The Prokhorov affair brought the Kremlin’s manipulation fully into the open, ridiculing its system of “managed democracy.” However, it was not to put an end to the Kremlin’s machinations. In May 2011, at the same time that Prokhorov was selected to become a party leader, Vladislav Surkov and his associates were already preparing another plan: the formation of an “All-Russia People’s Front” (Obshcherossiyskiy Narodnyy Front), in which United Russia would participate together with other parties and organizations. Putin officially presented the plan on May 6, 2011, at a conference of United Russia in Volgograd. One of the parties invited to participate in this Front was the successor organization of Rodina, an ultranationalist and xenophobic party. Its former leader, Dmitry Rogozin, who had become Russian permanent representative to NATO, was called back to Russia to organize its relaunch under the name Rodina-Congress of Russian Communities.[35] For small parties it was attractive to participate in the Front because, not hindered by the extremely high 7 percent threshold, they would get a guaranteed number of seats in the Duma. For United Russia this formula was interesting because, while keeping its absolute majority, it could plan in advance the “diversity” in the new parliament. Also representatives of Kremlin-friendly trade unions, agricultural associations, veterans’ organizations, and even car-owners organizations were mentioned as possible candidates for joining the Front.[36] On the website of “United Russia” the Front was welcomed as a “modernization” of the party, which would create a new, broad coalition around the party—some kind of “silent majority” representing different ideological positions: “left-wing people, right-wing liberals, [and] moderate nationalists.”[37] Up to 25 percent of the positions on the Front list would be reserved for these outsiders. It is certainly no coincidence that this new “All-Russia People’s Front” was a faithful copy of the “National Front” of the former German Democratic Republic. In the GDR it was the only list in the elections for the Volkskammer, the East German parliament.
Andrey Kolesnikov made another comparison in the Novaya Gazeta. “Putin’s Popular Front,” he wrote, “is Mussolini’s corporation: everything from Shmakov’s unions [Mikhail Shmakov was the chairman of FITUR, the Russian trade union federation which unites 49 trade unions and counts 25 million members, MHVH] to the women’s organisations, all under one roof…. In implementing the idea of a popular front, I see the principle enunciated by Il Duce in 1925: ‘All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.’”[38] Putin’s Front, however, still left some place for other parties, thereby rescuing Russia’s “pluralism.” Real opposition parties, such as the Peoples’ Freedom Party (Parnas) of Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, and Mikhail Kasyanov, were eliminated beforehand from this “pluralist” system. On June 22, 2011, the Justice Ministry refused to register the party.[39] The Duma elections of December 2011 came too early for the All-Russia People’s Front to play a role. But after the election ”victory” of United Russia, which was characterized by massive fraud and the growing estrangement of the urban electorate from this party, the Kremlin began to purge the party of its most corrupt elements. At the same time it began to build the All-Russia People’s Front as a political formation to capture the votes of the conservative and anti-Western segment of the Russian electorate in the next election. In order to give the—mostly provincial—representatives of this “silent majority” a chance to enter parliament, Vladimir Putin, on March 1, 2013, submitted a draft law providing for a restoration of a mixed electoral system in which one half of the MPs are to be elected in single-mandate constituencies.[40] By May 20, 2013, organizing committees of the All-Russia People’s Front were created in all Russian regions. It was telling that Moscow and St. Petersburg would be the last regions where the Front opened offices.[41] The founding congress of the Front, renamed into “People’s Front for Russia,” took place on June 12, 2013, the official “Russia Day” holiday. At the end the chairman of the congress said that he still had “a very stupid question.” He asked: “Who do we choose as leader of our movement?” In the room they started to chant: “Putin, Putin.” “Shall we vote? There are no other candidates? Vladimir Vladimirovich, I congratulate you with all my heart.”[42]
However, the new “People’s Front for Russia” was not the only safety valve, invented by the Kremlin, to save the system. When, at the Duma elections of December 4, 2011, the disaffected liberal intelligentsia of Moscow and Saint Petersburg turned away en masse from United Russia and neither did they vote for the fake “Right Cause” party (which, after Prokhorov left, only got 0.6 percent of the vote), Vladislav Surkov proposed in an interview a new fake party for “angry urban communities.”[43] In reality, however, the next Kremlin creation was not the promised party for “angry urban communities,” but a party for a quite different audience: the conservative Cossacks and their sympathizers. On November 24, 2012, the Cossack Party of the Russian Federation was founded. There are about 7 million Cossacks in Russia, mostly living in frontier regions. It is a nationalist electorate, deeply Orthodox, and dedicated to Putin, who, in 2005, was given the title of Cossack colonel—a title previously held by the tsars. According to the president of the party, Sergey Bondarev, a former United Russia MP and deputy governor of the Rostov region, “the party is not only for Cossacks, but for all citizens of Russia. We are not left-wing and not right-wing, we are straight ahead.”[44] The abbreviation of the new party, CaPRF, was almost the same as CPRF, the abbreviation of the Communist Party, which led to protests from the Communists, who accused the Kremlin of wanting to siphon off voters from their party.
After the Duma elections of December 2012, when the oppositionist blogger Aleksey Navalny denounced United Russia as the partiya zhulikov i vorov (party of swindlers and thieves), Putin is relying more and more on building the People’s Front, while letting Medvedev take on the job of purging and “modernizing” United Russia. One of Medvedev’s “modernizing measures” was a proposal to give opponents of United Russia the opportunity to express their views at the “Civil University,” a new educational project for party members, launched by him on March 27, 2013. “If these are people who criticize the party for some mistakes, tricks, lack of activism, for some issues or others, I believe that would only benefit us,” Medvedev said.[45]
36
Cf. Robert Coalson, “United Russia, Putin Prepare For National Elections,”
37
“Ignatov: Narodnoy front: modernizatsiya ‘Yedinoy Rossii,’”
39
Cf. Ilya Kharlamov, “Court Refuses to Register Russia’s PARNAS Party,”
40
Cf. Jadwiga Rogoza, “The Kremlin’s New Political Project,”
41
“All-Russia People’s Front Organising Committees to Be Created in All Regions by May 20,”
44
Julia Smirnova,“Wie Russlands patriotische Kosaken Moskau erobern,”