Regarding Elections, Moscow isn’t Russia -- But Russia Isn’t Moscow Either

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 9 – Moscow commentators are celebrating how successful the opposition has been in the municipal elections in the Russian capital compared to how unsuccessful it has been beyond the ring road, but such conclusions are sustainable only if one ignores some extremely important developments elsewhere.

            The Muscovite perspective is offered by Nikita Isayev in a blog post republished in Nezavisimaya gazeta under the title “Moscow Isn’t Russia – The Chief Result of the 2019 Elections” (ng.ru/blogs/nikitaisaev/moskva-ne-rossiya-glavnyy-itog-vyborov2019.php). He presents his conclusions as a series of bullet points, first about Moscow and then about Russia.

            Moscow, he says, has provided “a bold illustration of the processes of the disintegration of the political construction directed only at the imitation of elections and public politics.” Because media attention makes it harder for the authorities to falsify results there, the opposition won some important victories.

            According to Isayev, they are the result less of Navalny and “smart voting” than the protests Muscovites have made by going into the streets and the crude suppression of their actions by the authorities.  The KPRF has benefitted from this, but only for the time being as the protesters were not its people but otherwise.

             He says that in the wake of the elections, United Russia as a party “no longer exists in Moscow.” It may formally be there but it has no power to win voters over to it. Indeed, even its candidates fled from being identified with the party of power. As a result, there is “a political vacuum in Moscow,” waiting for the opposition to unite in order to fill it.

The picture in Russia outside of Moscow is very different. There were no real gubernatorial elections (politsovet.ru/63911-vse-kandidaty-ot-vlasti-stali-gubernatorami-v-pervom-ture.html). These were appointments. United Russia, he says, won in the regional parliaments, if only “a Pyrrhic victory,” because now it will be blamed for all the things that happen.

But given its poor showing last year, United Russia has done remarkably well in putting its people in place, Isayev says.  At the same time, he says, the Navalny factor simply doesn’t exist “in Russia.” It is a Moscow-only phenomenon.  But Russia does show “enormous protest” potential and so these elections should not be the occasion for celebration in the Kremlin.

Most other Moscow commentator were similarly Moscow-centric.  Leonid Moyzhes wrote in The New Times that “’smart voting’ worked only in Moscow, although he conceded that United Russia was now in opposition in Khabarovsk Kray, implicitly conceding that someone  else had won (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/184772?fcc).

And Andrey Pertsev of the Moscow Carnegie Center conceded that the opposition had won in Khabarovsk as it had in Moscow because of the existence of strong protest attitudes in the former as opposed to “serious protest mobilization” with “low turnout” in the capital (carnegie.ru/commentary/79804).

This Moscow approach ignores or at least downplays two political earthquakes in the regions. In Khabarovsk Kray, the LDPR won an overwhelming victory getting 56 percent of the vote to the KPRF’s 17 percent and United Russia’s 12.5 percent and took control over the entire political establishment there (politsovet.ru/63920-v-rossii-poyavilsya-region-polnostyu-podkontrolnyy-ldpr.html).

And in Buryatia, hundreds took to the streets to protest the results of the elections, to demand that new votes be held, and to seek the release of all those the police have arrested so far. Relative to the size of the Buryat capital, this is a far larger protest than any of the recent Moscow ones; and it is continuing (mbk-news.appspot.com/region/shaman-i-kprf-protiv-edinoj/, ehorussia.com/new/node/19262 and sibreal.org/a/30156190.html).

This in no way minimizes the achievement of Moscow residents and voters but rather is intended as a reminder that just as Moscow isn’t Russia, as s many are willing to say, Russia isn’t Moscow as all too many forget.