Washington Post - 06.08.02

 

The Washington Post

Russian Communists Wane

Putin Consolidates Power, Leaving Rival Party in Disarray

By Susan B. Glasser

MOSCOW -- Two years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin cut an unorthodox deal with the Communists. He would rule, butthey would have real power to help him govern on the inside: the speakership of the Duma, or lower house of the Russian parliament, and key committee chairmanships.

They had tormented his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, but Putin seemed determined to get along, even restoring the controversial Soviet-era national anthem and other cherished Communist symbols.

Now, the deal is off.

In what is being portrayed here as yet another masterful plot by the Kremlin to enhance its own power, Putin's allies in the Duma have kicked the Communists out of their governing coalition, setting off internal turmoil in the once all-powerful party that until now had managed to remain a national force long after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Here in Moscow, where politics under Putin has become an often dull ritual of professing loyalty to the leader, the shake-up has led many to suggest, as analyst Valery Fedorov did this week, that "the inevitable demise" of the Communists may finally be at hand.

The Russian Communist Party was formed by Gennady Zyuganov and others after the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Communist Party was monolithic and ran the country, the current party is one among many in parliament and has accepted some aspects of democracy and free markets while also espousing elements of the old ideology.

The crisis began when the Putin team decided to strip the Communists of most of their key committee jobs in parliament. When party leader Zyuganov, who now calls Putin a "liberal dictator," demanded that three remaining Communist committee chairmen and Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev resign in protest, they opted to remain in their posts instead. By this week, the Seleznev faction had been kicked out of the party, and many in the less ideological wing walked out, too.

"The romance is over between the Communists and the Kremlin," said Fedorov, director of the Russian Center for the Study of Current Political Events. "There are no prospects now for the Communists ever again to come to power." Or, as Gennady Khodyrev, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region who quit the party in protest last month, put it, "If the party does not change its style and methods, the party will gradually die."

The current turmoil would seem to be another sign of Putin's methodical approach to politics. Since taking office on Dec. 31, 1999, Putin has systematically neutralized -- or at least sidelined -- most of his potential rivals for power.

He took on powerful businessmen such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky, forcing them into self-imposed exile, and reined in the power of the independent media the tycoons controlled. He named seven new presidential envoys -- called "super-governors" -- to curb the influence of regional leaders, and ousted reform-resistant heads of the Central Bank and the natural-gas monopoly Gazprom. Would-be presidents such as Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov were corralled into folding their own party and joining forces with a new party -- United Russia -- whose only real ideology seems to be supporting Putin.

In taking on the Communists now, Putin seems to be fine-tuning even further his often-articulated idea of a "managed democracy," in which opposition seems to be tolerated only as long as it is controllable. "Putin didn't need them anymore," said Igor Bunin, director of the Center for Political Technologies. "He has chosen instead to pursue liberal economic reforms and a new foreign policy of rapprochement toward the West. They couldn't be partners in that."

For their part, the Communist Party's leaders say the whole thing was a Kremlin-manufactured intrigue. "The fact that we are now in tough opposition to the authorities -- it is not we who are to blame for this, it is the authorities," said Ivan Melnikov, a top deputy to party leader Zyuganov. "They tried to organize this plot. They took advantage of the situation to weaken the Communist Party and to split it."

Now, Melnikov said, the Communists will give up on behind-the-scenes power politics and turn to protest instead. Next week, they plan to press a no-confidence vote against Putin's government in the Duma -- a tactic that is considered certain to fail -- and in the fall they will organize a nationwide referendum protesting Putin's plans to allow the sale of agricultural land in Russia for the first time in seven decades. "We are going to continue fighting," he vowed.

Already, the Kremlin's advisers are touting the maneuver as a success even as they hedge about their hand in the affair. "This crisis in the Communist Party will lead to very serious changes in the political landscape," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who helped in Putin's election. "I wouldn't say the Kremlin was plotting this, but it is obvious that Putin approved of the Communist dissidents. This is an evolutionary movement in Russian politics in the same direction that Putin is trying to lead the country."

Alexander Oslon, a leading pollster who works for the Kremlin, said the maneuvering has already begun to hurt the Communist Party's effectiveness as a political force. Oslon cited a poll conducted this week by his Public Opinion Foundation, which showed the Communists favored by 20 percent of those polled, down from almost 30 percent before the recent turmoil. "The construction of the party called 'Communists' has become obsolete, in the same way that we see old buildings standing among modern buildings," he said. "Even if the old buildings remain standing, the future belongs to modern buildings in Russia."

The pro-Putin United Russia party, Oslon asserted, has benefited from the Communists' slide. "There is a real trend toward growth in the rating of United Russia," he said, saying his new poll showed that party with 30 percent support this week, up from the low 20s two months ago. "United Russia is more popular, and it's closely connected with the events within the Communist Party."

Independent pollsters and analysts are more skeptical about the benefits to the Putin-backed party, but they agreed that support for Communists has slipped and backing for Communist leader Zyuganov has fallen off even more significantly.

"There's no question preferences are changing," said Lev Gudkov, director of political polling for the All-Russia Center for Public Opinion. Current support for the Communist Party, he said, is about 21 percent in his polls, while less than 9 percent of those polled said they would back Zyuganov for president, compared with about 16 percent a year ago.

Still, aside from Putin, the Communists continue to be perhaps the most formidable electoral force in the country, capable of calling on a core group of mostly elderly voters who remain nostalgic for the Soviet Union and feel left behind by Russia's tumultuous decade-long experiment with a market economy. While that core has likely shrunk -- analysts generally contend that around 15 percent of Russian voters are unshakable Communist loyalists -- it will continue to be a presence in upcoming elections.

"The Communist Party has still got its brand name," said Bunin.

But even as the party may remain the only real opposition to Putin, it is clearly experiencing a crisis of leadership as its reform wing under Seleznev decamps and no others wait in the ranks who are capable of displacing Zyuganov, a humorless demagogue.

"There is no other leader except Zyuganov around whom it would be possible to gather," said Khodyrev. "Zyuganov's lack of charismatic personality is one of the signs of the illness of the party."

As with most political disputes in Russia's presidentially dominated system, the real rift in the Communist Party is between those who don't mind being managed by Putin and those, like Zyuganov, who have decided to turn to protest politics.

"We should be a constructive opposition, as Putin invited us to be," Khodyrev said in an interview at his office here. "Any party would be proud if its representatives are the speakers of parliament or heads of committees. Now, the party is poorer. Who are we left with?"