Putin Set to Rule Until 2036?

The Kremlin is celebrating. The 78% approval for a constitutional amendment on a 65% turnout is described by Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesperson, as a “de facto triumphal referendum on trust in President Putin”. Many commentators from right to left are jumping on the bandwagon, claiming that “Russian President Vladimir Putin won a resounding endorsement”, “Putin wins big in vote” or even “[with] a majority of votes in favour, the legitimacy of the current government will be established and the current state of affairs in the country will continue”. Yet the reality is much different.

Will of the people?

When in January, President Putin, in his annual ‘State of the Nation’ speech announced he was proposing a series of constitutional amendments aimed, he said, at reducing the power of the presidency and strengthening that of the Parliament and Prime Minister, ISA described this as a ‘creeping constitutional coup’. We suggested it was quite possible, that during the discussions about the wording of the amendments the working group would “simply ‘amend’ the Kremlin’s proposal to remove the restriction on serving two Presidential terms, allowing Putin to accept ‘the will of the people’ and become a president for life”.

Sure enough, in March former Soviet Cosmonaut, first woman in space and member of the ruling party ‘United Russia’ Valentina Tereshkova proposed, during the discussion in Parliament, that as the Constitution was being amended, the rule restricting the number of terms a person could serve as President to two terms should now be reset — anyone running again for President on the new rules would be considered to have two terms left in the future.

It should be remembered that Vladimir Putin has already served four terms by using an anomaly in the previous constitution and has extended the length of a term from 4 years to 6. Now, he can stay in power until 2036, by which time his reign will have lasted 36 years.

Tereshkova’s proposal was put to due consideration by the Parliament. The Speaker announced he would only accept it if the leaders of the four Parliamentary factions, including the so-called Communist Party as well as the sitting President agreed. As expected, the faction leaders fell into line, President Putin showed suitable reluctance but said he would agree if the Parliament and people wanted him to. The proposal was rushed through all its parliamentary stages in 19 hours, the change was due to be put to a ‘people’s vote’ on 22nd April. This is not a referendum, that has strict rules defined in the constitution but a voting procedure with rules defined as it went along.

There was, of course, never any doubt that the amendments to the constitution would be approved in the vote. Not particularly because Putin is popular, on the contrary criticism of his continued rule has been growing as his popularity ratings have plunged. A positive vote was guaranteed because of the way the vote was organised.

No opposition allowed

Some commentators, including a layer of lefts who have illusions that Russia is worthy of support because of its past, still view Putin’s Russia as a form of bourgeois democracy in which elections can lead to a change in government, or in this case, voters could either accept or reject amendments to the constitution. But this was never on the cards.

The plebiscite was, from the beginning, not intended to judge the mood of the electorate, but to demonstrate to waverers within the ruling elite that Putin is still in charge. Concern has been growing in Kremlin circles about what would happen in a year or so’s time when arguments develop over who will be chosen as successor to Putin. Over the past twenty years, he has built the so-called ‘power vertical’ in which all decision making is maintained within a narrow circle of family, friends and acolytes, whilst any awkward oligarchs or other potentially powerful opponents are side-lined. A battle within the ruling elite over the successor would have potentially opened a can of worms, as different figures fought for power.

Crisis after crisis

With an economic crisis already looming at the end of 2019, the ruling elite want most of all to maintain stability. The ‘people’s vote’ was intended to be combined with the 75th Anniversary Victory parade and then successful regional elections in the Autumn as a coronation of the ruler for the next 16 years.

That is until the virus spoilt the plans. Initially trying to ignore the virus, the President claimed Russia was well protected, but as the numbers infected grew particularly in Moscow, and hospitals became overwhelmed, a lock-down could no longer be avoided. Except it wasn’t called that, but a ‘non-working week’, then a ‘non-working month’ and so on. Most significantly, for the first time in twenty years, Putin ditched his ‘power vertical’ and passed responsibility for dealing with the pandemic onto regional leaders. This led to clear frictions not just between the Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin and the Kremlin, but also between the different regions.

Despite the virus, the Kremlin made clear its priority was the vote on constitutional change. The economic crisis which had started to develop at the end of last year but has now dramatically accelerated put pressure on the Kremlin to have the vote as early as possible. With both the Russian Central Bank and the IMF expecting GDP to fall by 6–7% this year and unemployment already escalating, they could not risk having a vote later in the year when Putin’s ratings are already plummeting.

Plebiscite prioritised

On June 8th, the very day when the number of infected by the coronavirus in Russia went over half a million and, it appears, against the initial resistance of Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin, Putin announced that the ‘lock-down’ measures were to be eased ‘on a region by region’ basis. In fact, the virus is still spreading across Russia with several regions far from their peak. But all sorts of measures have been taken, including an instruction from the health ministry not to include positive tests in the figures if people are asymptomatic, to keep the statistics low. In many regions, there simply are not enough tests.

Main amendment hidden

In the past there has been the use of fraud in elections, but this time the Kremlin has pulled out all possible stops. Firstly, the main change allowing Putin two more terms was hidden amongst 206 others — some populist, although meaningless, measures such as the indexing of pensions and improvement in the minimum wage as well as some intended to appeal to the more backward layers of Russian society — such as enshrining marriage as between one man and one woman. Another change defines the Russian language and people as the foundation of the state — in effect relegating all other nationalities who live in the Russian Federation to the status of a second rate people. All changes were included in one amendment. For weeks, during the lock-down, television advertising was dominated by propaganda highlighting all these issues — the extension of the Presidential term was barely mentioned.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, the Electoral commission announced that no campaigning against the changes would be allowed.

Bribery, pressure and QR codes

Still opinion polls indicated that support for the amendments was not guaranteed. So the voting rules were changed — in two regions including Moscow electronic voting was allowed and the period for voting was extended from one day to one week. Staff of the local polling stations were expected to go door to door to collect votes. These changes made it almost impossible for independent observers to monitor the voting with the aim of preventing manipulation.

Other already traditional methods of ensuring a turnout were stepped up. Those working in the state sector and large private companies were instructed to vote on pain of wage cuts or other sanctions and expected to take photos of their vote once cast. A special IT system using QR codes was introduced to make sure that all who work for these organisations voted. The QR system was first used in Moscow to control people leaving their homes during lockdown. Students were often threatened with not getting their diplomas or with expulsion if they didn’t vote. The Head of the armed forces proudly announced that over 99% of personnel had participated.

A widespread campaign to encourage people to vote using bribes and other monetary inducements was conducted. In some regions, pensioners were told they would get grocery discount vouchers. In other regions electoral commissions organised lotteries offering cars and flats as prizes.

Manipulation of the count

This was still not enough. Manipulation of the counting of votes reached a scale not yet seen. In one polling station in St Petersburg over 500 ballot papers obviously filled in by the same person were found, while in other cases the genuine count as recorded by the electoral official was entered into the national electronic counting system using completely different figures. Sergey Shpilkin, a prominent Russian physicist, who has previously identified electoral fraud using statistical methods has produced graphics demonstrating large scale vote manipulation. He estimated that at least 22 million votes for the amendments were “anomalous”.

So while the Kremlin is boasting about its ‘triumph’, a more sober analysis taking into account the ‘anomalous’ votes indicates that less than a third of the population approved the changes, a significant proportion of whom did so because their jobs and wages were under threat if they didn’t. Significantly 16 million officially voted against, whilst there is also a significant layer who simply refused to take part in the vote in protest.

Society split

Rather than being a resounding display of support, this plebiscite has actually demonstrated to a growing section of the population the complete cynicism of the Kremlin. No-one will believe that nearly 80% of the population are fully behind the Kremlin.

Rather than uniting the population behind a popular President, this referendum has succeeded in deepening the divide in society with now a very significant minority not just opposed to his continued rule but increasingly angry at the way this vote has been manipulated. This is particularly marked in the large cities and amongst the youth.

Ineffective opposition

Although there are divisions developing within the ruling elite, it still presents a consolidated position behind their leader, however, the opposition is not. The liberal bourgeois opposition completely abdicated responsibility in this referendum. In part this is due to their fear that the wider population, rather than just the intelligentsia and petit-bourgeois would be mobilized in opposition. In general, their position was to boycott the whole referendum. Even Navalnii, who has proved to be a relatively skillful judge of mood, fell into this trap. Naturally the Stalinist and near Stalinist left, which has anyway become increasingly irrelevant in recent years,’ also completely boycotted the process. Isolated individuals within the stalinist left argued against the boycott from a non-marxist position, saying that the ‘no’ and ‘boycott’ campaigns should ‘unite their camps’. But forming such a block with the liberal organisations would have been a fatal mistake that would have disarmed the left in arguing for working class opposition to the referendum.

The No campaign

In the end just two organisations made a clear call to vote no to the amendments to the constitution. The ‘Net’ campaign which appeared in the later stages of the campaign consisted of a layer of public figures such as journalists who could probably be described as ‘left liberals’, but who were weak in their arguments and indecisive in their opposition.

The other organization was ‘Sotsialisticheskaya Alternativa’ ISA in Russia which as soon as the final date for the vote was announced stepped up its campaign calling for a ‘No’ vote to the constitutional amendment. It was supported, of course, by Socialist Feminist Alternative, the Virus Trade Union and Community, the union for students and youth. The very first post by SA calling for a no vote argued this was necessary to protest against the regime’s policies in the interests of the bureaucrat-thieves and oligarchs. It said a no vote was needed to answer the increase in the pension age, lies to medical staff, the break-up of social welfare, the growth in repression and police violence, and to oppose mass sackings, unemployment and poverty as well as systematic sexism and homophobia. This was rapidly ‘liked’ by 43,000 people, mainly youth as in many cities our placards and leaflets were reprinted and used in agitation in favour of a no vote.

Although still a small organization this response shows the huge potential there is for a class based left wing opposition now in Russia. As the economic crisis develops, it is clear that the fight for democratic rights and against police repression will increase in importance as the struggle by workers to defend their social rights, jobs and living standards develops. We are determined to step up our campaigning to offer a genuine democratic socialist alternative to the current authoritarian capitalist regime.