National Observer Home > No. 67 -Summer 2006 > Articles

BOOK REVIEW

by Max Teichmann

National Observer
(Council for the National Interest, Melbourne),
No. 67, Summer 2006,
pages 66-72.

 

In this review, Max Teichmann describes the emergence in post-Soviet Russia of “designer parties”, manufactured by advertising agencies but with little or no membership base.

 

VIRTUAL POLITICS: FAKING DEMOCRACY IN THE POST-SOVIET WORLD

By Andrew Wilson

Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2005, pp. 332 and index.

 

Adviser to President: “Mr. President, I have good news for you, and bad news. The good news is that you have been re-elected. The bad news is that nobody voted for you.”

(Russian joke)

This is a remarkable study of Russia in the post-Soviet world. It tells us how it happened that the Russian people, having been given the chance, it was said, of achieving political and social freedoms that they had never really possessed before, found themselves, fifteen years after the fall of Communism, struggling in the toils of a semi-dictatorship, presided over by ex-KGB officer Vladimir Putin — a president who operates in an atmosphere of general corruption, probably worse than at any stage of the old Soviet Union, and with ever-rising inequalities and injustices.

Pari passu , Russia’s society, i.e., the people, is in free-fall. I don’t think many people ever dreamed that Russia would be facing utter catastrophe in the mid-term, when Gorbachev shook hands with Reagan, and when a new era for Russians was proclaimed.

This book is subtitled “Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World”. In other words, the Russians never had a real chance to grasp, and hold on to, their new democracy long enough before the process of stealing their freedoms took off, and by now has snuffed out all hope, all optimism, on the part of ordinary Russians, and revived and magnified that deep corrosive cynicism which was there, just under the surface, during the time of Communism.

Wilson maintains that on the other hand, new actors actually did take power in Poland and Czechoslovakia — an electrician, a poet, with well-established resistance movements, so to speak, behind them. Also anti-Russian, and hence far more likely to be anti-Communist, for their Communist forces had been originally imposed, and guided, from outside. But in Russia, the changeover occurred within the upper echelons, as groups of apparatchiki “and successful party functionaries” became “the Opposition” in the last years of the Soviet Union.

One group, under Alexander Yakovlev, created a bloc to advance liberal, pro-Western ideas and parties. While another, under Yegor Ligachev, produced conservative and nationalist groups. These, supposedly, were the two opponents with radically different viewpoints and scenarios, who would, in time, become the two-party system. The Russian Communist Party would, in a sense, self-destruct, while the KGB would fade away, losing all influence and credibility. This is what the Russian people were led to expect, and what the Western media, and hence the Western public, believed was occurring.

Whereas neither man pushed his ideas, the party was allowed to remain and operate, as a bogeyman. Vote for X, for he may have broken his promises, even be surrounded by corrupt followers — but it’s a choice of the lesser of two evils, for would you want the Communists back in his place? That ploy worked for Yeltsin, the second time around, for a big Communist threat was beaten up — and partly created by the media. Yeltsin promised to mend his ways, and keep his promises, so … most Russians still preferred him. (A remarkably limited choice, you might say.)

But the reality, meanwhile, was that a multitude of parties and candidates had sprung up, almost from nowhere, to confuse the public and every issue. Many of these were bogus — parties without members, parties without policies, funded by … who knows? The fabrication of multiple parties, and candidates, eventually led to a law in the Ukraine, whereby every party had to lodge its programme. One submitted, as its programme, a document subsequently identified as a page from the Moscow telephone directory.

In reality, funding and facilities had gone to favoured “designer parties” — and most parties have been designed, increasingly by the public relations industry, there being very little grassroots stuff. The funding came from the ruling groups, who remained after the assumption of power by Gorbachev. These were the apparatchiki, the nomenklatura, who quickly changed their coats, but stayed in place — the supposedly enfeebled KGB, and the new entrepreneur class. These were only new in the sense that they could now operate completely in the open. Many of them had come from the black market area of the old Soviet society — or, if you like, grey area — which had comprised a third of the old Soviet economy. These traders and speculators knew the political and bureaucratic systems inside out, understood who had the power, who could be bribed, or set against a competitor, etc., etc. And they were no strangers to the West, its corporations, its currency systems, its financial institutions, etc. So the liberated entrepreneurs flourished from the very beginning of the New Era.

The financing of political parties, and elections, is a very important field for study in the modern world (just have a look at the Romans, et al). As is the influence of the media upon the political processes, and their financial structure and provenance. But post-Communist Russia is positively exotic as a stage for these funding and media dramas and melodramas.

One of the most striking features of post-Soviet Russia has been the deepening poverty of the masses, the chronic shortage of money to support even the most elementary services and infrastructure, as against the lavish lifestyle of the new rich and a growing middle class, but also the very large amounts of money available for political activity, and media extravaganzas. Another paradox: very large quantities of aid and quite considerable investments flowed into the new state during the 1990s, but how little of it appears to benefit the ordinary Russian. Where did it go? Which leads to the matter of where such lavish funding originated, from the very beginning.

I don’t remember Andrew Wilson discussing this, but very large sums of money had been taken out of the old Soviet Union, and deposited in America, Europe, and the usual tax havens in the last years of the Communist régime. Most of this was taken out by the KGB, or leading members of the Communist Party. And of course the usual private capitalists and gangsters.

The general assumption was that this money was gone from Russia for ever, and would be enjoyed by the lucky thieves when the time came — as ex-Third-World dictators, kings, sheiks, normally do once in exile. Undoubtedly a lot did stay out, and the purchases of property of every kind by Russians in Europe and elsewhere testify to these losses by Russia itself.

But a lot, perhaps most of it, was parked, awaiting the big changeover in the political system, then was fed back into the system. To be available to buy out government enterprises, which were to be privatised and then sold, to crooks or ex-Communists, “retired” KGB agents, for a song. Hence the rise of the oligarchs, creations of Yeltsin and of Anatoly Chubais. But this returning money was also available via slush funds to the political classes, for them to support and create new parties. These creations had patriotic names, candidates from nowhere, and programmes (where they did have programmes) created by the burgeoning PR industry.

I’ll just add, en passant, that Russian political propaganda and media management and indirect control of political activity and the social agenda in their country are — in their variety — far in advance of anything in the West, or in China. More sophisticated, more Machiavellian (as against crudely cynical), far better educated. They, the practitioners, may well believe in nothing. They see themselves as condottieri: swords for hire to the highest bidder, while taking care not to cross the powerful, be they rulers or potential rulers, or the super-rich, or the Mafias.

They can sell you a party programme, create a new party, sell you bogus opinion polls and exit polls, get them placed prominently in the press — and, most important, sell prime television time. They can manufacture lying or scandalous stories about your opponent: an anti-Semite, a drug addict, a pederast, a CIA agent — you name it — and get them properly circulated. And they can see that the subsequent denials and refutations by the victims are suppressed, or buried in some media cul-de-sac. They can even start a bogus newspaper or broadsheet supposedly sponsored by your opponent, which reveals him to be a religious fanatic, a crazy hyper-nationalist, or in favour of abolishing pensions. They let the paper run, then close it down.

All this costs money: obtaining prime time on television and radio, paying off electoral officials, or, where possible, foreign observers (Third World electoral observers can be soft touches). And these political technologists were vital in the early years, when real democracy was possible. Vital by misleading and confusing the public, so that they kept finally going back to the old choice. Better the devils you know, than the devils you don’t know.

Wilson has big sections on faking elections, and election results, in Russia, the Ukraine, and the other ex-Soviet states. The trick has always been to rig the whole thing before the election starts, so that there is no need to fake the result on the day, to stuff the ballot boxes, or to bash and intimidate opponents. That’s African stuff. So when the foreign observers turn up and give a thumbs-up, often they “know not what they do.”

Some of these political technologists are famous for their effectiveness. One, Gleb Pavlovskii, is not merely a political technologist, as his admirers claim, but a virtuoso, or a major expert in contaminating the political environment. Others say he’s a charlatan … who has mastered the black art of self-mystification rather than Machiavellianism. Pavlovskii has said: “Frankly, I’m not interested in clients. What interests me is political technology — pure and simple.”

Wilson believes that the apparatchiki, the KGB, the oligarchs, and the generally rich, who usually hang together, isolate themselves from the average Russians, and from overt political life. At the beginning, it was the elites that selected, designed, and created parties, the parties that control Russia. They don’t personally want to rule, are amoral, and are only interested in money, privileges, and the power that comes from pulling the strings. The PR industry and the media do the rest. Wilson thinks that all the happenings, the “coups”, the referenda, and the elections have been rigged, from the time of Gorbachev onwards. People who are arrested, and charged with treason, can be seen walking around freely within a few months. It is all deception, he believes.

As a Ukrainian scholar, Wilson covers that unstable state extensively, and actually came to believe at first that the Orange Revolution was the exception to the rule. It was genuine. At last, the People had spoken. But a year on, the whole thing is unravelling, with division, even more corruption than before, and dirty tricks. Meanwhile, Putin awaits his chance.

The conduct of Russian politics has changed since those early days, when genuine mavericks, even maverick parties, would appear, would confuse the parliament, and would provide hope for Russians wanting reform. This also encouraged the Americans, especially George W. Bush, to believe that democracy would slowly win. Such young mavericks are nowadays stopped early and knocked out — by bribery, intimidation, orchestrated smear campaigns and fabrications. Incidentally, we Australians are now finding this ugly behaviour is a key weapon for our media, and the more stupid politicians.

But, to return to Russia. Failing all else, the erring candidate and his party would be left off the final electoral list, by some means or another. The West, by and large, has evaded all this, as it has similar occurrences in the countries of Eastern Europe.

Phoney mavericks are designed, funded and promoted so as to split voting, draw off dissent, and present an extravagant radicalism (such as anti-Semitism, anti-religion, whatever), attacking the status quo in toto, But in the days when the New Order was still fluent, some of the “designer mavericks”, such as Vladimir Zhirinovsky — and General Lebed, the hero of Afghanistan — started to play their own hands. It took a lot of pressure, and manipulation, to make them return to their designated roles. General Lebed eventually gave up on his challenge, and was allowed to become Governor of East Siberia. Subsequently, Lebed and his aides were killed in an unfortunate plane crash. Most unfortunate.

On the other hand, Zhirinovsky thrives, like the Artful Dodger. A great actor, he can be abusive, violent, and wildly reactionary. Then he reappears, ready for the next task: he and his new party are rational, liberal and soft-spoken. Always flush with cash — being on the Oil for Food list of favourite Russians for oil vouchers — and clearly getting handouts from many discreet sponsors, he does the rulers’ bidding, until the changeover of rulers is imminent.

Much has changed with the coming of Putin, and Wilson has an account of his early spell in office. But things have been moving fast at the Kremlin, so his story is incomplete.

Yeltsin, at the urging of people such as Chubais and Yegor Gaidar, economic rationalists, etc., and encouraged by the West, sold off — i.e. privatised — state utilities, factories, banks, indeed anything for which there was a buyer. He also broke up the collective farms. But for our purposes, the sale of the great oil companies and public utilities is what interests us. These enormously rich state oil companies were sold off to cronies for a song. The lucky beneficiaries, now enormously rich — hence powerful — became known as the oligarchs, of whom seven became the leaders.

Indebted to Yeltsin, and able to run rings around him, they went from strength to strength, conducting independent deals and transactions with powerful economic actors, and then with politicians in foreign lands. One favourite land was Britain, where they could buy up mansions and castles, and be part of that essentially greedy and predatory upper-class structure of Britain. This lavish spending was to stand them in good stead for when Putin began to crack down on some of the oligarchs, and to take over their companies. One oligarch was in Britain when he was charged by Moscow, for something or other. Moves to extradite him were begun, but Britain, in the person of Tony Blair, refused, and granted the oligarch asylum. Putin can go jump, Tony said.

But why did Putin start to crack down on the oligarchs, and seek to destroy their power? Because some of them were developing political ambitions of their own. Owning big slices of the media was OK, provided they were used to the advantage of the government. And they could create “parties”, provided these fell in with the electoral strategies of Putin and his fellow rulers. But some oligarchs started to use their parties as bona fide competitors for votes and power, to use their television to criticise Putin — especially over the Chechen war — and to open up the system, perhaps inadvertently, to a process of genuine competition. So Putin started to close them down, and forced their television and press outlets to purge their critical journalists.

Although the author sometimes talks as though the media were controlled and conformist from the beginning, that was not so. Talented and critical journalists arose, much sophisticated political and sociological writing emerged, and many radical commentators and disc-jockeys became overnight heroes. There were a lot of people in the West who thought that this process of media liberalisation and pluralism would develop, until Russia had free media, which would hold politicians to account and expose corruption.

This pluralistic stage coincided with the early, unstable, shifting character of the country, when all kinds of things seemed possible. But they weren’t — and neither is a free press, nor a democratic society, any longer in prospect.

Wilson believes that post-Soviet societies suffer from the legacy of both the super-ideological Stalinism and its almost complete opposite, with Brezhnev. Politics is more radically solipsistic than in the West. The public face of politics exists as, and often only as, virtuality, most of it in the form of “broadcast parties”, or politicians who are almost entirely media creations. Russian television has been credited with helping Russia hang together in the early 1990s; but its sequestration by the State — and the rich, who would buy prime time and pay stations to smear opponents and spread wild rumours — has ended all of that. Most of the parties to be viewed and heard on television are otherwise never experienced, by voters, who might well wonder whether they really exist. Everything now is fantasy.

While all this clever, cynical manoeuvring goes on, Russia is collapsing. The population is not reproducing itself, with abortions constituting 70 per cent of all conceptions. Only the Muslims are building up their populations, and they will finally inherit the earth. The life expectancy of Russian males is fifty-six, and fifty per cent of them are drunk when they die. The safety nets for sick, old, poor and unemployed are all gone, as is the health service. AIDS is spreading through the land, while crime and corruption seem out of control.

But in Moscow, and in the other big cities, there are some very rich people, in a place where everything is for sale. Putin is hailed as another Peter the Great, or Ivan the Terrible, who destroyed the boyars, created absolute centralised rule, started on the expansion of Russia’s borders and the ejection of occupiers and old enemies — the Tartars, the Turks — and then began the push into Central Asia, and Siberia.

Nothing of the kind will happen. The Muslims are back, and the latter-day Mongols are coming. Siberia will soon be theirs. But … the political game-playing goes on, and, like France, Russia pretends she is still a world power. Only the old Stalinists here in Snake Gully, viz., the ABC, believe this is all the fault of America. As to the Russians, they’d all like to live there.

Some readers might have noticed distressing similarities between the Russian societies and their own. Parties without policies; parties without members; “policies” created by PR operators; opinion polls to order; orchestrated campaigns of smearing, hopefully destroying, political actors seeking meaningful exchanges of opinion; politics one long dramaturgy, occurring on television, which becomes the arbiter of what is true, right, relevant, or real, and who are the good guys and the rogues. The use of state money to help particular candidates, parties, and pressure groups; and the lack of transparency, or accountability, in more and more parts of public, social, and cultural life and activities.

One big difference: the Russians found themselves ambushed, and then entrapped, in this web of corruption and falsification, as they started moving to the light from their dark prison. Whereas many Western societies are retreating from the light, and regressing into this world of ubiquitous fantasy and falsification.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dr Max Teichmann is a former member of the Faculty of Politics and Economics at Monash University, and has for many years been a commentator on Australian social and political affairs and foreign policy.

 

 

 

National Observer No. 67 - Summer 2006