As polls in 76 of Russia's 83 regions were beginning to close on March 14, Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the Russian parliament and the No. 2 member of the ruling United Russia party (Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is head honcho), opened an evening press conference. It seemed like it should be a grim night for the UR spokesman. The elections were the first since blatant fraud during the Oct. 11 regional vote triggered a major political crisis, causing even the token opposition to walk out of the federal parliament for a week and forcing President Dmitry Medvedev to address the deeply rotten resources-distribution trough that, in Russia, is usually referred to as the "electoral system."
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Worse for Gryzlov, this time the scam seemed to be failing. Despite continual reports of polling-place fraud, it seemed that months of sporadic but well-attended protests around the country had made a dent in United Russia's hegemony. For the first time ever, the party failed to lock up results that once regularly topped the two-thirds mark. In Boris Yeltsin's home region of Sverdlovsk, United Russia walked away with only 39 percent of the vote (the last time Sverdlovsk voted, in 2007, UR pulled in 59 percent). Irkutsk elected a Communist mayor with over 62 percent.
But Gryzlov looked rested, cheerful, as if he wasn't standing in front of a crowd of reporters waiting to grill him on the upset. Most bizarrely, unlike the be-suited party notables flanking him on the dais, Gryzlov was wearing a thick sweater whose shade of opulent ivory implied visits to Courchevel and half-finished glasses of mulled wine.
Surprised, a reporter from a state wire asked Gryzlov if he thought wearing a sweater to an elections press conference was appropriate.
Gryzlov chuckled and said that it was, because this was in fact his lucky sweater. "I only wear this sweater on election day," he explained. "It's a tradition that began many years ago, and we always win." The sweater, he added, "symbolizes our victory."
Gryzlov's sweater wasn't just for show: Sunday's elections were actually a major victory for his party. Yes, there were UR violations -- tales of vodka drinking at the polling places in Tula, bused-in factory workers in Yekaterinburg -- though, United Russia hastened to add, the opposition committed infractions, too. Yes, United Russia had suffered electoral setbacks, gaining its usual stratospheric figures only in the oil-and-gas-rich Arctic wasteland of Yamalo-Nenets autonomous okrug, with 65 percent of the vote. Yes, the Communists had doubled their showings in certain places, and yes, even Yabloko, the liberal party of the also-rans, had done well, garnering an unprecedented 11.4 percent of the vote in Tula.
But after October's debacle, Sunday was exactly what United Russia needed: The elections got minimal press, the vote was relatively clean, and those who needed to be fed got their piece of the pie. The shrewd party decision to give up some local votes allows the Kremlin-engineered system of plunder to carry on with only very minor adjustments.
In understanding the Kremlin's strategy over the last few months, it's hard to overstate the impact of October. The vote-rigging was beyond blatant. There was compulsory voting, forgery and vote-buying, intimidation and physical violence, and carouseling (taking a bus of loyal voters around to various polling stations so they can vote more than once). And even though everyone, including employees of the Russian Central Election Commission, understands that the vote will always be doctored in United Russia's favor, the unnecessary brazenness in the regional elections shocked even the loyal, token opposition, which lost way too many seats to stay quiet. Unexpectedly, they stormed out of the federal Duma and refused to come back until they met with the president. It took all the Kremlin's men -- and prizes -- to bring them back again.
Since then, the climate has been risky for the Kremlin for other reasons, as the touted post-crisis recovery fails to materialize for most Russians. Unemployment continues to creep upwards (it is officially around 10 percent, but many think it is actually much higher), and 300 or so "mono-towns" -- one-industry cities -- are still bankrupt, hooked up to a tenuous trickle of Kremlin bailout.
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