Russia's presidential election: rigging is a delicate art

The election was rigged for his pleasure

“It is hard to conceive of how the demands for fair elections, rule of law and end of corruption could be met without a revolution”

Guardian March 2012

Four days before the presidential elections in Russia, REN TV a pro-Kremlin television channel warned what life would be like without Vladimir Putin. The doomsday scenario goes like this: crowds rejoice in Moscow's Sakharov Avenue as the Duma and presidential elections are cancelled; a provisional government is formed and to the victors go the spoils – Boris Nemtsov takes over Gazprom, Alexei Navalny's wife the foreign trade bank. Russia's nuclear arsenal is handed over to the US. Economic crisis soon erupts. Thousands of companies go bust. The provisional government closes Avtovaz, the giant motor works in Tolyatti. Riots and ethnic clashes break out in major cities. Kaliningrad, Tatarstan, Bashkiria and Yakutia secede. The republics of the North Caucasus set up an Islamic state. Civil war erupts. Georgia retakes South Ossetia. Navalny flees to the US, but not without a Nobel prize for his pains. The clip ends: "Russia without Putin? You choose."

This is the latest of many samples of the Kremlin dark arts production team. It is crude, but is it also ineffective? Not as much as one would like to believe. Put to one side the demonstrators who turned out in their tens of thousands in the streets of Moscow and St Petersburg to decry the medievalism of the political state in which they live. The rest of Russia, the majority of its population who live in its provincial towns and villages, think and act differently. For them vlast (power) is a low-hanging cloud about to dump 30cm of snow on their heads. There is very little they can do about it, except hold on to their shovels and pray for spring.

They, too, are unhappy too with Putin, after 12 years in power, but not for the same reasons as the agitated city dwellers. They decry Putin's economic liberalism, the way his elite uses the state's oil and gas wealth, not to build Russian industry or agriculture, but to fund an economy that buys its cars from South Korea and its butter from New Zealand. They want the system to change, not a change of system. For two reasons: every change at the top, at any level of government, entails a shift change of bureaucrats below them. And every time that happens, the form is the same. You can do nothing with your small business, farm, or property, unless you pay the right people off. Why exchange the predators you know for those you don't? Second, it is hard to overestimate the cynicism in the country after two decades of broken promises. About the last thing Russia wants is another revolution, in which property becomes theft, and the goodies are redistributed – all over again. And in one sense, they are right. It is hard to conceive of how the demands of the demonstrators could be met – fair elections, rule of law, end of corruption – without another revolution taking place. Putin's elite is so deeply dug in to the system they have created that they are inseparable from it. And they would not go without a fight, because they personally have so much to lose. So the other Russia out there in the dormant wastes of winter, a Russia that is passive and offline, wants a chastised, humbled Putin to continue as the guarantor of the stability they crave. They ask a simple question: "If not Putin, who?"

Putin would win the election on the first round on Sunday even if the elections were fair. We suspect from recent experience that they will not be. But if they were fair, his vote in Moscow and probably St Petersburg would fall well short of the required 50%. So a balance has to be struck. How many ballot boxes have to be stuffed? United Russia inflated its results in Moscow by about 11% in the December poll. If Putin has to do that and more this time, what would be the cost? Does he go for broke and fuel the political activism more, or does he defuse it by playing fair but risking humiliation in his capital city? A mass demonstration has been called for Monday. It is expected to be the largest of all so far. How Putin answers this question will be an indication of how he intends to answer much larger questions that await him in his third term.