Parliamentary elections signal growing Russian assertiveness towards CIS neighbors

Igor Torbakov 12/18/03

The marked growth of nationalist sentiment in Russia, reflected in the country's recent parliament elections, is helping to push Moscow to become more assertive towards its CIS neighbors. Russia's foreign policy shift, in turn, could intensify the US-Russian geopolitical rivalry in the Caucasus and Central Asia.

The outcome of the December 7 State Duma elections significantly changed Russia's political landscape. Only four political groups – United Russia, President Vladimir Putin's power base; the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party, led by nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky; the political bloc Rodina (Homeland); and the Communist Party – will be represented in Russia's new parliament. All four espouse, to various degrees, a combination of statist and nationalist ideas.

"We are for the Russians, we are for the poor," and "Let's reclaim Russia for ourselves" – the election slogans of the LDP and the Rodina respectively – are symptomatic. This kind of rhetoric helped the two groups capture one out of every five votes at the polls. Political parties in Russia that support Western-style democracy, market capitalism and the rule of law, including Yabloko, failed to garner the sufficient percentage of the vote to secure parliamentary representation.

Although nearly 50 percent of Russian voters stayed away from the polls, most commentators suggest the outcome reflects Russia's public attitudes. According to the analyst Sergei Yuryev; "They [the elections] captured the true [psychological] state of [Russian] society."

Veteran political commentator Vitaly Tretyakov said the election results confirm the existence of a collective desire among Russians for the country to regain the great power status that it lost amid the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991. "Derzhavnichestvo (great power ideology)," notes Tretyakov in his lengthy analysis of the election results written for the Rossiiskaya Gazeta newspaper, "is the absolutely dominant ideology in today's Russia."

In the 12-plus years since the Soviet collapse, many Russians have become disillusioned with the capitalist economic system. That is why, the sociologist Leonty Byzov said, support now appears to be growing for a "certain universal national-socialist model," or some form of state capitalism "with a strong [nationalist] ideology and strong state that will guarantee social justice." There appears to be a powerful public demand for a socialist-nationalist synthesis, and the Rodina bloc has met this demand best, said Byzov at a recent round-table discussion organized by the nationalist weekly Zavtra.

The main political outcome of the Russian parliamentary elections is the imposition of complete presidential control over the Duma, said Ilya Ponomaryov, chief information officer of the Russian Communist Party. "The political system, which until recently resembled what existed circa 1913 (a corrupt and ineffective government, limited parliamentary authority and controlled courts), has regressed and now looks more like the system in place before the 1905 revolution, when an absolute monarchy ruled," Ponomaryov wrote in a commentary published in the Moscow Times.

Political analysts are split over how President Putin will use his enhanced authority. One school of thought maintains that parliament's new composition will give the Putin administration a free hand to pursue a pragmatic cooperation with the West, rather than antagonize it.

Other analysts disagree. They note that prior to the emergence of the more nationalist new Duma, a similar shift toward nationalist populism occurred within Putin's own administration. This dual change is seen as potentially hazardous.

"I think that the first result of the changes in both the structure of parliament and presidential administration will be a tremendous temptation to get involved in some adventures in the post-Soviet space," says Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Center for Strategic Studies. The first indicators of Moscow's aggressive behavior are evident in its treatment of post-Shevardnadze Georgia, Piontkovsky said in an article published by the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. [For additional information see the Eurasia Insight archive].

An independent defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer shares this view. "With fascists and nationalistic statists dominating the Duma and the Kremlin, it is virtually inevitable that Russia will attempt to dominate the post-Soviet landmass – installing pro-Moscow governments, destabilizing those that refuse to integrate and annexing neighboring territories," Felgenhauer wrote in the Moscow Times.

Some observers suggest Putin may find it difficult to keep ultra-nationalists, especially those in the Rodina parliamentary bloc, in check. According to Liliya Shevtsova, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Kremlin "has created a popular demand for dictatorship and has even formed its [social] base." Shevtsova went on to warn in a Moskovskie Novosti commentary that a new and aggressive nationalist force "may undermine his presidency."

Rodina wants Russia "to act as a dominating force in the zone of Eurasia," according to one the party's leaders, Dmitry Rogozin. He also indicated that Rodina would prefer to see the Russian government adopt a tougher stance against the United States – to counter what the party believes to be Washington's encroachment on Russia's sphere of influence. In comments published by the Trud daily, Rogozin said the United States is trying to prevent Moscow from reasserting itself in Moldova, the South Caucasus and Central Asia.

"If I only could, I would create the similar problems for them [Americans] in Mexico and Panama," Rogozin said.

Editor's Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York; and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Posted December 18, 2003 © Eurasianet