Managing the Vote

The Kremlin's spin-masters have invented a term for what happened in Russia on Sunday; they call it "managed democracy." European parliamentary observers had different words for that election today: they called it "unfair." The vote "failed to meet standards for democratic elections," the observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's parliamentary assembly and the Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly said in Moscow. "There was widespread abuse of administrative resources … [and] media coverage was strongly biased in favor of the ruling party."

Amid a blaze of media adulation of President Vladimir Putin some 65 percent of Russian voters chose United Russia, the official party of bureaucrats and careerists, which Putin heads. Nominally "contesting" the election were two other parties that also vocally support Putin—and a third, the communists, who claim to be antigovernment but who have, in practice, voted more or less as the Kremlin wishes for years. Among the latest crop of newly returned members to Putin's rubber-stamp parliament is Andrei Lugovoi, the former KGB officer wanted for the poisoning of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko in London last November. In Putin's assertive new Russia, Lugovoi is considered a national hero.

It's hard to blame the Russians for their overwhelming support for Putin. To the average Russian voter "democracy" conjures nothing but memories of politicians' lies, official corruption and the thieving of the Yeltsin era. Similarly, "free market" means, to most Russians, the loss of their savings, grinding poverty and the spectacle of an undeserving clique of Kremlin cronies amassing obscene fortunes at the public's expense.

Putin, in seven years in power, has presided over a dramatic improvement in ordinary Russians' standard of living, paid off the country's debts, and stood up on the international stage to defy what he calls American "hegemony." Small wonder that Russians voted wholeheartedly in favor of the institution of a wise tsar over the dangerous uncertainties of real democratic choice. Yet in truth, the death of Russian democracy is a tragedy—and a dangerous tragedy that will come back to haunt Russia and the world in years to come.

The real problem is that the idea of Putin's wisdom and greatness is built on a carefully constructed myth. The Kremlin has succeeded, after having stamped out most independent media in the country early in Putin's first term, in persuading the Russian people that their newfound prosperity is due to the superior management and vision of Putin and his team. He has also convinced a certain number of gullible Westerners of that, too—the kind of people Stalin called "useful idiots," to be wined and dined at Kremlin expense and carefully spoon-fed the party line. But the reality is that the whole foundation of the Putin economic miracle lies in a twist of the world's commodity markets, which have sent prices for oil, gas and metals skyrocketing—and with them, Putin's ego.

Putin's popularity is, at base, simply shorn up by an endless stream of free revenue, which gives him the luxury of not having to bother with such mundane concerns as balancing budgets, raising taxation and optimizing economic performance to stay in power. Many of the Kremlin's macroeconomic policies, such as putting aside oil money into a "stabilization fund," have been sensible enough. And Putin is certainly nowhere near as crazed as the world's other petro-demagogues, like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez and Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (though he is friendly with both). Yet the difference is one of style; in substance Putin, like the others, owes his swagger to one of the great redistributions of wealth of our times, as the industrialized world pours its dollars into the coffers of those countries lucky enough to have mineral and energy resources under their soil.