time — to widespread fraud.
Attempts at blocs
During March and April, signs that the elections would actually take place spurred political groups to consult with one another, aiming to form blocs large enough to bid for parliamentary seats. Leaders of the country's mass labour movement body, the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), issued a call in March for a "broad left- centrist coalition".
Enterprise directors under threat from the government's hard-line monetarist economic policies were also preparing for electoral battle. A congress on April 18 formed the Russian United Industrial Party.
Rather than limit its freedom of manoeuvre, the government had always avoided formal attempts to organise its supporters. Now, with the need to prepare for an election campaign, an effort was finally made to unite pro-government deputies in the parliament. But the resulting faction promptly split into three.
The authorities responded to this setback by launching a far more ambitious project. On April 25 came an announcement by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin that he intended to head a new pro-government political bloc; journalists noted that the initiative for this move appeared to have come from Yeltsin himself.
Chernomyrdin's projected coalition was said to be only one aspect of the president's plan. According to Izvestia, the Prime Minister's "right-centrist" bloc was to be matched by a "left-centrist" opposition led by Ivan Rybkin, speaker of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament.
Russian political commentators immediately concluded that the projected coalitions were intended to act as factions of a single "party of power". Faithful to the regime's key strategies, and with programs that differed only in their nuances, both blocs would be kept in line through a steady flow of material favours, of state dachas and places on leisurely official tours to the West.
Using this two-party structure — which journalists irreverently compared to the two-headed eagle of the Russian coat of arms — Yeltsin aimed to create the appearance of democracy while exiling serious critics to the fringes of political life. The president made little effort to hide this objective. On April 27 Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported that during a meeting with the pro-government "Stability" group of deputies, Yeltsin had declared that in future elections the right-centrist and left-centrist blocs would act as a powerful united front which would "cut off the left and right extremists".
Cool response
Chernomyrdin's bloc, by now dubbed the "All-Russian Social Movement 'Our Home — Russia'", was officially launched on May 12. The four-hour founding congress, accompanied by a lavish buffet lunch, was reported in the Moscow press to have cost US$169,000; a series of Russia's largest banks and industrial conglomerates picked up the bill.
Chernomyrdin was elected chairperson; the members of the movement's new Council included a string of government ministers, no fewer than 46 regional governors and numerous figures from among the cream of Russia's business elite.
The response from prospective coalition partners, however, was cool. Important neo-liberal formations such as the "Yabloko" group of Grigory Yavlinsky and Yegor Gaidar's "Russia's Democratic Choice" had long been alienated from the government, and shunned the new bloc from the start. The only established and well-known group of parliamentary deputies to align itself with Chernomyrdin was the Russian Party of Unity and Accord (PRES), which gained about 5% of votes in the December 1993 elections.
Meanwhile, Rybkin's efforts to form a "left-centrist" bloc failed ignominiously. Sensing that any links to Yeltsin's two-party project would spell electoral death, potential coalition partners hastily declared their resolve to run independently.
The "party of power" therefore seems destined to be a one- headed bird, peppered with rhetorical buckshot from almost every quarter. As the main political embodiment of the new ruling stratum, it will present an obvious target for everyone discontented with the state of Russia and the thrust of government policy.
Its likely popularity among voters is suggested by the current rating of PRES, its key organisational component. A survey reported by Pravda in mid-April concluded that just 2% of Russians thought PRES represented their interests, a result equal to that scored by the Beer Lovers Party.
Though unlikely to win votes, "Our Home — Russia" will nevertheless be charged with winning elections. Ivan Grachev, campaign director for Yabloko, has expressed alarm at the prospect of massive fraud. Grachev noted recent elections in the republic of Tatarstan on the Volga, stating that these were "100% falsified". "None of the candidates of the non-state bloc was elected", Grachev explained to the Moscow Tribune. "We are worried that this way will be used all over Russia."
Many Russians also recall Yeltsin's constitutional referendum of December 1993. Although electoral authorities reported that enough votes had been cast to validate the result, political scientists who made a detailed analysis of the returns concluded that this was impossible.
A heavy defeat for pro-government forces in the elections in December would be a drastic setback for Yeltsin, depriving his rule of much of its legitimacy and making it difficult for him to pursue his apparent goal of running in the 1996 presidential race.
The temptation for the authorities to tamper with the results will therefore be particularly strong. Their need to resort to such methods will be increased if, as widely expected, the current sharp fall in production and incomes in Russia continues. Close scrutiny by international organisations of the preparations for the elections, the polling and the vote-counting is therefore highly desirable.
Opposition
Meanwhile, what about Russia's real opposition — the political currents that do not support one variety or another of monetarist "reform"?
These forces are anxious to mount an electoral challenge, and with the bulk of the population hostile to the government's strategies, have the potential to poll strongly. However, people who line up against monetarist "shock therapy" policies may well have fundamentally opposed interests on other vital questions. As a result, their unity can only be of a partial, conditional type.
This point becomes especially critical when labour movement bodies are faced with the question of collaborating with organisations that essentially represent employers.
When FNPR chairperson Mikhail Shmakov called during March for the formation of a "centre-left coalition", he appeared to have in mind a formation dominated by working-class forces. The obvious base for such a coalition would be an alliance between three large organisations: the FNPR, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and the Agrarian Party, whose following consists mainly of workers on collective farms.
With effective organisational structures, a strong grassroots base, and clear independence of the government, a worker-peasant bloc around these forces promised to be a big vote-winner. A hint of what seemed to be in store appeared at the large Moscow rally on May 1, when Shmakov and CPRF chief Gennady Zyuganov spoke from the same platform.
Soon afterwards, however, it emerged that Shmakov's plans were quite different. On May 5 the newspaper Rabochaya Tribuna published a declaration signed by Shmakov, by Russian United Industrial Party chairperson Vladimir Shcherbakov and by Yuri Petrov, the head of the "Social-Political Movement 'Union of Realists'". According to this statement, the signatories had agreed to form a united electoral bloc around goals which included "reviving national industry and agriculture as the basis for rebuilding the economy".
Recent declarations of the Industrial Party and the Union of Realists have not been short on pro-worker rhetoric. But if one studies these groups further, it becomes clear that their promises will not be adhered to.
For a start, these groups are not really independent of the government. Despite being disaffected with government policy, the industrialists and apparatchiks who make them up retain numerous ties with official circles, sometimes at a strikingly high level. Union of Realists head Petrov was formerly President Yeltsin's chief of staff. He is currently head of the State Investment Corporation, and according to Nezavisimaya Gazeta, remains "well known for his closeness to the president."
Just as fundamental is the question of the class nature of the FNPR's new allies. Both the Industrial Party and the Union of Realists are made up of enterprise directors anxious to extract favours and subsidies from the government, and of state functionaries sympathetic to this aim. Despite their bid for working-class support, the leaders of these groups are avowed champions of capitalism.
Industrial Party chairperson Shcherbakov, for example, doubles as head of the International Foundation for Cooperation in Privatisation and Foreign Investment. Even if Shcherbakov's party now pledges to "restore the special role, peculiar to the Russian economy, of the labour collectives", the party will soon discover a "need" to attack the labour collectives, sacking activists and driving down wages. In the meantime, the industrialists will be in a position to veto any attempts to include serious pro-worker demands in the platform of an electoral coalition.
The Industrial Party clearly has no intention of accepting the Communist Party as an electoral ally, and the Communists, with good reason, have kept their distance from Shmakov's new scheme. The possibility of a strong worker-peasant bloc contesting the elections seems to have disappeared.
The FNPR's 50 million members will now be urged by their leaders to vote for a coalition whose policies will be seen, correctly, as dictated by bosses and bureaucrats. Repelled by this option, millions of Russian trade unionists will spread their votes over an assortment of nationalists and dissident neo-liberals.
Shmakov thus appears to have neutralised the labour movement as a force in the December elections. If the pro-Yeltsin forces defy expectations and score impressively in the polls, much of the credit will belong to the FNPR leadership.