RAS 12 - JRL 6535
PROVINCIAL POLITICS
2. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES IN THREE RUSSIAN PROVINCES
SOURCE. Joel C. Moses, "Political-Economic Elites and Russian Regional Elections 1999-2000: Democratic Tendencies in Kaliningrad, Perm and Volgograd," Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 54 No. 6, September 2002, pp. 905-932.
The political process in the Russian regions is widely portrayed as irremediably corrupt and authoritarian. This image does much to justify Putin's campaign to re-centralize government authority. But how accurate is it? (1) Professor Moses (Iowa State University) argues that the image fits many regions but by no means all. He supports his point of view by presenting case studies of "democratic tendencies" revealed in three provinces by the gubernatorial elections of November-December 2000. By this term he does not mean to imply that the elections in these provinces were democratic in an ideal sense. They too had their share of dirty tricks. Nevertheless, one can speak of democratic tendencies because public opinion played a significant autonomous role in the competition among the elite "clans" that function as local quasi-parties.
In Kaliningrad the incumbent governor Leonid Gorbenko was narrowly defeated in the run-off by Vladimir Yegorov, a Baltic Fleet commander new to politics. Yegorov's candidacy was put forward by "Sozidanie" [Creation], a coalition of local politicians and businessmen alarmed at the damage to the region's economy caused by Gorbenko's blatant corruption and incompetence. Gorbenko lost despite his built-in advantages as the incumbent: he outspent his opponents and "waged an effective campaign of dirty tricks against them," and he had the support of most regional media, which were dependent on him financially or politically.
The incumbent governor in Perm, Gennady Igumnov, also lost. He faced two challengers: Perm city mayor Yuri Trutnev, who had been his own protégé, and Duma deputy Pavel Anokhin, owner of a small oil company linked to Roman Abramovich's Sibneft. In September 2000, shortly before the election, Anokhin apparently instigated a criminal investigation of Igumnov's daughter on a fraudulent charge of embezzlement. (The investigation was dropped after the election without bringing charges.) Igumnov's image had been effectively smeared but there was also widespread public distrust of Anokhin, who was viewed as an agent of outside oligarchical interests (Berezovsky as well as Abramovich). Thus the beneficiary of the scandal turned out to be Trutnev.
In Volgograd the incumbent governor Nikolai Maksyuta, whose chances of re-election appeared marginal at the beginning of the year, rebounded to win by a slim margin. His main challengers were Volgograd city mayor Yuri Chekhov and Oleg Savchenko, a "new Russian" who (like Anokhin in Perm) had ties to Abramovich. Both Chekhov and Savchenko "outspent [Maksyuta] several-fold, … targeting him … with a media blitz and suits alleging campaign violations. … Savchenko spent seemingly unlimited millions … (including publishing his own newspaper and distributing it free to all voters), much of which he was rumored to have embezzled as head of a development fund in Chukotka." Savchenko succeeded only in creating a negative public image of himself as an unscrupulous parvenu trying to buy the governorship, while Maksyuta's "low-key and under-financed campaign" won the voters' confidence.
NOTE
(1) RAS has already examined this issue through the prism of media freedom (or lack of it) in the Russian regions: see No. 6 item 2 and No. 8 item 4.
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