UNITED RUSSIA’S ELECTORAL SUCCESS: A CPSU EFFECT?
In 2004 United Russia, the “Presidential Party,” had only one task: to reassure the reelection of Putin as president. Although it was the Presidential Party, Putin was not a member. It was a huge bureaucratic apparatus in the service of the president. The party soon became a victim of its own success. After Putin’s reelection in 2004 there was a great influx of new members—especially from amongst bureaucrats, civil servants, and regional leaders, who rallied to “the party of power”—just as they had done before, in Soviet times, when they adhered to the CPSU (though at that time the CPSU was the only choice). This “CPSU effect” had three consequences:
• First, a majority of the new members was less driven by ideological considerations than by career prospects.
• Second, the new mass basis made the party ideologically still more nebulous and colorless than it already was.[36]
• Third, the influx of new members brought into the party people with different ideas and ideological backgrounds, which soon led to a pressure for the formation of “party wings.” These problems became more acute in 2008, when Medvedev succeeded Putin as president and Putin became prime minister. From that moment it was in Putin’s interest to change the “President’s Party” into “the Prime Minister’s Party” or better, into “Putin’s Party” tout court.
In November 2007, some months before the presidential elections of 2008, Putin began to criticize the party. He said: “Does it [United Russia] look like the ideal political structure? Of course not. There is still no established ideology, principles for which the overwhelming majority of the members of this party would be prepared to fight and to accept its authority.”[37] He added that “it is close to the state. And, as a rule, all kinds of criminals try to infiltrate into such structures…. The goal of these people is not the welfare of the people, but their personal enrichment. And, of course, by such actions, they compromise the state and the party.”[38] Putin formulated here two new objectives: first, the need for United Russia to develop its own ideology, and, second, the need to purge the party of unwanted, “criminal” elements. Shortly thereafter, on April 15, 2008, Putin accepted the position of chairman of United Russia. In 2010, however, the announced purge was still waiting to be implemented. The party membership had not diminished, but had grown from 1,980 million in April 2008 to 2,026 million in May 2010. United Russia had become a huge bureaucratic organization with 2,598 local divisions, employing 40,000 employees.[39] It was clearly on the way to becoming a clone of the Soviet-era CPSU. However, the other goal formulated by Putin in 2007: giving United Russia an ideology, was in full implementation. Marlène Laruelle wrote that
a new wave of Russian nationalism has been emerging that broadly exceeds the influence of older strains of nationalism, whether founded on Slavophilism, Soviet nostalgia, or Eurasianist theories….[40] Western observers and political scientists have a tendency to reserve the label “nationalist” only for small extremist groups or political parties, such as Gennady Ziuganov’s Communist Party and Vladimir Zhirinovski’s LDPR. It prevents them from taking stock of the existence of an ideological continuum that encompasses the entire Russian political spectrum. Indeed… the presidential party United Russia is itself thoroughly permeated with ideological debates about the nature of the country’s national identity. Owing to its ability to co-opt doctrinaires, to finance them, and to broadcast their messages to media and public opinion, it has even become one of the major actors of the nationalist narrative.[41]
United Russia, far from distancing itself from the ultranationalist discourses of Zhirinovsky’s LDPR and Zyuganov’s Communist Party, had begun to develop its own version of a “patriotic” ideology. This “ideologization process” had three characteristics:
1. It was related to the formation of “wings” in the party.
2. It was led by the Kremlin.
3. It was not restricted to pure party politics, but embedded in a broader “Gramscian” strategy of securing an overall ideological “hegemony” in Russia.
THE BEAR WANTS TO FLY: HOW UNITED RUSSIA GOT DIFFERENT PARTY WINGS
In 2005 a debate had already started inside United Russia over the possibility of organizing different ideological currents inside the party. The initiative for this was taken by Vladimir Pligin, president of the Constitutional Legislation Committee of the Duma. Pligin published a text, cosigned by some thirty colleagues, in which they asked for ideological platforms in the party. The party leadership, however, was not in favor of this initiative. Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Duma and party leader, was categorically against. He declared “that there will be no organizationally formalized platforms or wings in United Russia. Discussion is not only natural and necessary… but discussion must not be to the detriment of party discipline.”[42] And he added: “We cannot and have not the right to divide ourselves into right and left.”[43] Gryzlov was acting in line with an established Soviet tradition of “democratic centralism.” He reminded his audience that already “Lenin sternly warned about the adverse effects of factionalism.”[44] Gryzlov went on to repeat the official party ideology, which was, according to him, located in the center. It was “social conservatism,” which intended “to maintain order, social stability, [and] unconditional defense by the government of legally acquired property.” This “social conservatism,” he went on, “was broader than any political current, because one can find elements of it in the traditional left and right.”[45] An ideology that finds its elements “in the traditional left and right” is necessarily centrist. In 2005, when Gryzlov wrote these lines, order and status quo were, indeed, still the most important objectives of the regime. This conservatism was logical for a party in power. Would it be enough, however, to stay ahead when competing against the parties and movements that were propagating a passionate brand of patriotism and were animated by great-Russian chauvinism and ultranationalist fervor? Konstantin Kosachev, a Duma member of United Russia, dared to challenge Gryzlov in an article titled “Why Would a Bear Need Wings?” Kosachev wrote: “What some hastened to call ‘wings’—something that, as party leader Boris Gryzlov said, a bear, which is the party’s symbol, hardly needs—should be more aptly seen as working groups… and not something generating internal conflict within the party.”[46] Kosachev won, because Gryzlov’s initial negative response could not prevent discussion groups being set up before long within United Russia.
One of these was the Center for Social and Conservative Policy. In 2007 this faction started the Russian Project, led by the popular TV presenter Ivan Demidov and Andrey Isaev, a Duma deputy. The project initiated a discussion on the Russian nation, national identity, and “Russianness” (Russkost). Thereupon the Kremlin decided that the time was ripe for ideological discussions in the party and in April 2008 United Russia formalized the authorization for clubs to be created, on the condition that they did not develop into factions. A Political Clubs Charter was signed by three clubs: the Center for Social and Conservative Policy, the Club of 4 November, and the State Patriotic Club. These three clubs were seen as expressing the new pluriformity in the party. The Club of 4 November—connected with (nonstate) business circles—was considered to represent the “liberal” wing, whereas the State Patriotic Club was more right-wing. The Center for Social Conservative Policy, supported by Gryzlov, took a middle position. But it soon became clear that despite these different labels the differences between the party clubs were only marginal and they all shared the party’s new ideology: ultranationalism (called patriotism). This did not mean that the old ideology centered on the keywords of “status quo” and “order” had been abandoned. These objectives were still present, but they were repackaged and recycled into a more marketable product of national grandeur, great power status, historical pride, and imperial ambition.
36
The members were not the only ones who were “gray.” Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow and himself one of the founders of United Russia, said in an interview, “the leaders of that party are weak and gray in terms of their potential—organizationally, intellectually, and so on…. [Duma speaker] Boris Gryzlov, as the boss of the party—not the leader, but the boss—is a gray personality, a person who has always been a servant and who is incapable of having an independent position.” (Cf. “Moscow’s Bitter Ex-Boss Luzhkov Lashes Out at Kremlin, Calls United Russia ‘Shameful,’”
37
Vladimir Putin, “Zachem ya vozglavil spisok ‘Edinoy Rossii’” (November 13, 2007). http://www.kreml.org/media/165463628?mode=print.
39
Cf. Paul Goble, “United Russia Party Now has 40,000 Apparatchiks, Moscow Analyst Says,”
44
Robert Service,
46
Konstantin Kosachev, “Why Would a Bear Need Wings?”