Institute of Modern Russia

It was bound to happen sooner or later. And, indeed, it happened: by whatever means necessary, the Russian opposition was barred from the upcoming elections and driven out of the field of legal political competition. The behavior of the activists in the current regime forced the opposition to change their agenda. Before, it was the results of previous elections that raised doubts (and reasonable ones) among the opposition; today the acting regime and the election itself are being heavily criticized.

The leaders of the People's Freedom Party went even further to consciously and openly raise the issue of the illegitimacy of the upcoming elections. The well-reasoned criticisms levied by [Mikhail] Kasyanov, [Vladimir] Ryzhkov, [Boris] Nemtsov, their associates, and other like-minded people in Russia have already captivated some European and American politicians, resulting in the declaration by the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe that Russia's upcoming elections are, in fact, illegitimate.

By no means are all the opposition members aware of the changes to the regime and the nature of their reactions to these changes. Therefore, negative responses to the staged elections are spilling over into heated debates regarding what practical conclusions can be made and what citizens should do on election day.

According to the most radical point of view, people should completely ignore the elections and not show up to polling stations. This position is fervently defended by human rights activist and journalist Alexandr Podrabinek and writer/politician Eduard Limonov. Their justification is straightforward: “These elections are a farce and illegitimate. To participate is to become complicit in an illegitimate farce.”

This point of view is in competition with other positions, ones unified by a common perspective: people should go to the polling stations because the lower the voter turnout, the easier it is for authorities to rig the ballots. To ignore the elections is to play into the hands of the regime: if people went to the polling stations, they would decrease the opportunities for rigging.

There is also disagreement among different opposition politicians and experts regarding what to do with ballots themselves. The leaders of the People's Freedom Party suggest destroying the ballots by checking all the boxes, thus making the ballot invalid. Voters are urged to write slang comments describing their attitude to the authorities and elections directly onto ballots. This position is supported by the rousing motto “Нах-Нах!” Doing so would, in essence, bring back the old “against all candidates” check box, which used to be so dear to Russian voters.

There are two other recommendations concerning the use of ballots. The first approach suggests voting for any party except for “United Russia.” The logic behind this is simple: do anything to mess with the “party of swindlers and thieves.” The other approach is to vote for those parties which have a better chance of actually getting seats in the Duma, in this case, the Communists. This approach is based on a rational consideration: to decrease the number of seats held by “United Russia.”

 

 

These perspectives represent the intellectual diversity and creative thinking of the Russian opposition. For several months, this marginal — or “non-mainstream opposition,” as they are being labeled by the Kremlin — has been occupied with these debates regarding the upcoming elections. There are discussions and conferences, swords are crossed, and political coalitions collapse. The ability to focus on insignificant things and quarrel over secondary matters has always been a characteristic of our opposition, but only recently has it reached the level of a well-honed skill. And just when everybody in the country has gotten got sick and tired of barefaced cynics and of the mediocrity and thievery of the Russian authorities, when the population is finally beginning to wake up, remembering that they are, in fact, citizens of this country, the opposition finds itself immersed in debates over indistinguishable dilemmas, driving potential supporters almost to a nervous breakdown.

The pointlesness of these debates concerning voting day tactics has become even more obvious once we consider the following: the most optimistic forecasts estimate that no more than two to three percent of all voters are supporters of the Russian opposition (according to statistics revealed at a recent conference), and only one tenth of the aforementioned group is ready to heed the calls of the democratic opposition movement. This tells us more about the quality of the opposition than it does about society.

Let's try to analyze the outcomes of implementing the approaches mentioned above and their possible influences on the political context. To do this we'll have to articulate the goals of these different election day tactics. Two of them are obvious to me. The first is to obstruct the authorities' efforts to skew the results of the elections as much as possible. The second is to provide the most compelling evidence that the elections are illegitimate, assuming that the rigging will take place anyway. And now let us go through each of the tactics.

The great majority of that small percentage of voters who potentially support the democratic opposition have long stopped participating in elections. That’s why public reaction to the the “Нах-Нах!” call will not alter voting outcomes in any substantial way.

Let's assume that the call to come to polling stations and destroy the ballots gets the support from some tenth of a percent of voting citizens. It could have been feasible to make an impact if this fact were reflected in the Central Election Commission’s concluding results. But if we assume that the ballots will get rigged, the destroyed ballots may eventually be misrepresented bу the Central Election Commission. Furthermore, the destroyed ballots could easily be unlawfully destroyed, withdrawn, and replaced with “correct” ones.

It seems unlikely that a substantial part of those five percent of voters who support the opposition would answer the call to vote for any party but the “party of swindlers and thieves.” Even if one third of a million voters distribute their votes between the five parties in the race, it would barely affect election results since some of these votes could be switched to “United Russia” in the process of vote counting.

The last approach – to vote for those parties which have a better chance of overcoming the seven percent barrier and getting into Duma – will hardy get a wide response from voters. Even if “United Russia” doesn't get a million votes, they will get votes through rigging the ballots.

The result we come to is not at all surprising. It is no wonder that the democratic opposition with its scarce support has little chance of influencing voting outcomes. Even more so if we keep in mind that any attempts to affect the situation are easy for the authorities to overcome using unlawful manipulations of voters, ballots, and even protocols (as evidenced by previous elections).

The inability to come to an agreement, or, if you like, the ability not to come to any decision characteristic of the Russian democratic opposition, has revealed the opposition's “epistemological” essence. Disputing parties try to impose their point of view based on “reasonable arguments,” often very unpretentious ones, I should add. Meanwhile the general invincibility of such a “rational” approach has long been disproven.

 

 

Here's a trivial fact: existential experience is based solely on the past and not on the future. That to my mind is the reason why people are much more able to collaborate when they come to an agreement about what should not be done, than when they try to find a common ground in terms of what should be done. It's no coincidence that people generally succeed in banning faulty social behavior. On the other hand, attempts to impose ideals often end up in social disasters.

The common tendency to search for rational, well-founded decisions derives from the generally accepted notion that politics and morality don't go well together. But our acknowlegement of this point means that we've already gone the path of the immoral authorities. Should we, for the sake of conventions worth preserving, agree that moral-based arguments can be used by citizens and the opposition? This opens up the opportunity to forget “reasonable arguments” from time to time and to rely on moral principals, however biblical or Kantian they may be.

We must not forget that moral acts count only under the condition of free will. Therefore, participants of this debate would be better off if they just suggested their approaches and voting tactics and then let citizens choose for themselves (any many are doing so). However, if morality continues as the starting point, when offering the citizens the choice of several moral acts, the boundaries of morality must be set. It is important to discuss the fact that participation in the immoral acts sanctioned by the authorities is immoral in itself. Therefore, a moral prohibition introduces a boundary, along which are the possibilities for various moral acts, including trivial inaction.

However this boundary can be moved forward by claiming that indulging the immoral behavior of the regime is immoral in itself. Kant would have supported such a formulation as it derives from his categorical imperative, which can be summarized as follows: “Avoid behaving in a manner in which you wouldn't like most people to behave.” If we asked a person who acknowledges the immorality of the regime but remains inactive: “Would you like everybody to act in the same manner as you, thereby indulging the immorality of the regime?,” the answer, if he was sincere, would be “No!”  Then there'd be no need to ask whether or not the man's behavior was immoral, if the man was reasonable.

Nothing above sounds encouraging. But does it mean that the situation has no way out and that there’s nothing we can do with such scarce support from voters? No, it does not, as evidenced by Dmitry Oreshkin’s suggestions on voting and vote count supervision published in “Novaya Gazeta”. Oreshkin argues, in essence, that it is necessary to concentrate on a relatively small number of polling stations in various places, but that the supervision of these polling stations should be organized, massive and tight. Thus the outrageous differences in voting results between stations under tight supervision and those without would serve as evidence of election fraud, proving the illegitimacy of the elections.

This suggestion has some obvious advantages. Firstly, the implementation of this plan would require far less participants than required by any significant effort to impact voting results when they are obviously getting rigged. Secondly, such a campaign would require some time and effort from participants, and some real action as well. Thirdly, participation in such a campaign would unite people, making them a team. Fourthly, participants would be likely to see some tangible results from their collaborations.

Oreshkin’s suggestion however has one important disadvantage: a political campaign like this would require the leaders of opposition to do some actual work instead of just making loud proclamations. Unfortunately, this reality significantly reduces the chances of this smart suggestion being adequately implemented.

And this is what we find ourselves with a week or so from the elections.