Some analysts in the West adhere to a peculiar form of Occam’s Razor, whereby the most sinister explanation (in lieu of the simplest) is held to be the most likely when trying to understand what transpires in Russia.
Certainly there are serious flaws with the Russian electoral system. Indeed, Russia’s unbalanced media is a major factor. With all television channels effectively controlled directly by the government or by proxies in the private sector, one cannot speak of a true “marketplace of ideas” with different viewpoints given equal time.
And until Russia’s middle class and political parties mature, whoever controls the state apparatus has access to considerable administrative resources–including patronage–that dwarfs even the formidable advantages incumbents possess in the West’s developed democracies.
But does that mean that Sunday’s presidential elections were nothing but a farce, devoid of meaning and lacking in any democratic legitimacy?
Let’s first take a look at the numbers. 61 percent of eligible voters cast ballots, according to the Central Election Commission. Even taking into account the Chicago-style machine politics found in some of Russia’s “ethnic” republics (voting early, voting often), it seems apparent that at least half of Russia’s voters chose to go to the polls–the threshold needed by the Russian constitution to validate the presidential ballot. So Russian voters did take this election seriously enough to turn out and vote.
And despite the fact that no one expected Putin to lose, nearly one third of voters who cast ballots voted against Putin. Perhaps this was nothing more than a gesture of Don Quixote-like bravado, or something like the stubbornness of American voters who still chose Walter Mondale in 1984 even when it was clear as the sun in the summer sky that Ronald Reagan would be overwhelmingly reelected. Yet Putin’s “landslide” victory still falls short of the 96 percent won by Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia earlier this year, or the traditional 99 percent won by most despots in the rigged elections held throughout the “greater Middle East.” So it does appear that most Russians who voted did so with an eye to expressing their preferences.
Approximately 3.5 percent of voters exercised their right to vote “none of the above.” The Communist faithful voted for their standard-bearer, Nikolai Kharitonov, who polled approximately 14 percent–which more or less corresponds to support for the Communist party in public-opinion surveys. The other “serious” presidential candidates–Sergei Glazyev and Irina Khakamada–each took about four percent of the vote. Yet here it is also important to recognize that potential Glazyev and Khakamada supporters in the Russian electorate may have preferred to cast a vote for Putin, seeing him as the “half-a-loaf” candidate who could deliver on some of the agenda espoused by the other candidates. Writing on NRO on January 28, I noted that Khakamada herself acknowledged that “most small-business owners in Russia, who might be expected to support pro-market parties, have preferred Putin and United Russia, believing that the current leadership can offer stability and protection.”
And this is an important point. Putin can be criticized for his “overkill” campaign methods, but the election was not “stolen.” Kharitonov, Glazyev, or Khakamada do not speak for some silent Russian majority whose will was bypassed due to fraud or harassment. Most Russians support Putin’s vision of orderly reform and trust him as an individual.
And this has implications for U.S. policy. Russia is not Iran, where after the recent parliamentary elections it is clear that the government and the people have parted ways. Russia is not Azerbaijan, where one can argue that the stage-managed presidential elections in that Caucasian republic masked the lack of deep support for Ilham Aliev as successor to his father. In contrast, Putin enjoys tremendous popular legitimacy. Even if we lament that this reflects some defect in Russia’s political culture–a preference for authoritarian rulers, proof of how the myth of the “good tsar” permeates Russian political dialogue for the last millennium–it does not change that basic fact: Putin is Russia’s legitimate president.
And he is president not simply because he and other members of the security services–the so-called siloviki–predominate in the government but because after a decade of dislocating and severely damaging reforms Russians want stability–and many trust that Putin and his team can provide over an orderly reconstruction of the state and society.
We as Americans, in a spirit of cooperation and goodwill, should offer the benefit of our own republic’s evolution over two centuries and constructive criticism of the Putin team’s policies when we feel they might be counterproductive. But we should never assume that the majority of Russians share our vision for the type of Russia that should emerge. And if we are serious when we proclaim our fidelity to the notion of government “of, by, and for the people,” we need to accept the verdict that a majority of Russians, last December and this past Sunday, have rendered.
–Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a senior fellow for strategic studies at the Nixon Center.