The 'Democratic Presumption' is Taking Hold in Russia

The Boston Globe
December 21, 1999, Tuesday

SECTION: OP-ED; Pg. A31
HEADLINE: THE 'DEMOCRATIC PRESUMPTION' IS TAKING HOLD IN RUSSIA
BYLINE: By GRAHAM ALLISON

BODY: Sunday's stunning victory for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his supporters in the new Unity Party surprised most observers. Just three months ago when Russian President Boris Yeltsin made Putin prime minister, knowledgeable Muscovites dismissed the Kremlin entourage as politically spent. It was judged too corrupt and too incompetent to matter.

Kremlin campaign strategists demonstrated extraordinary capabilities in managing Russian perceptions of the war in Chechnya and in undermining political opponents. In the campaign for president, Putin now appears unbeatable. But having ridden the Chechnyan horse to victory in the parliamentary election, he remains vulnerable to a major reversal of Russia's fortune in that war. Among the many remarkable features of Russia's parliamentary election, what is most significant?

First, pause to reflect on Czech President Vaclav Havel's insight: "things have changed so fast we have not yet taken time to be astonished."

After 70 years of communism, the truly extraordinary fact is that Russians are choosing their leaders in competitive democratic elections. Despite dramatic election abuses, most Russian citizens were able to vote for the candidate of their choice without fear of consequences.

Second, democratic processes are taking root in Russia. Despite history, culture, and recent national experience that make Russia rocky soil for democratic seeds, Russia's fledgling democratic experiment survives. With the election of members of the Duma and the campaign for June's presidential transfer of power, the "democratic presumption" is taking hold across Russia's political spectrum. By "democratic presumption," I mean the belief that the "normal" or "civilized" way to answer the question "who rules?" is to count votes in an open, competitive election.

Consequences of democracy for Russia's government, as elsewhere, include greater attentiveness to what Russian citizens think; greater responsiveness to those who can supply ingredients essential for electoral victory, including voters, funders, opinion makers, and regional leaders; and greater accountability.

Third, counter to the prognosis of many doomsayers, election results demonstrate that extremists have been marginalized. Elections put ideas and slogans to a market test. In the past decade, Russians have experienced prolonged economic depression. An emerging middle class was devastated in August 1998 by the double devaluation and default. These conditions resemble those of Europe during the 1930s when fascism arose. Nonetheless, fascists, anti-Semites, and other extreme groups have attracted little support in Sunday's election.

Russia's most prominent extremist, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, not only moderated his statements and positions during the Duma campaign, but declared that his party will join Unity and Union of Right Forces in supporting the Putin government.

Finally, amid the good news, it is also important to note that Russians are practicing democracy in what they call a "Russian way."

The brazen, no-holds-barred verve with which they have absorbed and extended the worst practices of campaign manipulators, media scandalmongers, and moneybags is as far from textbook democracy as Russia's economy is from Western practice. Their success in transforming voters preferences exceeded even their expectations.

Yeltsin's core strategy for the upcoming presidential election, as a Yeltsin adviser explained to me, is to "do '96 again." That means polarizing voters' choice between their candidate and the Communists.

One campaign manipulator's hubris in imagining that the "Family," Russia's nickname for Yeltsin and his advisers, could find a candidate (their third try after having hired and fired former prime ministers Sergei Kiriyenko and Sergei Stepashin) and push him to victory brings to mind the punch-line from Wag the Dog: "Oh, that's nothing."

But at this point in the game they are better positioned than at an equivalent point in 1996 to divide and discredit a Communist-led Duma and then move on to a presidential campaign in which voters are forced to choose between Putin and the Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov.

In sum, as a result of Sunday's election, a more centrist, more progressive, more professional Duma will convene in January. The vote for Yeltsin's successor is scheduled for June 4, six months and several lifetimes in Russian politics ahead. Abuses abound. But in assessing Russia's imperfect democracy, as in other areas of Russian practice, it is useful to remember the alternative.

Graham Allison is the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and supervises publication of the monthly Russian Election Watch bulletin.