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Russia Profile
www.russiaprofile.org
June 14, 2005
Will United Russia Fly?
The Party Power Has Developed Wings and a New Head

By Dmitry Babich

"If the party has right and left wings, why doesn't it fly away from us?"

The line is a quotation from a character in Mikhail Sholokov's novel Virgin Soil Upturned, and is spoken in reaction to the factional strife within the Bolshevik Party in the late 1920s. United Russia, the party of power that has been portrayed as a monolithic structure, holding a commanding majority in the State Duma and boasting almost 1 million members across the country, has suddenly been displaying signs of pluralism within its own ranks. The first move came on April 19, when 19 members of the party's Duma contingent declared their intention to make United Russia a "rightist party," along the lines of European social conservatism and economic liberalism. The group also included regional governors Mikhail Prussak, Dmitry Zelenin and Alexander Khloponin, and it didn't come as a surprise to anyone that the declaration, which included some harsh criticism of recent developments in the country, earned the group the 1920's sobriquet of "Right Deviationists."

"Administrative pressure on business is mounting... Judicial reform has yet to yield the expected result - real independence of the courts... There is every reason to be concerned over the fate of institutions of civil society in Russia," the declaration read.

Andrei Makarov, a Duma deputy and one member of the "rightist" group told the state-owned Rossiya television channel that the move on the part of himself and his colleagues did not represent a split within the party but, rather, "an invitation to hold a discussion."

The fact that Makarov and other members of the group were provided with coverage on state television led to suspicions about just how spontaneous their comments were and who might have been behind them. The business daily Vedomosti suggested that the right wing of United Russia was created on the initiative of Vladislav Surkov, deputy head of the presidential administration, who acts as the Kremlin's point man on relations with the Duma. Makarov, the former head of an anti-corruption commission under former President Boris Yeltsin, had close ties with the Kremlin and was active in attempts to discredit Yeltsin's political opponents from 1993 to 1996. Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of the Duma and the head of the United Russia faction in the chamber, has repeatedly spoken out against any form of dissent within the party in the past, but described the latest development as "natural."

An opposite reaction

The statement from the right wing triggered a reaction from a group of "left deviationists." On March 21, two days following the first statement, Andrei Isayev, chairman of the Duma's Committee on Labor and Social Policy, issued another declaration, this time carrying the signatures of 15 other United Russia members.

The statement cautioned that a move to the right on the part of United Russia could cost the party significantly at the polls.

"The rightist SPS [Union of Right Forces] already took part in parliamentary elections and managed to get three percent of the vote," Isayev said. "But United Russia got almost 40 percent of the vote. We consider the rightist tilt inside our party a serious mistake. The state should be democratic. There is no arguing about this. But the state should also be strong, especially now when the fact is that war has been declared on us."

Isayev did not elaborate, so it was unclear whether he was referring to the terrorist threat, particularly from Russia's Caucasus region, or recent concern that the bloodless "revolutions" in Georgia and Ukraine could be repeated in a more violent fashion in Russia.

While repeating some of the criticisms of the government leveled in the statement from the right, Isayev's leftists focused on a different set of priorities, concentrating mostly on the lack of social support for the Russian population. Isayev's group was clear in their opposition to government plans to cut taxes in the country further.

"So far, cutting taxes in our country has added to the incomes of the richest part of our society," Isayev said. "Contrary to what some liberals predicted, it has not led employers to stop paying wages under the table. Now, when businesses already have numerous tax concessions, calls are being made to cut taxes even further, making up for the gap by slashing the state's social obligations."

Fewer Big names

The members of Asayev's camp aren't as high profile as those who signed the statement from the right, but the group includes Gennady Kulik, a former deputy prime minister in Viktor Chernomyrdin's government in the 1990s who has lobbied strongly for the country's agricultural sector. Another signatory, Konstantin Zatulin, the director of the Institute of CIS countries in Moscow, has campaigned for greater Russian influence in the former Soviet republics, which lends a nationalist tinge to the traditional social rhetoric of the left.

Both groups maintain, however, that their respective emergences do not represent, - and, perhaps more importantly, - will not ultimately lead to a split within the party, saying instead that public discussion within the party is simply a necessary condition for its survival.

"The liberal and the social-patriotic platforms can coexist inside one party," Isayev said. "The divisions between us and the communists and old liberals is much greater than our own differences."

Some members of the liberal opposition downplayed the apparent broadening of discussion within United Russia, characterizing it as a case of "political genetic engineering."

"All of the talk about the necessity of discussion within the party, about elaborating the party's ideology and the need to develop the right and left wings of the party - all of these ideas stem from Kremlin," said Irina Khakamada, one of the three former SPS leaders who who led the party in the 2003 campaign for the Duma. Following the SPS' poor showing, Khakamada ran against Vladimir Putin in the presidential election in March 2004.

"It is not particularly liberal to label someone who has voiced a different opinion from your own a Kremlin puppet," Makarov replied, in an interview carried on state television. "As for political genetic engineering, I don't know why the [opposition] rightists have decided to try to move politics into the sphere of biology. Perhaps they will be more successful there. So far, they are too busy divying up places in political parties that have yet to win anything." Neither the SPS nor Yabloko, which campaigned on something closer to a social-democratic platform, were able to clear the 5-percent barrier necessary to qualify for proportional representation in the parliament under the legislation in effect at the time.

Growing wings appears to be in line with a number of steps aimed at retooling and moving away from United Russia's image as a "voting machine," as the party was christened in the press after it took control of all of the Duma's committees following the 2003 elections. Another move was a major reshuffle in the party's leadership. Valery Bogomolov, the secretary of United Russia's General Council, resigned suddenly at the end of April, followed shortly by Yuri Volkov, who quit his post as the head of the party's executive committee. Both Bogomolov and Volkov had maintained low profiles and worked mostly within the party bureaucracy.

High roller

Bogomolov's replacement is Vyacheslav Volodin, who, as the deputy head of the United Russia faction inside the Duma, is seen as more of a political heavyweight. A young politician from Saratov who survived a long confrontation with local Governor Dmitry Ayatskov, Volodin is being touted as someone who can reinvigorate United Russia without becoming associated with either of its new wings. He apparently turned down suggestions within the Kremlin that he replace Ayatskov, whose term ended earlier this year.

"If Volodin preferred party work to a governor's job, he will try to get as much as possible out of it," one of Volodin's aides in the Duma said on the condition of anonymity.

If Volodin isn't successful in the new position, there are no guarantees for United Russia's future.

"Putin's approach to United Russia is basically 'sink or swim.' If United Russia fails to convince the voters, he will find another party," said Gleb Pavlovsky, the head of the Foundation for Effective Policy, who has worked closely with the Kremlin.