Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 21 – Six years ago,
the Kremlin feared mass protests and so allowed for competitive elections in
local Moscow elections, Kirill Martynov says. Now, it fears competitive
elections because of its concerns about organizing the transition and so doesn’t
fear the mass protests which have come as a response.
The Novaya gazeta commentator
argues that this change of heart has happened because after 2024, Vladimir
Putin cannot remain president without a change in the Constitution but that he
will retain real power one way or another to ensure that the current
distribution of rents stays the same (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2019/07/21/81324-tranzitnaya-situatsiya).
Even the carefully choreographed transition to Medvedev “showed that any reconfiguration
of the top positions in the country leads to a significant change in the positions
of the influence groups within the elites,” with some gaining and others losing as a result, Martynov
says.
Were there to be independent
deputies in the Moscow city council or a governor from the opposition, such
people could serve as “a trump card” for those within the Russian elite “who
are ready for dialogue with society.” Others within that circle who aren’t
ready for such conversations naturally are against the appearance of such
people.
And the latter thus protect
themselves from any such risk of the transition as well as protecting their current
powers by ensuring that no such opposition figures appear within the political firmament
by the simple but clearly unpopular strategy of blocking them from running
altogether.
Mass protests in contrast cause the
elite to unite against them because all of its members are threatened by them,
and such street actions are less of a threat because the regime has prepared
what it needs to control or even suppress them outright. Hence the fear of
competitive elections but not of people in the streets.
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