John Dunlop is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and an expert on the Soviet collapse and Russian domestic politics. Yesterday, we featured the first half of a conversation between Dunlop and National Review Online’s Daniel Foster about the rise of Vladimir Putin, once and future president of the Russian Federation. In Part II, Dunlop describes the farce that is the upcoming Russian “election,” discusses Putin’s Soviet-imperial ambitions, and reveals the identity of the “Russian Karl Rove.”

DANIEL FOSTER: Let’s talk about the upcoming elections in Russia. There will be parliamentary elections in December and a presidential election in March. Can you give us an outline of the three or four main parties in play?

JOHN DUNLOP: Well, as of today, it looks like four political parties are going to clear the 7 percent barrier [required to create a party or “faction” in the Russia Duma], which is a very high barrier. It was put in there intentionally by Putin and his team, to keep democratically oriented parties out.

FOSTER: How so?

DUNLOP: It’s very hard to get 7 percent. So the four parties that appear likely to clear the barrier are, first of all, the party of power — United Russia, which will probably get somewhere between 55 and 65 percent of the vote. Of course, part of the question is how the vote is going to be tabulated. Is there going to be cheating? Manipulation? But it’ll get over half the votes. That seems clear.

Then there is the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, KPRF, which should get 15 to 17 percent, something like that. The Communists could actually go higher if there were free elections. I think they have more appeal to the population than 15 to 17 percent, but they have been constant in all elections since the Russian presidential elections in 1991, and they’ve had a significant degree of clout as a result. They focus on social issues, and on nostalgia for the Soviet Union and Soviet empire — when it was a great state, and so on.

There are two other parties that look like they will be in the 7 percent area. One is the Liberal Democratic party [LDPR], headed by a semi-fascist demagogue, Vladimir Zhirinovsky — a kind of clown, but a very gifted one. He’s been around since the early ’90s as a major political figure, and there’s a 10 to 12 percent segment of the electorate that loves the guy and will always vote for him. So the polls suggest that he’s definitely going to get in with his party. It’s almost like a one-man party, because most of the other people on the party list are not so well known.

And then the last group, the last party which seems likely to clear the barrier — there are still questions whether they will; recent polling data suggests they’re going to — is the so-called Party of a Just Russia, which is headed by Sergey Mironov, until recently the speaker of the Federation Council, the non-elected upper chamber of the Russian parliament. He’s a well-known figure. It looks like they’ll get a little more than 7 percent. Now, both the Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia are tainted by the puppet master — that’s not my term — of Russian politics: Vladislav Surkov. He’s propped up those parties to take away votes from the Communists. In other words, both of their appeals are to the constituencies that the Communists might be expected to get votes from.

FOSTER: Let’s talk more about the puppet master, Surkov, because he’s an intriguing figure. Who is he? Where did he come from? What’s his role?

DUNLOP: He has a high position in the Russian presidential administration under Medvedev, and is a close confidant of Putin.

FOSTER: Like the chief of staff?

DUNLOP: Not like the chief of staff, but like a deputy chief of staff. But he’s much more powerful than that title conveys.

FOSTER: Yesterday you called him “the Russian Karl Rove.”

DUNLOP: Yes, but he’s more influential than Karl Rove was under Bush, because he runs everything. Rove ran Republican-party politics, but this guy would have run Republican- and Democratic-party politics, and any other parties that were out there. So he’s an extraordinarily powerful person, and a very smart guy. He has an interesting ethnic background — his father was a Chechen, and his name at birth was Dudayev, which was the same name as the first separatist president of Chechnya [Dzhokhar Dudayev], who was assassinated by a Russian missile.

FOSTER: So he needed to change that.

DUNLOP: Well, his mother’s name was Surkova, so he just took his mother’s name, which is legitimate because his parents got divorced when he was young, and she moved away [with him]. So he was raised as a Russian, not a Chechen — although he is not ashamed of his Chechen background, and he has spoken about that on several occasions. But in any event, Surkov was an assistant to Alexander Voloshin — who was chief of staff under Yeltsin — and then became Putin’s first chief of staff. So he was kind of the right hand of Voloshin, who was a very clever guy in his own right.

Voloshin left Putin’s administration after the arrest and trial of [Russian businessman, dissident, and political prisoner] Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He protested against that. Voloshin is not a man of conscience, but he thought it was a mistake tactically. And Surkov sort of stepped in and took over. This guy calls all the shots with, presumably, the approval of Putin and, to a lesser extent, Medvedev. He’s constantly moving the pieces on the chessboard.

FOSTER: When you’ve spoken of Surkov before, he sounded to me like an old machine boss, a ward-heeler from the Gilded Age, rather than a member of the Politburo. So I want to understand the dynamic. Can you maybe talk about the weapons in his arsenal, and how he can be so effective at determining domestic political outcomes?

DUNLOP: Well he can be compared in some ways to the second-ranking party official in the Soviet era: party secretary for ideology, a very powerful position. But he’s not a Communist in any meaningful sense. In fact, he’s kind of Westernized in some ways. He’s also very modern, so in some sense he is like Karl Rove: always looking at polls and utilizing the media. But in Russia they use Russian television as an instrument to rule, since they control it. They give the people what they want to see, as evidenced by polls. They manipulate them, but they’re also giving them what they think they want. So it’s a very clever kind of policy.

FOSTER: What about his role in the elections?

DUNLOP: He’s very firm and tough about prohibiting non-regime-approved candidates from getting on the ballot. For example, the group Parnas, which is headed by very significant, former high-ranking officials in Russia — Surkov won’t let them be registered. Now, technically the decision was made by the justice ministry, and then confirmed by the courts, but everyone understands that Surkov was running it.

FOSTER: Is he passing out money? Is he strong-arming people? Threatening violence?

DUNLOP: I’m sure he is handing out money, but it’s being done in underhanded ways, so we wouldn’t necessarily be able to document it. He also uses pro-Kremlin youth groups to harass opponents. There is a youth group called “Nashi,” or “Our Guys,” that the Kremlin supports in their efforts to intimidate “fascists” who also happen to be enemies of the regime. Another example: A disliked opposition leader recently was in a southern Russian city to give a speech, and the lights went off, and the riot police came and broke up the meeting. It’s the kind of thing they do. They use pressure against people they regard as serious or even dangerous opponents.

FOSTER: What can we expect to see in the elections? Has the outcome been predetermined?

DUNLOP: Well, as far as the election is concerned, it looks like, barring unforeseen circumstances, United Russia will get 60 to 65 percent of the vote; the Communists will get their 17 percent; LDPR will get 12 percent, and A Just Russia 7 percent.

FOSTER: How much does the composition of the Duma really matter?

DUNLOP: It matters in a sense because what it means is that the leader can get any or all legislation through, and have no problems with that. So it’s important. It’s a kind of mechanism, but the individual deputies don’t matter at all. They tend to be very corrupt, and no one takes it seriously. But it matters in a kind of political and psychological sense.

FOSTER: Can we talk about money in general in the Russian system? How do the so-called “oligarchs” play into all this?

DUNLOP: There are different oligarchs. Some are just unimaginatively pro-regime, and they’ll do whatever Putin wants. Others have tried to stake out a more independent position. Recently, the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov — the third-wealthiest man in Russia — was slated by Surkov to head a pro-market political party, and it appeared in the beginning that the party would be able to get over the 7 percent barrier. And therefore, it would be able to attract entrepreneurs, people interested in a Western-style economy and so on. And it was intended also to make Russia look better in the eyes of the West. But it fell apart because Prokhorov wanted to actually run his own party. [Laughs] He wanted to control, at least to a considerable extent, the people in the party list, and Surkov said, “No. I’m going to do that,” and so there was a clash and Prokhorov lost completely. In fact, he was thrown out of his own party, so this was the third-wealthiest man in Russia, and, according to Forbes, the 39th-wealthiest man in the world, and he lost completely.

Another example: Mikhail Gorbachev, a former Soviet premier, a Nobel-prize winner, wanted a few years ago to help form a social-democratic party, because he considers himself now a social democrat. And so he was making plans, and Surkov talked to him and said, “No, you can’t do it.” He told Gorbachev he can’t do it! Gorbachev was terribly angry, you can imagine. He was completely angry, but what can you do? Surkov is far more influential in Russia than Gorbachev, who is regarded as kind of a failure. So, these are examples of this guy’s quite extraordinary power.

FOSTER: Even without cheating, ballot-box stuffing, and other forms of manipulation, like control of state television, would Putin be able to get a plurality or majority of the vote?

DUNLOP: Yes, but I don’t think the question is entirely valid. I think that if, for example, Parnas had access to state television, and they were able to put their positions out there, [things might be different]. Or if there were ever debates — there have never been debates in these elections. Even when he was acting president from January to March of 2000, Putin refused to debate his opponent. He said, “I’m too busy.” But yes, Putin is popular. There is no question.

FOSTER: What can the United States expect from round two of Putin’s rule? Specifically, is Putin’s Russia an expansionist power? Is Putin looking to create a regional hegemon? Does he want to exert more influence over Europe?

DUNLOP: I think that’s his view. He would like that to happen, but he’s not — I wouldn’t say he’s cautious — but he’s not reckless. He’s not likely to do anything that’s going to cause a scandal. I think he sees one of the purposes of his next two terms, which will be going from 2012 to 2024, to recreate as much of Soviet space as possible. Under the various different systems, some of [the former Soviet territories] will be incorporated into Russia completely. Others will be Finlandized, to use a term of art, and he’s recently been involved with forming a customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan. So I expect him to continue moving in this direction rather relentlessly.

— Daniel Foster is NRO’s news editor.