Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 11 – The results
of Sunday’s voting in Tatarstan show that that Middle Volga republic is divided
into “two unequal parts:” one that resembles Chechnya with participation and
support for the ruling party close to 100 percent, and a second like Moscow
with low rates of participation and increasing divisions among the electorate.
In a commentary on Forum-MSK.org
today, Sergey Gupalo writes from Kazan that in those “Chechnya-like” portions of
the Republic of Tatarstan, “all political life has been paved over under
asphalt.” There, there is not even any “controlled”
opposition of the Zyuganov type, and “consequently, the results are ‘Chechen’”
(forum-msk.org/material/region/10040042.html).
But in the cities and decaying
industrial centers, the commentator continues, the situation more closely
resembles that in Sobyanin’s Moscow: low participation – in fact, even lower
than that in the Russian capital – electoral fraud designed to help the party
of power retain control, and still a divided vote with other parties winning
some seats in local legislative bodies.
Gupalo provides details on the
voting in these two parts of Tatarstan, details that appear to justify his
conclusion that this round of voting shows that “Tatarstan is Chechnya and
Moscow in one bottle,” a situation that he suggests will only be overcome with
a new edition of socialism where a party machine won’t control one part and the
rich “bays” the other.
Unfortunately, he continues, in
Russia today, Moscow will likely try to go after the bays but not the party
machine, all the more so since the latter delivers the outcomes the ruling
United Russia Party wants and the former “is not capable even of minimal
Russian Federation-average outcomes.”
Gupalo’s article has already
attracted a number of comments. The first, from a blogger who identifies
himself as a Kazan resident, asks simply: “Is this true only for Tatarstan?” The answer of course is absolutely not.
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