Apathy alone isn’t to blame. Russia’s parliamentary elections on Dec. 12 are supposed to render a verdict on the future of democracy and Yeltsin’s reforms–but probably won’t. With everyone from reformers to communist hard-liners accusing each other of dictatorial ambitions, the campaign has featured more bickering than serious debate. Yeltsin himself hasn’t contributed much to the multiparty spirit. Two months after tanks blasted his parliamentary opponents out of the White House, he has outlawed some opposition parties and warned candidates not to criticize his draft constitution (which will be decided by referendum).
Yeltsin’s strong-arm tactics could end up helping his opponents. Thanks to rulings that disqualified several fringe groups, the communists have managed to form a united front. The “democrats,” meanwhile, have splintered into four quarreling parties. Although each registered party gets free air time, candidates from Russia’s Choice dominate state-run television news coverage. “That’s perfectly normal,” says Aleksandr Tsyganov, a staffer for one of the democratic parties. “When the communists were in power, they controlled TV. Now, Yeltsin’s government controls it.”
And sometimes abuses it. From its elegant office, equipped with fax machines and video equipment by private companies, Russia’s Choice has launched a slick advertising campaign dominated by warm images of youth and prosperity. One of its commercials even stole a slogan from a public-relations firm funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. The PR firm was trying to encourage Russians to buy up state-owned companies, using the jingle “Your Voucher–Your Choice.” Yeltsin’s people simply changed it to “Your Voucher–Russia’s Choice.” When U.S. AID refused to pay for airing the ad, the government footed the bill (though it later decided to pull the ads).
The opposition has confusion on its side. Russians will be voting for a complicated combination of representatives for two houses of Parliament. For the first time. voters are supposed to check on the ballot the candidates they favor instead of those they oppose. There are voting lessons every night on TV, but they’re up against a far more popular Brazilian soap opera.
The campaign has sparked raucous and raunchy face-offs across the country, attracting a motley array of candidates, many of whom have never been in politics. In one democratic party, a scraggly rock-and-roll star is sharing a ticket with the former armed-forces commander in chief, Yevgeny Shaposhnikov. Even Artyom Tarasov, a millionaire who fled the country two years ago in the midst of an embezzlement scandal, has returned to run for office. In the city of Tver, a candidate for the obscure Dignity and Charity bloc offers a $1 discount on cheap champagne for anyone who votes for him.
Everybody is digging for dirt. Yeltsin’s camp has dispatched 15 special investigators to pursue corruption charges against Eduard Rossel, a former governor of Yekaterinburg whom Yeltsin fired for declaring a Ural Republic. Now others are slinging mud. Economist Grigory Yavlinsky’s party ran TV ads that juxtaposed Yegor Gaidar, the architect of Yeltsin’s reforms, against Stalin. Extremist Vladimir Zhirinovsky is suing Gaidar for calling him a “Hitler” and is demanding $83,000 in damages.
For Yeltsin, the most important element of the campaign is the referendum on the constitution. Following the putsch on Oct. 3, his aides revamped the document draft behind closed doors, significantly strengthening the president’s powers and weakening the rights of ethnic republics. The constitution no longer grants them any “sovereignty” and prohibits them from proclaiming independence. Yeltsin has already snubbed the new legislature by splitting its new headquarters between an unprestigious government building and the former mayor’s office. The constitution permits him to name all cabinet ministers, including the head of the central bank. He can dissolve Parliament if it blocks his candidate for prime minister three times, or if it passes a no-confidence vote against his government twice in three months. “The most important thing is to have a new constitution,” says Vitaly Mashkov, Yeltsin’s representative in Yekaterinburg, “because then we can dissolve the Parliament if it is pro-communist,” So much for democracy.
Since the attempted coup, radical reformers like Gaidar have ruled out compromise with centrists. They argue that a strong presidency is necessary to push painful, radical market policies such as bankruptcy and privatization. “The role of the Parliament will be supplementary, not decisive,” says presidential adviser Andranik Migranyan. But the newly elected deputies–which may include a solid showing of centrists, communists and nationalists–will have a legitimacy the old one never had. And they aren’t likely to accept a passive role. “The new Parliament may prove to be more difficult for the president than the previous one,” says Anatoly Lukyanov, the Soviet-era Parliament leader and defendant in the trial against the 1991 putschists, who is running on the Communist ticket. If the current campaign is any indication, President Yeltsin is in no mood to compromise with a feisty Parliament.
