Part two. Retention of power. Here is how Grigory Golosov characterizes this period. The quote is long, but we need it for a refined analysis:
A little theory is needed here. By their very nature, all electoral authoritarian regimes in their pure form, which is available in Russia, are personal dictatorships. Their leaders do not come to power as a result of a military coup, nor by inheritance, and not by party line. They win elections, and often these first elections are relatively free. However, they cannot cede power in the same way, because the authoritarian degeneration of the regime eliminates this possibility, turning the electoral process into an empty fiction. At the same time, the leader has absolutely no institutional incentives to transfer power to someone else. He can always and almost always wants to rule forever, until, so to speak, “death do us part.”
It took Russia some time to verify this pattern on its own experience. The first bell sounded in 2011, when the “castling” suddenly ended, and in order to stop the public reaction and leave it without political consequences, it took unprecedented falsifications in the Duma elections. They upset the citizens, which led to mass demonstrations. However, the initial reaction of the authorities was not unequivocal. The crackdown on the agitated citizens did not really unfold until the following spring, but at first the regime tried to smooth things over in a manner common to electoral authoritarianism, that is, with partial and inconsistent liberalization.
After that, its other side, or rather, the true nature of personal dictatorship, took over. A significant role in this was played by the foreign policy events of 2014, after which Putin was finally convinced (I think without sufficient grounds) that he deserved the eternal gratitude of the Russian people and the same eternal hatred of the Western powers not only for him personally, but also for Russia in general. The well-known thought of Vyacheslav Volodin that Putin is Russia was expressed by an experienced courtier, but, I think, was born in a different head.
In particular, one of the responses to the difficulties that arose in 2011/early 2012 was a return to a mixed-member parallel system in almost the same form in which it was practiced in 1993–2003. This led to the expected results, confirming the conformity of this system with the primary task of authoritarian consolidation—the preservation of political monopoly. In the 2016 elections, despite the extremely favorable political context for the authorities, United Russia received only a little more than 50% of the votes on the party list, and only winning in the vast majority of single-mandate constituencies allowed the executive branch to consolidate the balance of parliamentary forces necessary for an unhindered implementation of the 2020 constitutional reform.1
Analyzing the legislation, we are forced to slightly shift the chronology of the transformation of Russian authoritarianism. As already mentioned, we marked the turning point from “the beginning of authoritarianism” to “the consolidation of authoritarianism” as dating from 2006. We also stated that the entire main consolidation base was laid already in 2008–2011. Another question is that on the surface this became noticeable only starting from the end of 2011 as a result of the “castling” itself, and the peak occurred in the period after the Crimean events of 2014. In fact, it seems that by 2008–2009, the contrast of the anti-democratic policy pursued in the country, compared to the 1990s, even if the 90s were “reckless” in the still hazy awareness of Russians, resulted in a decrease in the ratings of political leaders and the party in power. Political scientists define it as a crisis of the political system. And this is true, since the deeply unprofessional model under construction called “managed democracy,” which had not yet fully manifested itself in the state of the economy, significantly hampered development. There were two ways out of this crisis—democratic and authoritarian. And the authorities even hesitated for a moment—this can be seen from the legislation and judicial practice. But then, with confident steps, they moved towards the consolidation of political and economic authoritarianism.
The Medvedev period. Tandemocracy
Everyone who says that during Medvedev’s four years they managed to “at least breathe a little,” everyone who even for a minute assumed that Medvedev could stay for a second term, were and are wrong. In fact, everything that happened during the four years of Dmitriy Medvedev’s rule confirms that the regime had entered the stage of retaining power. The “castling” itself is the first and main proof of this. Medvedev merely occupied the position of temporary locum tenens (placeholder), continuing to prepare and equip a base for strengthening the autocracy. Two weeks before the 2008 presidential election, Vladimir Putin, at a press conference in the Kremlin, summed up his two presidential terms in his usual laconic form: “I am not ashamed in front of the citizens who voted for me twice, electing me to the post of President of the Russian Federation. All these eight years I worked hard like a slave in the galleys, from morning to night, and did it with full dedication of strength.” Citizens, including those who instantly came up with and spread the hashtag #крабнагалерах (#galley crab) on the Internet, did not have to say goodbye to Putin for a day.2 He continued to lead the country.
Putin took the first steps towards reformatting the system for new tasks immediately after the elections. On March 3, he asked Medvedev to start developing a new structure of executive power and, without waiting for the inauguration, to take over the preparation of meetings of the Presidium of the State Council, which is one of the president’s exclusive prerogatives. To do this, Putin had to sign on the same day a special unprecedented Decree No. 295 “On the status of the newly elected and not inaugurated President of the Russian Federation,”3 by which he ordered his administration “to ensure the activities of the newly elected and not inaugurated President of the Russian Federation,” and the Federal Security Service “to provide the newly elected president with state protection” and to provide him with “the allocation of an official residence.” Well, at least it became clear how before the beginning of May 2008 (before the inauguration) Dmitriy Medvedev’s position was called. He was a newly elected president, but not yet in office.
What significant events, testifying to the consolidation of authoritarianism, marked the time of Medvedev? There are several of them, but they are all illustrative.
External expansion and expansion of geopolitical claims. On August 8, 2008, the war in South Ossetia began. The President gave the order to bring in troops and conduct an operation to “force Georgia to peace.” The result of the five-day operation was the destruction of the main objects of the military infrastructure of the Georgian army and the ships of the Georgian combat fleet in the port of Poti. Two weeks later, on August 26, after corresponding requests from Tskhinvali and Sukhumi, the president announced that Moscow would recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
The rise of the army “from its knees.” Building up military potential. In 2008, a budget was adopted in which defense spending increased by 27%. A large organizational transformation of the army began, aimed at increasing the combat readiness of units and formations and the financial rehabilitation of the Ministry of Defense.
The final defeat of the “Club of Governors.” In September 2010, something that seemed impossible happened: Dmitriy Medvedev dismissed Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov with the wording that he had lost confidence. Thus, he solved one of the most difficult political tasks for the federal center—he eliminated the independent and ambitious heavyweight mayor from the capital and replaced him with a loyal official from Vladimir Putin’s team.
Consistent extra-constitutional expansion (spreading in all directions) of presidential powers to the detriment of the powers of other state bodies and local self-government bodies. The right to dissolve regional parliaments and even greater subordination of the executive authorities was added to the presidential powers that already existed. For example, the amendment to the Law “On the Government” (Article 32), which directly subordinated to the president all law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice, in fact, taking into account presidential decrees and sectoral legislation, turned into direct subordination to him, bypassing the government, of not just six, but of twenty executive bodies’ authorities (5 ministries, 12 federal services and 3 federal agencies).
Gradual narrowing of the powers of Parliament. First of all, the budget, even to the extent that the parliament itself ceased to create a draft state budget.4 Now it just delegates its representatives to a special commission. Its role had been reduced to the obedient approval of the main financial document of the state dictated from above. In addition, a law on parliamentary investigation was adopted, which completely neutralized this important tool of the system of checks and balances.
Amending the Constitution. Extension of presidential terms. Along with the consent to the “castling,” this event is the most important sign of the transition from the seizure to the retention of power. Amendments were proposed by Medvedev in his Address to the Federal Assembly on November 5, 2008 and consisted in increasing the terms of office of the President of Russia from 4 to 6 years, and of the State Duma from 4 to 5 years, as well as the creation of an institution of annual reports of the Government to the State Duma. On November 21, 2008, the State Duma approved the amendments in the third reading. The decision was supported by 392 deputies (from the United Russia, Just Russia and LDPR factions), 57 communist deputies voted against, and there were no abstentions. On December 16, 2008, the threshold of two thirds of the regional parliaments required for the amendments to enter into force was overcome, that is, approval occurred in more than 56 subjects. By December 18, 2008, the parliaments of all 83 regions of the country approved the amendments to the Constitution, and they entered into force upon official publication on December 31, 2008.
Here the Russian regime was not original. As is well known, in the early 1990s, constitutions were adopted in all CIS countries that established a certain term for holding the position of president (usually 5 or 4 years) and a limit on holding the presidential position by one person (for no more than two consecutive terms). In a number of states there was also a restriction on the age of a presidential candidate. However, very quickly initiatives arose in many countries, and then the practice of extending presidential powers, as a result of which the presidents who were in office received the right to run for a third or even subsequent terms, or these terms were simply significantly increased.
At the same time, similar constitutional and extra-constitutional mechanisms were used, namely:
recognition of the first term as “zero”, since it began before the adoption of the current constitution, and permission to run for a third term, or for a second (Leonid Kuchma—Ukraine,5 Islam Karimov—Uzbekistan, Emomali Rahmon—Tajikistan, Askar Akaev—Kyrgyzstan);
Elimination by referendum of an amendment to the Constitution on limitation of successive terms (Alexander Lukashenko—Belarus, Nursultan Nazarbayev—Kazakhstan, Ilham Aliyev—Azerbaijan);
personal lifetime presidency—as an exception—without amending the Constitution (Saparmurat Niyazov—Turkmenistan);
an increase in the presidential term by amending the Constitution with the automatic extension of the powers of the incumbent president (Nazarbayev—Kazakhstan, Karimov—Uzbekistan). When the Belarusian constitution of 1996 was adopted, the powers of Lukashenko, elected in 1994, were “nullified” and extended for two years in accordance with transitional provisions. In Russia, in 2008, the terms of the constitutional powers of the President and the State Duma were increased to 6 and 5 years, respectively;
removal of the upper limit on the age of a presidential candidate (Boris Yeltsin—Russia, Nazarbayev—Kazakhstan, Rahmon—Tajikistan).
Various combinations of these methods were also used (for example, Niyazov first delayed the application of the two-term presidential term, and then was declared president for life). As a result of this artificial extension of powers, some presidents received the right to stay in power for more than 20 years, counting from the time of the USSR (Nazarbayev and Karimov).In Russia, taking into account the possibility of a “tandem” with the chairman of the government, even without resetting to zero, the same president can theoretically be in power indefinitely. That is, there are constitutional transformations in order to retain power.6
One of the outwardly apparent paradoxes of Medvedev’s presidency is that, with all the hopes for “liberal signals,” it accounts for a very significant number of opposition demonstrations—for example, a mass protest against migrants on Manezhnaya Square in Moscow on December 11, 2010 or the beginning of the campaign “Strategies 31,” in which left-wing nationalist Eduard Limonov stood hand in hand with human rights activist Lyudmila Alekseeva. Some of these actions (for example, almost all demonstrations of the same “Strategy 31”) were extremely harshly dispersed in Moscow before the change of mayor. The first mass rallies demanding the resignation of Vladimir Putin were held in several cities in early 2010. In March, an open appeal by several oppositionists, human rights activists and cultural figures, “Putin must go!” was published on the Internet. According to the authors of the letter, as long as Vladimir Putin remained in power, “essential reforms” were impossible in Russia. In June 2010, Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov published a brochure “Putin. Results. 10 Years,” which focused on corruption, depopulation, growing social inequality, emerging stagnation in the economy and the difficult state of affairs in the North Caucasus. From the autumn of 2010 to the spring of 2011, several rallies were held in Moscow as part of the “Putin must go!” campaign launched by the non-systemic opposition. In March 2011, another report came out in mass circulation: “Putin. Corruption” which was actually an investigation into the enrichment of the Prime Minister’s inner circle.
Protest activity in Moscow reached one of its peaks in December 2011, after the publication of the results of voting in the elections to the State Duma of the 6th convocation. Numerous reports of electoral fraud in Moscow brought thousands to the streets. A whole series of rallies and marches was launched, which did not stop until the inauguration of Vladimir Putin in May 2012. Until the change of the mayor of Moscow, all these actions were suppressed very harshly. And it was during this period that the term “police state” came into use.7
In fact, there is no paradox. The transition from “capture” to “holding” occurred naturally and reasonably as socio-political tension in the country grew, the population gradually realized the high level of corruption in the course being pursued, and the desire to change it became more and more clearly formed. However, the more corrupt the regime, the stronger its defensive instincts. Power combined with property has a much higher incentive to hold both positions at all costs.
As a response to the crisis of legitimacy, in December 2012, Dmitriy Medvedev announced a reform of the political system. Under the external cover of some liberalization of the party system, this reform assumed a tightening of the centralized vertical of power, further curtailment of federalism and the introduction of additional filters of political competition, cutting off uncoordinated strong players from the electoral process.
In parallel, the transformation of the electoral legislation continued, in preparation for the next parliamentary and presidential elections.
A significant change in 2009 was the amendments to the Laws “On Basic Guarantees…” and “On Elections of Deputies…”. The institution of the electoral pledge was excluded, which had made it possible to avoid the time-consuming and costly procedure of collecting signatures in support of the nomination of a list of candidates.8
The legislator also made adjustments to the provisions on the so-called “floating threshold.” Previously, electoral associations that had received 7% or more of the votes were allowed to distribute seats. At the same time, mandates had to be distributed between at least two lists of candidates who received at least 60% of the votes of the total number of voters who took part in the voting, otherwise parties with less than 7% of the votes were also allowed to be distributed. These provisions generally remained unchanged, but were supplemented by a rule on granting one or two mandates to the lists of candidates who received from 5 to 6% or from 6 to 7% of the vote, respectively. Such electoral associations received mandates before they began to be distributed among the lists that had passed the threshold.9
It seems to be a good amendment, which made it possible to introduce at least a few new bright colors into the gloomy palette of the political landscape of the State Duma, discolored by an excessively high threshold. But at the same time, representatives of associations that received less than 5% of the votes did not appear in the deputy corps. The threshold continued to fulfill its main function of preventing parties with less voter support from entering parliament. And although one or two mandates with a total number of deputy corps of 450 people would hardly play any significant role in decision-making, several million voters can stand behind the figure of 5% of the vote, and their representation in the legislative body is important in any case.
A number of additional restrictions were placed on the conduct of election campaigning. Starting in 2006, airtime provided to registered candidates and electoral associations was prohibited from being used for campaigning against other candidates or electoral associations.10 That is, in order to avoid any criticism of the authorities during the election campaign, a kind of artificial political sterility was created, which guarantees the impossibility of a normal political discussion with a discussion of candidates’ programs. Everyone could speak only about himself, without questioning the positions and assertions of his competitors.
A serious limitation of the principle of equal opportunities for electoral participants during election campaigning was the introduction in 2009 of another norm into the legislation: free airtime and free print space were no longer provided to political parties whose federal list of candidates received less than 3% of votes in previous elections. Such political parties could receive a share of airtime or print space for election campaigning only on a paid basis,11 which put them in deliberately unequal conditions compared to other political parties.
By 2009, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) communicated the complaint of the Republican Party of Russia, and it became clear that consideration of the issue of clearly exceeded limits of state interference in the activities of political parties could not be avoided. Therefore, the parliament tried a priori to correct the situation—a gradual reduction in the requirements for the minimum membership in political parties began. From January 1, 2010 to January 1, 2012, the minimum number was reduced to 45,000 people (minimum 450 in more than half of the regional branches, minimum 200 in all others), and from January 1, 2012 to 40,000 people (respectively, at least 400 persons in half the regional branches and 150 people in all the rest).12 All these measures were illogical and, as already mentioned, were a chaotic measure in the run-up to the consideration of the case of the Republican Party in the ECtHR. On April 12, 2011, the decision was delivered (final full text published in September 2011), and, as expected, it placed on Russia positive obligations of a general nature to fundamentally change the legislation on parties.
Considering the liquidation of the Republican Party of Russia due to failure to comply with the minimum size and regional representativeness requirements, the European Court noted that requirements for the minimum number of members of parties were established in a number of states, but Russian requirements were the highest in Europe. The national legislation establishing these requirements had changed several times over the past few years, which, based on international practice, could be perceived as an attempt to manipulate the electoral legislation in favor of the ruling party. According to the ECtHR, a measure such as the liquidation of a party can be applied to political parties that use illegal or undemocratic methods, incite violence or pursue policies aimed at destroying democracy. The applicant, an all-Russian political party (Republican), which had never defended regional or separatist interests, one of the goals of which was to ensure the unity of the country and the peaceful coexistence of its multinational population, and which had never been accused of trying to undermine the territorial integrity of Russia, was liquidated only on formal grounds of non-compliance with the minimum size and regional representativeness requirements. The European Court considered that the liquidation of the party was disproportionate to the legitimate aims indicated by the representatives of the authorities. There had therefore been a violation of Article 11 of the Convention.13 That is, the legislation on political parties in Russia was recognized as violating human rights.
As already mentioned, as a result, the decision of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation on the liquidation of the Republican Party was canceled, and the registration of the party was restored. The decision of the ECtHR coincided with the beginning of the crisis of legitimacy, so the answer to this decision was the reform of the political system. Its contours were announced in December 2012, but under the guise of implementing the decision of the ECtHR, the reform of party legislation was quite elegantly built into the list of measures aimed at strengthening the authoritarian system.
Between the regular elections of the State Duma and the President, the time was exactly three months. Considering the ratings of the ruling party tending down, in May 2011, at the United Russia party conference in Volgograd, Vladimir Putin voiced the idea of creating the so-called All-Russian Popular Front, a kind of unofficial bloc not provided for by law of various public organizations that were allowed to hold primaries instead of the party. Director of the Center for Humanitarian Research and Counseling “Current Moment” political scientist Sergey Komaritsyn immediately renamed the newly minted formation a united front of bureaucracy, since bureaucracy can only give rise to a bureaucratic structure.14 That is, the Front of the bureaucracy against the people. Vitaly Tretyakov called it an “oxymoron”—a term from ancient stylistics, denoting a deliberate combination of conflicting concepts such as “merry sadness.”15 Naturally, the eternal comrades-in-arms of any ruling party were the first to announce their desire to join the new structure: Ekaterina Lakhova, chairman of the Women’s Union of Russia, Valery Ryazansky, head of the Union of Pensioners, and Valentina Ivanova, chairman of the All-Russian Pedagogical Assembly. Then very respectable organizations such as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), Delovaya Rossiya and others joined in. And then it started… In full accordance with the initiator’s wish for a “bright political palette of participants,” very exotic entities began to join the front, such as the “Association of Cossacks of non-traditional places of residence,” the “Beaten-up Roads of Pskov” movement, and the community of independent volunteer initiatives “Pomogay-ka!”
On September 24, 2011, at Luzhniki Stadium, on the second day of the United Russia congress, the decision was announced: Putin was going to run for a third presidential term, and the non-partisan Dmitriy Medvedev would head the party list in the State Duma elections.
It is this “castling” that political scientists consider the central event of the election campaign to the Duma, which ended with a vote on December 4, and which predetermined all subsequent developments. And these events consisted of a sharp mobilization of the protest electorate, a surge of civic activity and mass protests against the election results. Some people suddenly realized that what was next was a political dead end, and they had a desire to have their say in this situation. There was an understanding that the opposition was not ideal, but it should be voted for as opposed to the ruling party. The castling politically mobilized the upper middle class and the middle class to vote “no.”
“Before the events of September 24, it was assumed that the campaign would be of a regional nature, and the government was not ready for a sharply negative reaction from a large part of society to castling. The castling determined the entire campaign, evoking different emotions in the usually apolitical voter: fatigue, delight, irritation, joy… But the main thing is that there was a sharp increase in power fatigue among an entire segment of society,” says Mikhail Vinogradov, director of the Petersburg Politics Foundation. It was the castling that became an inexplicable milestone event, a line beyond which, for unclear reasons, the mechanisms of “managed democracy” ceased to work, Gleb Pavlovsky testifies.16
In addition, in February 2011, on the air of the Finam FM radio station, the creator of the anti-corruption project Rospil, Aleksey Navalny, called the United Russia party a “party of crooks and thieves,” citing the presence in the party of major officials and businessmen involved in corruption and criminal cases. The “Party of Crooks and Thieves” meme became widespread on the Internet, especially during the election campaign (moreover, it still works now, ten years later). That is, the question of the honesty of the parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, which eventually turned into mass protests of “angry citizens,” reached the public agenda long before voting day, because then, due to the tightening of electoral and party legislation in the country, by the beginning of the year only seven parties were registered, and party reform had not yet taken place. For the first time, the Duma was elected not for four, but for five years. Cooling public support for the regime, coupled with AlekseyNavalny’s “vote for any other party” campaign, nearly led to United Russia losing a simple majority in the Duma.
The main message of the opposition was a signal to come to the polls and vote, which corresponded to the mood of the voters, annoyed by the castling on September 24th. There was also a call to come to the elections and ensure observer oversight over them, which would convince voters that the elections were not entirely valid. The Just Russia party turned out to be the beneficiary of this strategy, and Yabloko also received many additional votes, since of the proposed parties they caused the least rejection among the middle class, although the middle class also voted for the Communist Party. For the most part, the voters didn’t care who exactly would get into the Duma and how many votes which party would have, the main thing was that as a result of such a strategy, people realized that the elections were rigged.
Indeed, the 2011 elections were accompanied by numerous scandals, administrative pressure and fraud. At that time, the level of fraud was recorded as “unprecedented.” The falsifications were expressed in the overestimation of the turnout, the stuffing of ballots, the rewriting of protocols, and in administrative coercion. A special term appeared—electoral sultanates—territories that give extremely high results in terms of turnout and percentage of votes cast for the ruling party and candidates from power. Of the data processed by electoral statisticians, almost half of the votes for the ruling party turned out to be anomalous: out of a total of 32.3 million votes for United Russia, only 17.1 million turned out to be “normal,” and 15.2 million were “abnormal” (anomalous voting—these are votes for the winner, which, from the point of view of statistical regularities, should not exist and the appearance of which can only be explained by stuffing and adding to vote totals).17
But even with all the falsifications, in the 2011 elections, United Russia, compared to the 2007 elections, lost about 13 million votes. In a third of the regions, the party won less than 40% of the vote. Yabloko won just over 3% of the vote and received state funding, while A Just Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation increased their representation in the Duma, gaining 13.2% and 19.2% of the vote, respectively.
It was at the same time that a mass movement of voters for public observation of the elections was formed and strengthened to oppose falsifications. On December 24, 2011, in his video address to the protesters on Sakharov Avenue, journalist Leonid Parfenov expressed the idea of uniting voters to ensure fair presidential elections. This statement provoked the emergence of a number of public organizations that were engaged in the formation and training of observers. Less than a month later, Leonid Parfenov, together with 14 other famous people (including writer Boris Akunin, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, writer Dmitriy Bykov, and doctor Elizaveta Glinka), decided to establish the “League of Voters.” A week later, Aleksey Navalny’s Rosvybory project appeared, on the website of which 16,000 volunteers registered, most of whom became observers in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Citizen Observer, the Golos association (later a Movement, recognized as a foreign agent), the Grakon project (civil control) and others also trained their observers.
In the 2012 presidential election, five candidates were nominated by political parties. Also, at least 12 more people informed the CEC about their intention to nominate their candidacy (later, only 10 of them submitted the documents necessary to acquire the status of a nominated candidate). In the event, some of the nominated candidates for one reason or another were denied registration. As a result, five candidates were officially registered for participation in the elections: four representatives from parliamentary parties and one self-nominee (Mikhail Prokhorov). The Yabloko party and its candidate, Grigory Yavlinsky, were denied registration due to the “high percentage of defects” in the collected signatures.
It was then, in late 2011 and early 2012, that Vladimir Putin faced mass protests for the first time in any of his election campaigns. Preparations for the elections took place to the accompaniment of large-scale rallies, provoked by the dishonest results, in the opinion of their participants, of the Duma campaign. The first major rally took place on December 10, 2011 on Bolotnaya Square under the slogan “For Fair Elections.” Vladimir Putin responded to the public demand in a peculiar way, calling his opponents “bandarlogs” [“monkey people,” the name of the monkeys in Kipling’s A Jungle Book], and compared the symbol of the protesters—a white ribbon—with “contraceptives.” In response, on December 24, 2011, new actions took place on Sakharov Avenue and on February 4 on Bolotnaya Square. They became more and more crowded and more and more anti-Putin. From a certain moment, the slogan “For fair elections” was replaced by the slogan “Not a single vote for Putin.”
The authorities responded with a series of rallies across the country. Two of these were also held in Moscow—on Poklonnaya Hill and in Luzhniki. They were even more numerous than the opposition, however, observers claimed that the participants in these events were brought from all over the country and not all of them were volunteers. This is how the terms for public events as either “rallies (mitingi)” or “putingi” appeared among the people.
The March 2012 elections were the first campaign in which the question of credibility of the results was almost more important than the election campaign itself. On December 5, 2011, Vladimir Putin said that the attacks on the Duma elections are “of a secondary nature,” while the “main goal” is the presidential election. And “in order to cut the ground from under the feet of those who want to delegitimize power,” the prime minister proposed his own way to make the elections transparent—to put webcams at all polling stations (of which there are about 95,000 in Russia) to broadcast the election process. The project (its cost for the budget was estimated at 13 billion rubles, and for the executing company Rostelecom, at 25 billion rubles) had to be implemented from scratch: in the previous Duma elections, only 742 webcams worked, and a third of the polling stations were completely without Internet connection.
The Ministry of Communications and the CEC formally coped with the task. The video monitoring system covered 91,400 election commissions. Each polling station had two cameras, one of which covered the general territory, and the second broadcast what was happening near the ballot boxes. Thus, a total of 182,800 cameras were installed. Anyone could track the process by registering on the Web Elections 2012 website. The total length of the video recorded then exceeded 260 million minutes, which would be enough to watch for more than 500 years. True, it was possible to obtain a video recording only upon a special application sent to the election commission. There were no special sanctions for violating the procedure for working with webcams, and a court, in the case of cases of election violations, could, at its discretion, accept or not accept recordings as evidence. After the elections, the webcams were planned to be used for other purposes, for example, during the Unified State Examination.18
In addition, 690,000 observers—Russian and international, from candidates and from non-governmental organizations—observed the course of the elections and the counting of votes.
According to official data from the Central Election Commission, Putin won 63.6% of the vote in the first round. But the “League of Voters” had its own view on the results of the presidential elections. It was voiced by political scientist Dmitriy Oreshkin at a press conference at ITAR-TASS: “Vladimir Putin gets 53%, not 63.6%, that is, a 10% difference.” Recognizing Putin’s victory in the first round, the league nonetheless declared non-recognition of the elections and issued a memorandum: “The elections on March 4 were not equal, fair and honest.” Against the background of widespread violations, the league considered it impossible to recognize the results of the presidential election in Russia: voting by special lists of people working in enterprises that operated around the clock and voting by absentee ballots aroused suspicion. The violations referred to by the League were recorded by observers who submitted 4,500 reports from polling stations. The Human Rights Council of Russia also adopted a statement in which it indicated that it “does not consider the electoral event held in Russia on March 4, 2012 to be the election of the President of the Russian Federation and refuses to recognize its results as legitimate.”19
As a result of the presidential elections, the headquarters of four candidates went to court over election violations. It is curious that Vladimir Putin’s observers also turned to the prosecutor’s office regarding the facts of the “stuffing” recorded by webcams. According to a representative of the headquarters of Mikhail Prokhorov, 4,783 complaints were received by the headquarters, and 2,280 people declared their readiness to take part in the appeal. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation received about 3,500 complaints, and the regional branches of the party filed more than 30 lawsuits in Moscow, Rostov, Nizhny Novgorod, Tver and Bryansk regions. Most of the lawsuits were based on discrepancies between the copies of the protocols and the official data.20 However, the Supreme Court refused to consider citizens’ applications for the cancellation of the results of the presidential elections in the Russian Federation. Among others, the collective complaint of the members of the public association “Russia will be legal” was rejected, which had asked to ban the inauguration of Vladimir Putin until the process was completed.21
On May 6, 2012, the “March of Millions” took place in Moscow. Then, on the eve of the inauguration of newly elected President Vladimir Putin, the marchers demanded fair elections. The opposition rally ended with clashes between demonstrators and police. Numerous detentions of people followed and the initiation of the so-called “Bolotnoy” criminal case, in which almost thirty people ended up in the defendants’ dock.22
Thus, the Duma and presidential elections of 2011–2012 convincingly showed that the key to the consolidation of an authoritarian regime is the creation of institutional conditions that ensure a political monopoly, regardless of the political context and voters’ preferences. And the falsifications undertaken to prevent this outcome became the source of a large-scale political crisis that prompted the authorities to revise a number of previously adopted institutional decisions. In particular, one of the responses to the difficulties that arose in 2011—early 2012 was a return to a mixed-member parallel system in almost the same form in which it was practiced in 1993–2003. This led to the expected results, confirming the conformity of this system with the primary task of authoritarian consolidation—the preservation of political monopoly. Almost every step in the evolution of the Russian authoritarian political regime had become, if not an unequivocal “escape from freedom,” then at least a movement away from it.
According to some media reports, on December 10, 2011, protests took place in 99 Russian cities. Data on the scale of online protest activity in 42 cities where the actions took place suggest that in general, at least (the lower limit) 200 thousand people came out to rallies against election fraud on December 10, and a third of this number was provided by the Moscow rally on Bolotnaya Square. The protest obviously swept the whole country, and this could not but disturb the authorities. They needed to strengthen their positions.
On December 22, 2011, in his last presidential address to the Federal Assembly, announced on the eve of a new opposition rally, Dmitriy Medvedev launched a political reform.23 The President ignored the demands of the protesters regarding the cancellation of the results of the December 4 elections, but announced his intention to liberalize the political system. The announced reform included proposals for a sharp liberalization of party legislation (reducing the minimum number of members for party registration, liberalizing the access of parties and candidates to parliamentary and presidential elections, abolishing and reducing the number of voter signatures required), changing the procedure for forming the lower house of parliament, returning direct elections of governors and changing the procedure for the formation of the Federation Council.
The first two points of this program looked like a direct response to the requirements of Bolotnaya Square and were formulated in the most concrete way. The relevant amendments to the laws were soon sent to the Duma and finally adopted in April-May 2012.
First of all, amendments were made to the Law “On Political Parties.” Now the state had gone for a sharp, 80-fold reduction in the requirements for the minimum membership of parties: from 40 thousand people to 500, with regional branches in only half of the subjects of the Federation.24 The logical result of the reform was a very rapid multiple increase in the number of registered political parties in 2012–2013: from 7 to 58,25 and the same number were in the process of registration within a year after the adoption of the law.26 Thus, the warnings about the futility of artificial construction of the party system from above were confirmed and were eventually accepted.27 Everything returned to normal, only with a ten-year delay.
Since 2014, the growth in the number of newly registered parties has noticeably slowed down and was reduced to zero by the middle of the second half of the 2010s, and since 2019 the number of parties has begun to decline rapidly due to the fact that, according to the law, a party is subject to liquidation if for seven years in a row it does not participate in elections. Under the letter of the law, participation in elections means participation in the elections of the President of Russia, and/or elections to the State Duma, and/or elections of heads of at least 10% of the number of constituent entities of the Russian Federation, and/or parliamentary elections of at least 20% of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (according to party lists), and/or elections to local governments in most municipalities (according to party lists). But all this would be later, and by 2018, 67 political organizations were registered in Russia, ready to take part in election campaigns. In the Duma they joked that “if we reach out to the 51 political parties allowed to participate in the elections, then the ballot for the KOIB (optical scan voting system for processing ballots.—Note by E. N. Poroshin) may be 1.70 meters long.” At least this is how the chairman of the Committee on Constitutional Legislation and State Building of the State Duma V.N. Pligin characterized it.
Another significant innovation of the year was the abolition of the collection of signatures by political parties when nominating candidates for elections at all levels (except for the elections of the President of the Russian Federation).28 Previously, such benefits were granted only to parties admitted to the distribution of mandates in the last elections to the State Duma or having their representatives in one third of the legislative assemblies of the constituent entities of the Federation.
The second stage of the reform began after Vladimir Putin was elected president for a third term. The main events of this stage can be considered the legislative formalization of the final version of the procedure for gubernatorial elections, the strengthening of control over the activities of regional administrations by the presidential administration, and the adoption of a new mechanism for the formation of the Federation Council.
First of all, the discussion was about the return of the elections of heads of subjects of the Federation. Although the issue of a return to direct gubernatorial elections was not mentioned among the demands of the Bolotnaya rally, the abolition of gubernatorial elections in 2005 remained the most negatively perceived element of Putin’s political reforms in the 2000s. Fifty-five to 65% of the population continued to favor a return to electivity throughout this time. The election of governors was returned. The relevant law was adopted in May 2012.29
But not everything is as simple as it seems. On April 5, 2012, at a meeting with a number of deputies, Dmitriy Medvedev announced the idea of introducing a “municipal filter,” which significantly changed the concept of the law on the election of governors. In the end, electivity was limited to two filters—presidential and municipal. The presidential filter, spelled out rather vaguely in the law, was more of a safety net than a systemic mechanism, and only secured the president’s participation in the process of approving candidates for governor. But the municipal filter, which assumes that a candidate for governor must enlist the support of 5 to 10% of municipal deputies, was designed to play a key role in ensuring the actual “closedness” of the elections. Due to the weakness of the municipal level of power and its economic dependence on the regional administration, the municipal deputy corps is completely controlled and managed. Thus, it is the current head of the regional administration who receives the keys to admit candidates to the gubernatorial elections. At the same time, in the event of a split in the regional elite, and if the federal center is interested in doing so, this mechanism makes it possible to create threats for the incumbent governor by obtaining the registration of his rival. As a result, the governor turned out to be responsible for maintaining a high level of integration of the regional elite, blocking significant threats to his victory and ensuring the necessary results of both gubernatorial and other elections. That is, nuances were built into the outwardly democratic reform that neutralized almost all of its democratic potential. The devil is always in the details. Moreover, a year later, the election of governors was supplemented with a clause on the possibility, by decision of the subject of the Federation itself, to return to the previously existing order—the appointment of governors by the legislative assembly of the region on the proposal of the President of Russia.30
Council of the Federation. A similar situation happened with the Federation Council. In December 2012, the procedure for its formation was “improved.” We have already said that the constitutional formula on the formation of the Federation Council was flawed from the very beginning—it only says that it is “formed,” and the procedure for “formation” is determined by law. As a result, new rules introduced in 2012 marked the fourth attempt to address this issue in 20 years. Each of them reflected the tendencies of state building at the corresponding stage. Only the first, transitional composition of the upper house was formed by direct elections. Then, since 1996, the elected head of the executive branch and the speaker of the regional parliament became ex officio members of the Federation Council, on the condition that the governors were elected. This was the result of the compromise reached between the President and Parliament. The reform of the early 2000s assumed that each of the branches of power would delegate its representative to the Federation Council (so the governors were removed from making federal decisions), which led to a sharp devaluation of the chamber’s political influence. After the cancellation of the gubernatorial elections, the situation became completely absurd: the governor appointed by the president appointed his representative to the Federation Council, which has enormous constitutional powers and is designed to serve as a counterbalance to both the lower house and the executive branch, in particular, to guarantee the independence of the courts and the prosecutor’s office.
The crisis of legitimacy, which manifested itself in the events of 2011–2012, once again put the central question on the agenda: who is the subject of the political will of the region—the population directly or the authorities? The proposed new decision reflected the general tendencies of authoritarian correction—now the governors had to go to the polls together with three candidates for members of the Federation Council. That is, the inhabitants of the region in the process of voting for a candidate for governor were, as it were, endowed with the right to choose candidates for senators, but at the same time they did not elect them.31 Moreover, the final choice of two of the three candidates remained with the governor after his election. This formula, admirable in its manipulativeness, manifested a desire to increase the legitimacy of the authorities, but at the same time to prevent a real redistribution of powers and an increase in the real competitiveness of electoral procedures.
The second most important innovation was the reduction to a minimum of the grounds on which a member of the upper house could be recalled. Against the backdrop of the absence of an imperative mandate, such an amendment actually deprived both the population and the regional authorities of formal mechanisms for controlling their representative in the upper house.
But even this authoritarian power was not enough to control the Federation Council. In 2014, the Constitution was amended to add to the representatives of the subjects 10% of members to be directly appointed to the chamber by the President.32
Finally, the third stage of the reform took place in the second half of 2013 to early 2014 and consisted in returning from a proportional to a mixed system of elections to the Duma and regional legislative assemblies, which reduces the role of parties in elections, and revision of the most important part of the liberalization innovations of the first stage of the reform—free access of parties and candidates to elections. The corresponding bill, which provides for the election of half of the deputies in single-mandate districts, was introduced by Vladimir Putin in March 2013.
To be fair, the claim of a full return to pre-2005 regulation is not entirely true. Taking into account the entire amount of changes that had accumulated in the Russian electoral legislation since the previous use of the mixed-member system, the return to it did not fundamentally change the situation by expanding political competition in elections: the ban on electoral blocs, and the abolition of the electoral pledge,and the abolition of voting “against all” and of the threshold for voter turnout remained. All other restrictions on passive suffrage remained in effect. Moreover, the new electoral law reintroduced provisions on the collection of signatures for candidates from parties that did not receive 3% of the vote in the previous Duma elections.
As is known from the theory and practice of electoral systems, the majoritarian system increases the representation of the leading party and reduces the representation of smaller parties. Although theoretically, given the high barriers to entry for political parties, the single-seat system expands the opportunities for independent candidates or opposition representatives to enter parliament. However, the key parameter here is the threshold of access to elections for “single-members.” This parameter of the reform became known only at the last stage of its discussion and turned out to be an order of magnitude higher than the threshold for parties: in order to participate in the elections, a candidate must collect 3% of the signatures of the residents of the district in which he intends to run, if he does not belong to a party already represented in the legislative body. And this is the most powerful prohibitive threshold for independent and opposition candidates. At the same time, this procedure strengthens the positions of parties that have already entered the legislature previously (their representatives, who are exempted from collecting signatures, find themselves in a privileged position), and also increases the political weight of regional elites and regional administrations, which are able to influence candidates’ access to elections by single-member constituencies, and to send their deputies to the lower house of parliament.
So, it seems that everything has been built and tested in practice—electoral authoritarianism, formalized in the norms of the electoral law, has been tested under extreme conditions of a crisis of legitimacy and has proved its effectiveness. After that, almost all the mechanisms were “twisted” and brought to a good level of combat readiness. If something else remains to be corrected in the electoral legislation, because there is no limit to perfection, it is only precious little.
Indeed, outside the framework of the reform of the political system in the period 2012–2019, few changes were made regarding the organization and conduct of elections. The government took up other issues, the solution of which, in its opinion, should have contributed to the stability of its political and economic positions. Two groups of these questions were addressed to two different categories of the population—television consumers and dissenters. Foreign policy expansion, expansion of territories, military power and valiant actions of the authorities in the ring of hostile powers and the idealization of the past (the Great Patriotic War and the achievements of the USSR) were all intended for the first ones. The fate of the dissenters was less enviable. They were subjected to “a tightening of the screws”—the restriction of constitutional rights and freedoms. Freedom of speech, the right to receive and disseminate information, freedom of expression, increased responsibility for holding public events, limiting international exchange, and assigning special statuses that complicate their work. All this, one way or another, eventually affected their electoral opportunities. A wide drag-net of so-called cannibalistic laws were preemptively aimed into the future, in order to play their part, if necessary, in restricting the electoral and other rights of citizens.
You can, of course, try to define the ongoing processes differently and say that the reserves of the electoral legislation for the purpose of retaining power have run out. Manipulations and electoral techniques alone could not save those in power. Tougher measures were needed to further limit political competition and fight the opposition.
Nevertheless, some amendments to the electoral legislation took place during this period as well. At the beginning of the work of the Duma of the sixth convocation, elected in December 2011, the adopted laws were still affected by the new tactics of the Presidential Administration in relation to the elections that were adopted in early 2012: an attempt to abandon direct falsifications on voting day and during the vote count. The rather close interaction of the head of the Human Rights Council (2004–2010) Ella Pamfilova, with the leaders of the ideological bloc of the Presidential Administration probably influenced the adoption of small improvements in the electoral legislation.
For example, the provision on preliminary submission of a list of observers was excluded from the law on presidential elections, the right of observers to conduct video recording was more clearly defined (from the place established by the chairman of the precinct commission), and criminal liability was introduced for illegal issuance or receipt of a ballot (Laws No. 103-FZ and 104-FZ). Observers were given the right to film. True, at the same time, the law did not say anything about such a right for members of commissions with a decisive and advisory vote and about the right to videotape in higher commissions.33And liberalization practically ended there.
Adopted in 2012 under the pressure of a crisis of legitimacy and the requirements of international standards, the norms regarding the liberalization of the activities of political parties were compensated by tough anti-liberal amendments. The Law “On Basic Guarantees…” was amended to deprive of the passive electoral right persons who had ever been sentenced to imprisonment for grave and especially grave crimes, regardless of the statute of limitations. Thus, retroactively, an additional (and lifelong) punishment was introduced for people who had long ago redeemed their guilt, including those who had a cancelled criminal record. This legislative innovation so clearly contradicted the Constitution of Russia that on October 10, 2013 it was cancelled by the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation, which considered the life restriction inconsistent with the Constitution and suggested that the legislator, firstly, limit the term for depriving a citizen of the passive electoral right, and secondly, to differentiate this term depending on the gravity of the crime.34 However, a few months later, the same norm, only in a somewhat relaxed form, was re-adopted. According to Federal Law No. 19-FZ of February 21, 2014, persons sentenced to imprisonment for committing grave and especially grave crimes were deprived of their passive suffrage for 10 and 15 years from the day the conviction was expunged or cancelled, respectively. That is, a certain life restriction was nevertheless established: now the candidate is required to indicate in the documents on his nomination information regarding any conviction, even expunged or cancelled.35 Meanwhile, in many cases it was about sentences under the so-called “economic” articles, which in Russian practice are often used as a way to fight for the redistribution of property.
In 2012, instead of two single voting days, in March and October, the legislator left only one, in September. It was convenient for the authorities. First, a single voting day was easier and cheaper for the authorities to centrally control and, conversely, more difficult for observers. Secondly, most of the election campaign now began to take place during the summer holidays and the garden season, which made it very difficult for non-system candidates to campaign. Thirdly, with the abolition of the turnout threshold, the high turnout of the active electorate turned out to be unprofitable, and in this regard, the single early September voting day fully corresponded to these aspirations: the interest of voters in the elections was naturally reduced. A.V. Kynev directly calls this amendment “a bet on low turnout. And indeed, from that time low turnout elections begin, when one can count on the arrival of an administratively dependent and conformist-minded electorate to the polling stations.”36
In addition, at the same time, the term of office of precinct election commissions, which had previously been formed once for a specific campaign, was extended to 5 years. Thus, the composition of the commissions became more stably controlled.37
In 2013, another set of restrictions on the passive electoral right of entrepreneurs was introduced de facto. In accordance with Federal Law No. 102-FZ dated May 7, 2013, during elections to federal government bodies, government bodies of constituent entities of the Federation, elections of heads of municipal districts and heads of urban districts, by the time of their registration, candidates had to close accounts (or deposits) in foreign banks located outside of Russia, stop storing cash and valuables there, and stop using foreign financial instruments. That is, contrary to elementary logic, it was necessary to get rid of these assets not after the election (although even this cuts off a large part of entrepreneurs, because it is difficult to imagine how you can run a big business without having accounts abroad), but before the elections, without having any guarantee to win them. In state propaganda, these restrictions were called the “nationalization” of the property of the elite, but in reality it was an attempt to put up a barrier for independent people with their own resources, able to succeed without relying on administrative resources and without the consent of officials.38
Six months before the 2016 Duma elections, a rule was introduced into the legislation that a party or candidate appointing observers must, in advance, three days before voting day (subsequently before the first voting day), provide their list to the territorial election commission(TEC) indicating who by name and in what area will be the observer.39 This rule was established simultaneously with the prohibition to remove observers from the polling station except by a court decision—apparently, to compensate for the concessions to observers, since in the previous elections the removals were massive and widespread. In fact, the requirement to provide lists prevented the “carousel of observers,” when an observer removed from the polling station changed places with a remote observer from another polling station. The amendment to the Law “On Basic Guarantees…” was formulated in such a way that the requirement to provide lists should have been established in a special law on specific elections. It was introduced into the Law “On the Elections of Deputies…”, it was also introduced into the regional laws, but not into the Law “On the Elections of the President of the Russian Federation.” Therefore, the old order of appointment remained in the presidential elections, when an observer can come with an assignment right on the voting day or quickly change the polling station if there is another assignment.
But these are all “little things.” Here is how Alexander Kynev assesses that time: “The period of the final consolidation of the regime at the turn of the 2010–2020s does not look like a continuation and development of old trends, but, on the contrary, like a change in the vector—manipulative mechanisms play an ever smaller independent role and require more and more support by means of instruments of violence. As a result, the regime is forced to forfeit the advantages that electoral authoritarianism can gain from its ability to hedge risks under conditions of “managed competition” and a relatively plausible imitation of democratic procedures. ‘Information authoritarianism’ is evolving towards conventional dictatorship.”40 And dictatorship is violence, restriction of the right to information and control.
Moreover, the internal political tension was complicated by the internal economic situation. In the second half of 2012, a sharp slowdown in economic growth began in the country, and from mid-2013, statistics had already recorded signs of economic stagnation. It is important to note that a sharp slowdown in growth in 2012–2013 took place against the backdrop of persisting ultra-high (near absolute highs) oil prices. This circumstance demonstrated that high oil prices were no longer sufficient to sustain economic growth. This changed the perceptions of society, of the ruling group, and of the political and business elites about the prospects for the Russian economy and the resources available to maintain social stability. The situation worsened many times over after the annexation of Crimea and the application of international economic sanctions against Russia, so there were more and more reasons for defense in order to retain power, and fewer and fewer methods of manipulating the situation.
And, accordingly, there were more and more repressive laws and laws with vague wording, which in one situation or another could be arbitrarily interpreted and used against the opposition and freedom of speech. Later, this is exactly what happened. It is unlikely that anyone in 2012 could have imagined that the Law on NGOs-foreign agents would magically turn into media-foreign agents and foreign agent-individuals, that on the basis of legislation on combating terrorism and extremism, organizations involved in the fight against corruption would be recognized as extremist, that members of these organizations and those who sympathize with them would be limited in their voting rights, and that children playing computer games would receive real prison terms for terrorism.
The Dumas of the 6th and 7th convocations competed fiercely in creating “cannibalistic” laws, and yet the 6th Duma succeeded more, although the 7th Duma became, perhaps, more bloodthirsty in essence. Especially since 2020. The 6th Duma toughened penalties for participation in public events three times: the Law on increasing fines for rallies and the Law on expanding liability for public events with the introduction of the so-called “Dadin” article 212.1 in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.41 It was this Duma that became the creator of the laws on NGO-foreign agents and on undesirable organizations.42It also authored a whole block of laws on the restriction of media rights, freedom of speech and control over information on the Internet: the Law on bloggers with an audience of more than 3 thousand equated them to media; the Law on the Restriction of Foreign Participation in the Media; the famous “Yarovaya package” (the unofficial name of a package of amendments to legislation, some of which oblige to store correspondence, phone calls and outgoing traffic of all Russian users, and also provide this data at the request of the special services); the Law on blocking extremist websites; the Gay Propaganda Prohibition Act; the Child Protection Against Pornography Act.43And still more, on her conscience is the Law on “scoundrels” (Law of Dima Yakovlev); the Law on the Protection of the Feelings of Believers; the law on the expansion of the elements of treason and the Law on the introduction into the Criminal Code of the act of calling for violation of territorial integrity.44 On the conscience of the 7th Duma up until the end of 2019: the Law on foreign agent media; the Law on insulting the authorities; the Fake law; The Law on the Sovereign Internet and the Law on Individuals Performing the Functions of Foreign Agents-Media.45 And in 2020, a completely different story begins…
In the 2016 elections, despite the extremely favorable legal context for the authorities, United Russia received only a little more than 50% of the votes on the party list, and only winning in the vast majority of single-member constituencies, as intended by the reform, allowed the executive branch to fix the balance of parliamentary forces necessary for the unhindered implementation of any legislative exercises of the president and the executive power.
Ella Pamfilova, who came to the Central Election Commission in March 2016, promised to change the attitude of citizens towards elections, increasing the transparency and competitiveness of voting. To achieve this goal, she made a lot of adjustments to the electoral process: she expanded the list of observers and interaction with human rights activists, and introduced a number of technical innovations—in addition to CCTV cameras, optical scan voting system ballot boxes (KOIBs) appeared that automatically scan votes and eliminate errors of members of the counting board.
Due to the fact that there was only one unitary day of voting left, the elections to the State Duma of the 7th convocation were held three months before the end of the Duma’s term of office. The reduction of the term was not without scandal—the Federation Council appealed to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation. The court considered the appeal in record time, just a week: on June 24, the senators sent a request to the court, on June 29 it held a public hearing and two days later announced the decision. As a rule, months pass from the receipt of a complaint to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation until the announcement of a decision. In the request, the senators asked the high judges to clarify whether holding elections to the State Duma several months before the expiration of the five-year period specified in the Constitution would not be a violation.
The Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation came to the conclusion that deviation from the deadline established by the Constitution is still allowed in a number of cases, for example, when the Duma is dissolved by the president, martial law is introduced, or a repeat election is called. And the law does not exclude a discrepancy between the real and the statutory period for achieving constitutionally significant goals, the judges concluded. Such a goal could be to postpone the election date to a single voting day, the Constitutional Court believed. Such a decision could lead to positive results: voter turnout would increase, budget savings would be achieved. In other words, if you can’t, but really want to, then you can.46 As a result, the deputies of the 6th convocation who did not get into the new State Duma received payments for the early termination of their powers, for which the budget allocated about 460 million rubles. No one refused, although the former deputies from United Russia had promised that they would not take money for shortening the term,47 with the result that the taxpayers paid twice for the three-month maintenance of the old and new convocations.
Fourteen parties took part in the September 18 elections. For the first time since 2003, elections to the lower house of parliament were again held under a mixed-member system. The intrigue was provided by the struggle between the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party for second place. The legislative increase in the number of signatures required for the registration of candidates and lists of candidates (by three times for candidates in single-member constituencies and by 50,000 for the federal list of candidates) had fully fulfilled its task of limiting political competition—for the first time in the history of elections not a single list was registered on the basis of signatures of voters. Only 14 party lists were registered, exempt from such a requirement.
“More honest and more boring” was how experts assessed the results of the 2016 election campaign. The Duma election campaign passed without loud scandals, although there was a sharp increase in the number of complaints filed with the CEC.
The final voter turnout was a record low—47.8% against 60.2% in the last Duma elections. In absolute terms, almost 57.5 million voters did not turn out to vote, which is comparable to the population of Italy (60.7 million) and exceeds the population of such countries as Ukraine (42.5 million), Spain (46.4 million), and South Africa (about 55 million). The non-recognition of the elections due to low turnout was announced by the chairman of the Yabloko party, Emilia Slabunova. Despite the fact that the same four parties made it to the lower house on the lists as five years earlier, this time, due to low turnout, each of them was supported by several million people less. The leadership of United Russia, for example, was now supported by 28.4 million people instead of the previous 32.4 million.48
United Russia received more than 54% of the votes on party lists in the elections, and its candidates won in 203 out of 225 single-mandate constituencies (United Russia did not nominate anyone in 19 constituencies). In total, this provided the ruling party with a constitutional majority (300 people) with a margin of 343 deputies. The party took revenge for the 2011 elections, after which it had only a simple majority (238 deputies). In fact, the result of 2003 and 2007 was repeated, when United Russia gained control of the lower house of parliament.
Specialists conducted a comparative analysis of the turnout and results of three parliamentary elections under electoral authoritarianism, and this is what they came up with. During the “elections” of 2007, 2011, and 2016, the official voter turnout was overestimated compared to the actual results by 12–16 million people, which ranged from 11 to almost 15% of all voters and from 25 to 32% of voters who actually took part in the voting.
Almost all of the stuffed ballots (corrected protocols)—from 98 to more than 100%—were counted in favor of United Russia (ER). Exceeding the additions by 100% meant that not only additional ballots (votes), but also part of the ballots (votes) already cast for other political parties were transferred (added to the actual number) to United Russia.
According to Andrey Illarionov, the number of votes added to United Russia amounted to almost half (44.4%) of the actual number of those who voted for United Russia in 2007; almost 90% of those who actually voted for United Russia in 2011, and more than 3/4 (77.4%) of those who actually supported United Russia in 2016. According to other experts, the votes that were added to the actual number were 15–20 percentage points. But anyway, it’s a lot.
Cleansing falsified data from official CEC data (the falsified almost all in favor of United Russia) makes it possible to obtain a more realistic picture of the political preferences of Russian citizens, as well as its dynamics. From 2007 to 2016, the actual number of voters who took part in the voting decreased from 56 million to 40 million; actual turnout decreased from 51% to 36.5%; the number of voters who voted for United Russia fell by half—from 31 to 16 million people; or from 56 to 40% of the actual turnout; the relative amount of United Russia supporters in the total number of voters also fell by half—from 28 to 14%.
Thus, the results of the “elections” of 2016 characterize four very different figures: if the proportion of deputies of United Russia among all deputies of the State Duma is 76%, and the officially announced support for United Russia is 54% of those who took part in the vote, then the actual support of the United Russia among citizens who actually voted is only 40%, and the real support for United Russia among all voters in the country is only 14%.
The presidential election campaign of 2018 was in many ways a milestone. The fact is that it has completed a certain cycle of evolution of the electoral system, marking its transition to a new state.
In the 2016 Duma elections, apparently, the decision was made to move voting manipulation away from large cities with malicious monitors and move them to regions and rural areas where the elections are not monitored as closely. The result, in conditions of very low real turnout, was the picture of “two-humped Russia,” when half of the votes of the ruling party on the federal list were given(in fact, mostly “drawn in”) by polling stations covering only 28% of registered voters.
For the presidential elections, such a configuration of the final results, which contradicted the concept of popular support, obviously did not fit, and the CEC and the presidential administration, apparently, decided to shift the focus of influence from the election protocols to the voters themselves, despite the much greater laboriousness of such an approach. The combination of agitation and administrative pressure achieved the almost unbelievable: the real turnout (which can be estimated from the position of the main peak of the distribution of votes on the graph) exceeded the figures for all federal elections since 2000 (about 62%). The new mechanism for voting at the place of residence, which managed to attract two and a half times more voters than the previous version with absentee ballots,49probably played a significant role—and played one not so much through the voluntary attraction of voters, but through new opportunities to pressure vulnerable groups (state employees, parents of schoolchildren, etc.). As a result, the distribution of votes in the main peak turned out to be very similar to 2012 (with a shift towards an increase in turnout by about 2%, despite the more “boring” list of candidates), and the “tail” of excess votes was smaller than in 2012.
During the 2018 presidential election campaign, the presidential administration managed to achieve a never-before-set goal: to achieve a high turnout and a high result even given a slight decrease in the level of mass fraud on the day of counting. As a result, direct falsifications amounted to about 8.6 million votes, returning almost to the level of 2004, and the record turnout after 2000 was achieved by a complex impact directly on voters—both propagandistic and administrative. This seems to be a step in a new direction: if the electoral fraud of the Churov style completely excluded voters from the process of achieving the desired result, then the new approach involves their maximum active participation in carefully controlled conditions.50
Compared to the 2012 elections, the requirements for the nature of documents for nomination and registration have become more complicated: there are requirements for filing a notice of the absence of accounts in foreign banks and of reports of foreign real estate, and offoreign financial obligations and major transactions for the last three years.51 But the number of signatures in support of the nomination has decreased: in the 2012 elections, self-nominated candidates collected 2 million signatures, and in the 2018 elections, only 300,000, and party nominees 100,000.
Initially, more than forty participants were announced, including many self-nominated candidates. Eleven candidates, including Aleksey Navalny, were denied registration by the CEC. It is not for nothing that criminal cases of various kinds were initiated against politically active people during the previous years, and the legislator constantly corrected the legislation to limit the passive suffrage of persons with a criminal record! One candidate (Natalya Lisitsyna) did not have enough signatures after they were verified. Six declared candidates did not submit final documents (read—they could not collect signatures). Eleven candidates withdrew from the elections (including in one case where the Social Democratic Party withdrew its participation, having recalled its candidate).
As a result, those eight candidates whom Vladimir Putin could defeat with a crushing score were admitted to the elections. In fact, these were no longer elections, but a renewal of legitimacy. During this “update” Putin was supported by 56.4 million people, or 76.7% of voters. Thus, he won 10.6 million more votes than in the last elections in 2012, setting two records at once, in absolute and percentage terms. The second place, according to a tradition that has not been violated even once since 1991, was taken by a candidate from the Communist Party. Crimea and Sevastopol participated in the presidential elections in Russia for the first time and immediately got into the rating of the subjects most integrated into the Russian Federation: more than 90% of voters voted for candidate Putin in these regions. It is curious that the locomotive of the last elections—Chechnya—dropped to fourth place (from 99.76% to 91.44%).
The first year of the new political cycle was marked by major changes in the political and social situation, as well as in the strategies and policies of the Kremlin. In general, this strategy can be defined as “digging in”—preparing for a long-term confrontation with external and internal challenges in the context of the “constitutional transition” of 2024. It is no coincidence that the Liberal Mission Foundation called its analytical report on this period “The Fortress Grows into the Ground.”
The response to the tightening of external pressure and the decrease in domestic support was the further expansion of “power practices” in domestic politics. A new strategy of super-centralism in the Kremlin’s relations with the regions was actively developed: over the past two years, the most massive rotation of the governor corps in the history of new Russia has been carried out, and the proportion of “Varangians” appointed by the federal elite to gubernatorial posts is also unprecedentedly high in this rotation. Regional policy is rapidly being “sovietised.”
It can be said that power and repressive politicians began to play no less a role, and perhaps even a greater one in maintaining the stability of the regime than “Putin’s popularity” and the effectiveness of propaganda. In the field of political repression, the main trends of the year were increased pressure on the youth environment and the expansion of repressive control over the Internet; in the sphere of counter-elite repression, there is a tendency to defiantly toughen punishments and further “sovereignization” of the regime for business.