RUSSIAN ELECTION WATCH



[pic]RUSSIAN ELECTION WATCH [pic]

No.2, September 1999

Graham T. Allison, Director Writer, Editor: Henry E. Hale

Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project Production Director: Melissa C. Carr

John F. Kennedy School of Government Production Assistant: Emily Goodhue

Harvard University Consultant: Vladimir Boxer

TOP NEWS of the MONTH

• Yeltsin fires Prime Minister Stepashin, anoints Putin “successor” for presidency

• Fatherland enlists Primakov, All Russia in alliance that rivals Communists

• Yabloko signs Stepashin up for #2 spot on party list, declares self “ready for power”

• Broad Kremlin-backed coalition of “former reformers” falters

• Communists lose allies to Fatherland-All Russia, smaller radical blocs

• Fatherland candidate fails to make runoff in Sverdlovsk gubernatorial election

SEE INSIDE

• On the Campaign Trail: Your crash course on the election campaign p.2

• Insider Information: Some of Russia’s most respected political analysts explain the events of August p.6

• Spin Control: Russia’s three largest parties put their spin on key stories p.5

• PLUS: the latest polls, important dates, what “left” and “right” mean in Russia, and a key to the new coalitions

TRACKING THE POLLS

Parliament VTsIOM Presidency VTsIOM POF

August June August June August June

Communist Party 31 30 Zyuganov 26 24 16 17

Fatherland-All Russia 16 14 Primakov 19 14 22 17

Yabloko 10 13 Yavlinsky 9 12 6 9

LDPR 5 8 Luzhkov 9 15 8 13

Gov. Tuleev’s Party 4 n.a. Stepashin 7 5 11 7

Our Home is Russia 4 4 Zhirinovsky 6 6 7 6

Women of Russia 3 n.a. Lebed 5 7 5 6

New Force (Kirienko) 3 5 Kirienko 3 4 n.a. n.a.

Lebed’s Party 3 7 Chernomyrdin 3 2 2 2

Agrarian Party 2 3 Nemtsov 2 n.a. n.a. n.a.

Voice of Russia 2 n.a. Putin 2 n.a. 1 n.a.

Right Cause 2 2 Pamfilova 1 n.a. n.a. n.a.

• VTsIOM poll: August 20-24, 1999, 1600 respondents. Percentages are from the total of those who said they intended to vote.

• Public Opinion Foundation (POF) poll: August 21-22, 1999.

IMPORTANT DATES

• September 25 Parties, Duma candidates can start registering with Central Election Commission

• October 25 Deadline for parties to get on the ballot

• December 19 Duma Election (Yeltsin has now formally announced this date)

• July 9 Presidential Election (expected – Yeltsin must make announcement early 2000)

ON THE CAMPAIGN TRAIL

While August is down time in Washington and many other capitals, this is not so in Moscow. August 1991 saw a failed coup that triggered the collapse of the Soviet Union and August 1998 witnessed a financial meltdown that brought down a government. August 1999 did not disappoint. Yeltsin fired his fourth prime minister in just 18 months and Russia’s leading politicians forged two coalitions, one with Primakov and the other with Stepashin, capable of competing with the Communists in the December Duma voting.

(Does this mean the end of the Communist-Reformist standoff in Russia? Read Bunin & Makarenko on p.10.)

YELTSIN NAMES HIS CHOSEN “HEIR”

Predictions that Sergei Stepashin would not last 100 days as Prime Minister were right. On August 9, Yeltsin announced that he had fired Stepashin and nominated Vladimir Putin, chief of the FSB (former KGB) and secretary of the Security Council. While changes of PM have become rather routine, Yeltsin spiced up the story by declaring that Putin (pictured above) was also to be his hand-picked successor as President – to be elected fair and square, of course.

Although Yeltsin praised the departing Stepashin, analysts noted that he had not prevented some of the Kremlin-unfriendly political alliances described below. Indeed, he had stated publicly that the Prime Minister should be neutral during the election campaign. Putin, Yeltsin said, had the wherewithal to alter Russia's political landscape and lead it into the next century. Determined not to provoke a clash with Yeltsin that could cost them the resources of office they use to get reelected, Duma members quickly approved Putin, noting that he differed little from Stepashin.

Few observers give this low-profile administrator, who once worked as a spy in East Germany, much chance of becoming president. Not only has he never proven himself as a major public figure, but Yeltsin's endorsement is widely seen as a kiss of political death. Nevertheless, the aging President has given Putin a chance to prove himself as a leader, and if he justifies his reputation as a skilled administrator, his authority may begin to rise just as Stepashin's did before him.

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (POO-teen)

Born: Leningrad, October 7, 1952

Degrees: Law, Economics

1975-90: KGB official, agent

1990-94: Mayor’s Administration, St. Petersburg

1994-96: First Deputy Mayor

1996-98: Yeltsin Administration: property

management, regional affairs

1998-99: Director, FSB (ex-KGB)

Mar.-Aug. 1999: Security Council Secretary

Aug. 1999: Prime Minister

July 2000: President?

BUILDING BLOCS

Fatherland-All Russia. Russia has a new electoral powerhouse. First, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov won the commitment of the powerful governors’ bloc, All Russia, to join his Fatherland movement in creating the “left-center” alliance “Fatherland-All Russia.” Then, on August 17, Russia’s most popular politician, former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov (pictured here), formally accepted Luzhkov’s longstanding invitation to lead the new bloc. At the same time, the Agrarian Party also joined the coalition as a junior partner. Fatherland-All Russia, as the bloc continues to be known, immediately became the favorite to gain the largest number of seats in the Duma and to provide the winning presidential candidate in summer 2000. Primakov’s popularity, Fatherland’s organization, and the governors’ political machines are formidable assets. The bloc is also full of self-proclaimed “proven managers” who can sell the popular message that prudence and competence, not youth and economic theory, are the keys to Russian revival.

One big unanswered question, of course, is how Russia’s two leading presidential contenders – Primakov and Luzhkov – will decide which of them will run. While Primakov’s true intentions remain uncertain, Luzhkov has publicly announced that he would defer to Primakov if the latter launches a presidential campaign. Luzhkov would naturally want to be sure that he is the one to succeed Primakov, who is now pushing 70 years of age. This deal could be sealed if a Duma dominated by Fatherland-All Russia, together with regional leaders, amends the Constitution to create a beefed-up prime ministership or even to restore the vice presidency. In this scenario, Primakov would focus on his beloved foreign affairs while Luzhkov (pictured here) would run the economy.

(Is Fatherland-All Russia nothing new? Read Golosov on p.14. Read Markov on p.16 for a different opinion.)

Yabloko-Stepashin. Leading liberal presidential hopeful Grigory Yavlinsky and freshly fired Prime Minister Stepashin (pictured below to Yavlinsky’s left) shocked the political establishment by announcing that Stepashin would run as the number two man on the party list of Yavlinsky’s Yabloko Party. This move came as a surprise because Yabloko had long blasted what it saw as Yeltsin’s corrupt governments for blackening the good name of economic reform, refusing to join forces with any official “tainted” by such public service.

Vouching for Stepashin’s honesty and reliability as a corruption-fighter, Yabloko used the opportunity to declare that it had shed its prima donna image and was now “ready for power.” Stepashin, for his part, attached himself to a party that is sure to clear the 5% barrier into parliament and that adds credibility to his claims to be an honest battler against corruption. As with the Primakov-Luzhkov tandem, questions remain as to whether one of the two will defer to the other’s presidential ambitions, but both have said that this is a question best left until after the Duma elections.

(Is this the last chance for the liberals? Read Gelman on p.12. Or is this bloc a paper tiger? Read Nikonov on p.6.)

Left-Wing Forces. The Communist Party has been much less successful in its coalition-building efforts, which are now in deep trouble. In Fall 1998, it decided to run for the Duma on its own, shedding smaller allies in the “Popular Patriotic Union” that had entered Parliament on its coattails in 1995. Over the course of the Spring, however, the Communist leadership increasingly came to believe that this had been a mistake, that they would be better off keeping the other groups as part of a united team.

When the Communist Party, led by Gennady Zyuganov (pictured below), called on the other left-wing forces to join it in a broad coalition called “For Victory” in early August, it was too late. The bulk of the Agrarian Party left to join Fatherland-All Russia, as did Aleksei Podberezkin’s slavophilic “Spiritual Heritage.” The radical communists formed their own blocs, one of them openly calling itself Stalinist and featuring Stalin’s grandson in the leadership. While the Communist Party is sure to finish among the top three parties in the new Duma, it is likely to be more isolated in the parliament, squeezed by the more broadly palatable leftism of Fatherland-All Russia and losing votes to smaller radical parties unlikely to clear the five-percent barrier.

Union of Right-Wing Forces. The liberal reformists with government experience, known widely as the “right-wingers,” are notorious for their inability to work together outside of government. August found them facing the same old problems. Former Prime Ministers Gaidar, Chernomyrdin, Kirienko, and Stepashin engaged in seemingly endless negotiations, at times appearing on the verge of forging a formidable coalition with the blessing of Yeltsin’s Kremlin.

These efforts came largely to naught. To the consternation of Yeltsin’s “Family,” Chernomyrdin refused to be associated with Gaidar or to give Kirienko one of the top three spots in the proposed coalition’s leadership. With Chernomyrdin out, Stepashin chose not to reinforce an image as part of the governing clique and instead joined Yabloko.

This left Gaidar’s “Right Cause” and Kirienko’s “New Force” virtually alone, and these rump rightists in the end formed the “Union of Right-wing Forces” with Governor Konstantin Titov, leader of the governors’ bloc Voice of Russia. By that time, Titov’s “governors’ bloc” had shrunk to primarily Titov himself due to internal conflicts over whether to align with the right-wingers. Topping the “Union’s” party list are Sergei Kirienko (pictured center), Boris Nemtsov (right), and Irina Khakamada (left). The unpopular Gaidar and Chubais remain behind the scenes. Chernomyrdin’s “Our Home is Russia” managed to pluck away one former leader of Right Cause, Boris Fedorov, but now effectively plans to contest the Duma elections on its own. (Why did the rightists fail? Read Boxer p.8.)

Telling “Left” from “Right” in Russia

Analysts disagree on how to characterize Russia’s political spectrum, but most resort to a standard “left-right” axis.

• Right: favoring the smallest government role in economics and advocating a rapid transition

• Left: favoring the highest degrees of state control over the economy and minimal transition

• Centrist: favoring gradual economic reform and a targeted state role in the economy, especially state support for restructuring older industries

• Patriots: characterized less by economic views than by nationalism, in terms of either cultural values or the need to restore Russia’s Great Power status in the international arena

A Failed Bloc. In one of the more comic episodes of the election season so far, Boris Berezovsky, reputedly Yeltsin’s modern-day Rasputin, went on a tour of some major Russian regions in August. Word soon got out that he was trying to form his own bloc in preparation

for the Russian elections, targeting such tough-guy governors as Gen. Aleksandr Lebed of Krasnoyarsk, former Vice President Aleksandr Rutskoi of Kursk, and former presidential candidate Aman Tuleev of Kemerovo. The working name of the bloc, Muzhiki, roughly translates as “Macho Men.”

Aside from their bravado, these governors found little reason to work together, especially under

the auspices of the unpopular Berezovsky (pictured here), and the effort collapsed. Tuleev has shown signs of backing the Communist-led coalition and Lebed will likely field his own party, which stands a reasonable chance of clearing the five-percent barrier.

FATHERLAND SLIPS IN SVERDLOVSK

On August 29, citizens of Sverdlovsk Region went to the polling places to vote in gubernatorial elections. No candidate won 50 percent of the vote, meaning that a runoff will have to be held in September. As expected, incumbent Eduard Rossel (pictured here) easily made it into the second round of balloting, surviving charges that he, an ethnic German, was linked to local fascist groups. The big surprise was that Arkady Chernetsky, the mayor of the region’s capital city, came in third and thereby failed to make the runoff. Chernetsky had been strongly backed by Luzhkov’s Fatherland, provoking Rossel to declare that the Moscow Mayor had betrayed him. While this was a clear defeat for Fatherland itself, Rossel did receive signs of support from Primakov, Fatherland’s new partner, illustrating the challenges that the Fatherland-All Russia alliance will have in producing a united front in some regions.

The Game Takes Shape

On the same day that he dismissed Stepashin, President Yeltsin decreed the date of the 1999 State Duma election to be December 19 and made official the beginning of the campaign period. Russia’s 141 parties have until October 24 to submit their candidate lists to the Central Election Commission (CEC). The International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES) is working to train journalists throughout Russia on election coverage and will continue working with the CEC and regional election commissions to provide support.

Information from the International Foundation for Election Systems’ September report. For more from IFES, see:

A KEY TO THE NEW COALITIONS

Fatherland-All Russia = Primakov + Luzhkov + All Russia (governors) + Agrarian Party

Yabloko = Yavlinsky + Stepashin

For Victory! = Communist Party + small allies

Union of Right-Wing Forces = Gaidar/Chubais + Nemtsov + Kirienko + Titov

SPIN CONTROL: IN THE PARTIES’ OWN WORDS

SDI posed a simple question about the campaign to top officials of a small set of leading Russian parties: What event of the past month (August 1999), in your opinion, will have the greatest effect on the results of the Duma elections in December 1999 and why? Here are the answers.

COMMUNIST PARTY

Yevgeny Primakov's agreement to head the electoral coalition “Fatherland - All Russia.” The previous year gave rise to the high popularity of Primakov, thanks to his personal qualities as well as to his actions as the head of the government of the Russian Federation. He was appointed during a most difficult period and he was able to stop a series of destructive tendencies. The increase in his authority was assisted by the left opposition’s, including the Communists’, positive attitude towards him. The unjustified dismissal of Primakov only increased the level of his authority. At the same time, the campaign-related activeness of August is characteristic only of the top political elite of the country. The public (voters) does not, in practice, take part in the process of forming coalitions. In August, processes and events that could sharply change the pre-election situation and become defining factors gathered strength: a fuel-energy crisis in the face of the coming winter, increases in prices for basic food products, etc.

-- Tamara Gudima, Duma

FATHERLAND/ALL RUSSIA

In August, Fatherland united with the movement of regional leaders “All Russia” and the Agrarian Party of Russia to create a new electoral bloc. The popular former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov became the bloc’s leader. Fatherland softened its image as the “Party of Moscow” and significantly gained political clout in the ethnic republics of the Northern Caucasus and the Volga region along with sturdy popularity in the regions of central Russia and a part of the Urals and Western Siberia. It is especially worth mentioning the fact that the second intellectual center of Russia, St. Petersburg, joined the bloc. The Agrarian Party broke away from the leftist communist union that had previously been considered monolithic. The Agrarians who went with Fatherland were those behind whom stand large and efficient producers of agricultural products who have successfully adapted to market conditions.

-- Fatherland Representative

YABLOKO

The dismissal of the government of Russia and the fact that the ex-premier of Russia, Sergei Stepashin, and his supporters have joined Yabloko. Today Russia is on the verge of a new epoch. The task at hand in the elections of 1999 and 2000 is not only the transition of power, but also the transition from an authoritarian, corrupt, and half-federal regime into a genuine democratic and lawful state. The Yabloko party and its constant supporters cannot accomplish this task alone. Therefore a new electoral union has appeared, founded in the ideology that was announced by Sergei Stepashin: “I would not discard a single point from Yabloko’s program from my own program both as an individual and as head of government.” This is seriously changing the pre-election situation. First of all, the myth that Yabloko is not capable of joining a coalition because of the ambitions of its leaders has been dispelled. The path has been cleared for the unification of the majority - the people who have been deceived and betrayed by the regime. Secondly, the union, in the opinion of the experts, increases Yabloko’s chances in the December elections by one and a half to two times. -- Grigory Yavlinsky

INSIDER INFORMATION

Analysis of the Russian election campaign by leading Russian specialists

THE POLITICAL COMPATIBILITY TEST

WHY YAVLINSKY-STEPASHIN FAILS, PRIMAKOV-LUZHKOV PASSES

Vyacheslav Nikonov, Director

“Politika” Foundation, Moscow

A joke from Moscow goes – two groups of demonstrators meet at Red Square, one of which is communist and the other democratic. The communists are carrying a banner saying “Lenin is alive!” The democrats are carrying a banner saying “Yeltsin is healthy!”

During the past several years, beginning with Gorbachev’s perestroika, the West’s perception of Russia has been one of an irreconcilable struggle between “good” demo-crats and “bad” commun-ists. Obviously, this image has little to do with contemporary Russian politics and the campaign for the parliamentary elections that has just begun.

The percentage of people who think that Lenin is alive is not higher than 20%, and those who consider Yeltsin healthy - 3%. The outcome of the elections will be deter-mined by those three-quarters of the population who stick to more pragmatic views.

After splitting into two parties, the rightists, who represent former reform forces in the parliament, seem to have lost their only chance. This chance consisted in uniting Sergei Kirienko’s party New Force, Boris Nem-tsov’s party Right Cause, Viktor Chernomyrdin and Vladimir Ryzhkov’s party Our Home is Russia, as well as politicians Ana-toly Chubais, Yegor Gaidar, and Irina Khak-amada, under one popular leader.

Electorates with such mismatched moods make a bad union.

Only Sergei Stepashin, who has preserved the trust of the electorate even after his resignation from the post of Prime Min-ister, could have played the role of the “savior” of the right forces.

However, he did not choose to spend the rest of his life trying to recon-cile Gaidar with Vladimir Ryzhkov and clearing up the question of who was, after all, guilty for the economic collapse of last August – Chernomyrdin, Chubais or Kirienko. And thus, the right forces did not pass the test on compatibility.

Our Home is Russia has begun with 1% support, according to a poll by the Public Opinion Founda-tion on August 22-23. The alliance under Kirienko was sporting a somewhat brighter out-look before the union. New Force and Right Cause had 2% and 1% support, respectively. Thus it seemed that combined they would have had 3%.

However, if one takes a closer look at the structure of the electorate of New Force, one realizes that it was mostly composed of supporters of Stepashin, who at that point did not have his own party. Thus, the right coalition at best has 1.5% support and it is highly unlikely that the money and good will of the liberal mass media will seriously improve the situation.

It is a pity, because a fraction of liberal refor-mers in the parliament would be able to help pass much needed market legislation.

Stepashin has appeared compatible with Grigory Yavlinsky, which was surprising, keeping in mind the resilient reputat-ion of Yabloko’s leader as an opponent of any coalitions.

At first sight it seems that we have a very potent force when we add Stepashin’s 9% presiden-tial rating to Yabloko’s 8% parliamentary rating! However, a problem which arises here is the incompatibility of the electorates. It turns out that only 24% of Yav-linsky’s supporters trust the former Prime Minister whereas 31% do not. Even worse, 11% of Stepashin’s supporters trust the leadership of Yabloko and 63% do not trust them. Electorates with such mismatched moods make a bad union.

Nevertheless, one can still predict with confidence around 10-12% support for Yabloko in its new form, as well as the creation of the third biggest parliamentary fraction.

The biggest degree of compatibility, at least at this time, has been demonstrated by Yevgeny Primakov with Yuri Luzhkov’s Fatherland, Vladimir Yakovlev’s All Russia, and the majority of the Agrarian Party under the leadership of Mikhail Lapshin.

However, even here there is no simple addition of the ratings of all parties and politicians. Voters of all participants of the bloc react very well to Primakov’s candidacy. Still, in his own electoral index of support Luzhkov has only 29% with 43% of the electorate opposing him. This represents a potential problem if Primakov and the Mos-cow Mayor are not per-ceived as one monolithic entity. So far the bloc Fatherland-All Russia confidently comes out as a leader with 27% (before the union with Primakov it was 15%), which promises it more than one third of the seats in the new Duma.

The Communist Party (KPRF) heading the elec-toral bloc For Victory!, on the other hand, is deep in contradictions. Following the footsteps of Aleksei Podberezkin’s Spiritual Heritage, the Agrarian Party, the only big party in the bloc (besides the KPRF), officially aban-doned the union. There is nothing surprising in that decision, if one pays attention, because the Agrarians’ voters prefer Luzhkov and Stepashin to Gennady Zyuganov.

The ultra-leftist flank of the bloc For Victory! is also losing power. The Movement for Support of the Army has moved to run independently under the leadership of Communist deputies Viktor Ilyukhin and Albert Makashov. The Movement has commen-ced negotiations with the nationalistic Russian National Unity and with Sergei Baburin and Dmitry Rogozin’s Con-gress of Russian Communities (KRO-ROS).

Only Father-land-All Russia, the Communists, and Yabloko have guaran-teed chances to overcome the 5% barrier.

However, here as well it is unclear how the leadership of KRO-ROS, which has not previously demonstrated antisemit-ism, is going to become compatible with the “Jewish-phobic” Makashov.

There is no simple addition of the ratings of all coalition partners.

Even more difficult will be for the nationalists to strike a deal about anything with the communist-international-ists, who are determined to go to the elections on their own under the patronage of Viktor Anpilov’s Working Rus-sia or Viktor Tyulkin’s ultra-leftists.

It seems that on the ballot in December there will be a whole range of leftist and nationalist groups that hold more radical pos-itions than the KPRF.

However, so far this does not seem lethal for the KPRF. The ratings of Zyuganov’s party may have fallen to a record low in the past year (21%), but it has still regained the second pos-ition. None of the radical groups has more than 1% support. They do not even have slim chances for popularity growth unless there is some radicalization of the Communist electorate. And this is not going to happen, unless the Krem-lin bans the KPRF or de-cides to take Lenin’s body out from the Mausoleum.

Finally, there are two parties that have firmly decided not to enter any blocs and are counting on individual success. These are Vladimir Zhirinov-sky’s Liberal-Democratic Party of Russia and Aleksandr Lebed’s Peop-le’s Republican Party of Russia. They have no grounds for optimism, since only 6% of the voters are ready to vote for the former, and 5% for the latter.

Thus, one can conclude that only three election coalitions, Fatherland-All Russia, the Communists, and Yabloko have guaran-teed chances to overcome the 5% barrier. Only illegal actions by the authorities could stand in the way of these coalitions.

The LDPR’s and Lebed’s supporters are on the brink of overcoming the barrier. The right, ultra-left and nationalist forces run the risk of being left out. The political system has centered itself.

CULTURE CLASH IN THE COALITIONS

WHY YAVLINSKY & LUZHKOV BUILT THE STRONGEST BLOCS

Vladimir Boxer, Fellow

SDI Project, Harvard University

It seems that the major Russian political players have learned their lesson from the last parliamentary elections, during which all the best strategists’ schemes found themselves useless in the face of the laws of statistical distribution, and all but four parties failed to clear the 5% barrier.

The old trend towards political divisiveness is now gradually being replaced by a tendency to integrate.

While some of the emerging coalitions are obviously aimed just at the consolidation of parties’ core electorates, others are reaching out for Russia’s giant mass of swing voters, who are uncommitted to any party or movement and are estimated to make up 40% of the electorate.

Successful coalition-building depends not only upon specific agreements between specific political leaders, but also upon four things: (1) whether the core electorates of one coalition member are socioculturally compatible with the core electorates of their would-be partners; (2) the sociocultural compatibility of the elite leaderships of the merging political forces; (3) whether the new partners possess (or potentially possess) a common “internally unifying” ideological concept (even if it is implied and not spoken) that may serve as a natural and convincing justification for the sacrifice of independence that coalition-building involves; and (4) whether targeted swing voters are socioculturally compatible with the core voters of the coalition.

By the term “socioculturally compatible,” I mean the absence of a conflict between key values and perspectives that can differ according to generation, social categories, and so on.

Fatherland-All Russia has no electoral core at all and, therefore, can spread without worrying about losing loyalists.

When we talk about the masses, we are talking about whether people are involved in urban or rural social relations, whether they have higher education, whether they have an “old Soviet” or “modernized” lifestyle, and how old they are. When we talk about the compatibility of political elites, we should also add their views on the importance of ranking in administrative hierarchies.

For example, the generation of Soviet executives who came of age during the 1980s is now confronting a generation of young reformers who, in the 1980s, were typically research assistants or, in some cases, the equivalent of assistant professors. The difference between the two generations involves not only age and hierarchical status, but also managerial philosophy: the older group values industrial output while the other stresses marketing.

From this perspective, we can first of all understand the problems that the Communists are having in building a broad coalition.

It is clear that whatever message the Communist-led coalition sends to the voters, it will hardly attract a significant number of supporters beyond its core electorate. This core, mainly rural villagers and the elderly, are indeed bearers of Soviet-era conservative attitudes, lacking the ability to adapt themselves to the post-Soviet environment.

The uncompromising, aggressive position of that “frozen” electorate makes it incompatible not only with its opposite, that is, with pro-modernization young and middle-aged residents of big cities, but even with those swing voters that belong to an intermediate category that we might call “soft-Soviet-conservatives,” oriented mainly toward the prevention of major social conflicts.

Any attempt by the leaders of the KPRF to expand their political base, therefore, may be not only useless, but also fraught with the danger of losing their electoral core – the only property they were happy to “privatize.” This explains the fickle nature of Communist leaders’ efforts to create a broader coalition.

In the past, when the Communists were not serious about reaching beyond their core, they applied great effort to preventing their core from breaking apart. Today, however, their major ally, the Agrarian Party, has split away.

Those Agrarian Party members elected from the most Soviet-conservative constituencies have chosen to stay with the Communist-led bloc, but the majority (mainly top party functionaries and government bureaucrats) joined the Fatherland-All Russia bloc. In this bloc they found a kindred spirit, a genuine sociopolitical representation of the entire Russian bureaucracy much like themselves.

Among the parties on the left of Russia’s political spectrum, the Agrarians are the only one in which the party elite disregarded the attitude of its core electorate to the point at which the party actually split.

On the opposite side of the political spectrum, the right-wingers in the end came to a similar solution, creating a coalition aimed at a purely liberal electorate.

Yet, contrary to widespread opinion, the right-wingers really did have a chance to extend their electoral base significantly had they succeeded in attracting former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin.

An August 1999 opinion poll from the organization VTsIOM showed that they could have raised their current upper limit of 5% support to as much as 10% had Stepashin agreed to lead them, and it is possible that a good campaign could have brought them as much as 15% of the vote in December.

This surprising capacity for the right-wingers to expand their electorate by choosing a popular and relatively neutral leader can also be explained by the sociocultural factor. The core electorates of the rightist parties and movements share the same sociocultural values as “adjacent” electorates, including what we might call “soft liberals” who are counted among Russia’s swing voters.

The right-wingers’ leaders, however, driven by their inherent economic determinism, underestimated the importance of sociocultural factors and made a fatal mistake. They tried to build a coalition that would not only have been led by Stepashin but that would have also included former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin’s Our Home Is Russia (OHR) movement.

That attempt failed first and foremost not because of any incompatibility in the ambitions of the two leaders, but due to the fact that by their sociocultural parameters, the electorates and the elite leadership of the right-wingers are completely alien to both the electorate and the elite leadership of OHR. No strong common internal ideological bond is possible.

Attempts by the Commun-ists to expand risk losing their electoral core, the only property they were happy to “privatize.”

In fact, the electorate and the elite leadership of OHR, in its sociocultural attitudes and appearance, are much closer to those of Fatherland-All Russia.

That explains the existence of the political unrequited “love triangle” among the electorates of the right-wingers, OHR, and Fatherland-All Russia found by the polling agency VTsIOM in July 1999. According to these data, the majority of the right-wingers’ electorate has a positive attitude towards OHR, whose electorate does not return these affections. The OHR electorate does, however, have a very strong attraction to Fatherland-All Russia.

As of today, only two coalitions, Fatherland-All Russia and the Yabloko-Stepashin alliance (which achieved what the rightists failed to do), have the potential to expand significantly beyond their core electorates and capture swing voters.

The Yabloko-Stepashin coalition has a big advantage in that Stepashin came to this bloc alone – as an individual. Thus, there is now no need to worry about inter-elite relations. The common internal ideological concept is to confront the old-style (and just plain old) bureaucracy.

At the same time, this advantage could turn into a danger. If the Yabloko-Stepashin deal is seen as an “acquisition” by Yabloko rather than a “merger” of two important political forces, people may not see in the new coalition anything very different than the old Yabloko.

But Fatherland-All Russia, in addition to Primakov’s popularity, has even greater advantages. It enjoys a high level of sociocultural compatibility among participating elites as well as among its members’ political activists. That makes it possible to share a very clear, natural and unifying internal ideological concept: status is valued over money, “real” manufacturing is valued over marketing, and “entrepreneurship” is administered from above.

But Fatherland-All Russia’s most important advantage is actually something that it lacks: it has no electoral core at all and, therefore, can spread to other parts of the electoral spectrum without

worrying about losing loyalists.

The absence of uncompromising, “frozen’’ core voters actually helps Fatherland-All Russia avoid or dampen potential sociocultural conflicts with almost all swing voters that it might hope to attract: “soft Soviet–conservative” voters share the same values as does the elite leadership of Fatherland-All Russia, and soft pro-modernization voters (at least those that won’t be too alienated by the socioculturally very different activists of Fatherland-All Russia) are ready to overlook the difference between their cultural values and the philosophy of Fatherland-All Russia in exchange for social stability.

THE COMMUNIST-REFORMIST STAND-OFF WILL SOON END

NOW WE KNOW THE PLAYERS. WHAT NEXT?

Igor Bunin, Director, Center for Political Technologies, Moscow

Boris Makarenko, Deputy Director, Center for Political Technologies, Moscow

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As of the end of August, the circle of main participants in the parliamentary elections has been determined. The exact configuration of the right-centrist parties has not been fixed and it is still not completely clear into how many columns the Communist opposition will split, but the favorites and the outsiders are already very clear.

In this article we will try to look not at tomorrow, but at the day after tomorrow, when the campaign comes to an end and the winners begin to divide up the Duma seats. In this way we will try to find the answer to the question: In what ways will the new Duma differ from the current one?

The four electoral blocs which have a solid chance of overtaking the 5% barrier will have the right to slice up the parliamentary pie:

The Fatherland-All Russia Bloc, with ex-Prime Minister Primakov at the head, has accumulated colossal electoral resources: the two most popular non-communist politicians, ten of the most influential governors, solid ties with the regional elite and financial circles.

We should add that this is the first instance of a voluntary (“horizontal”) union of influential circles of the federal and regional elite not sanctioned by the Kremlin.

The Communist Party - under pressure from the “Party Old Guard” - rejected the idea of dividing the united electoral machine into a few divisions and for the most part has succeeded in preserving the unity of the leftist camp (albeit having lost a few key peripheral figures).

For the KPRF, the important difference from previous campaigns is the existence of a competitor which is capable not only of competing with them “as equals” but also, under certain conditions, of surpassing the Communists in the number of votes they receive. Just the same, the Communist Party will most likely receive its 20%.

Grigory Yavlinsky’s Yabloko has received an unexpected electoral resource – the former Prime Minister Stepashin, who left the government with an unblemished reputation and relatively high popularity in public opinion. Out of the clear stagnation of the “right” Yavlinsky and Stepashin have received the opportunity to gain the general sympathies of their electorate.

The Third Duma won’t be “Red” or even dark pink, but also won’t feature much power for the Yeltsin loyalists.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party has no serious competition for the protest-nationalist electorate. Even if at the last moment the chauvinist wing of the Communists enters the elections with a separate list with Viktor Ilyukhin at the head, Zhirinovsky is almost guaranteed 5% of the votes.

Two more blocs, Viktor Chernomyrdin’s “Our Home is Russia” and Sergei Kirienko’s Union of Right-Wing Forces, have collected an impressive number of politicians who, in recent years, have occupied the highest governmental posts but who enjoy only minimal electoral support. Only a miracle could bring one of these parties into the Duma.

In the competition for the spots in the second half of the Duma, elected from single mandate districts, there are two favorites. “Fatherland” and the Communists have the right to count on several tens of seats each. Right-wing and Yabloko candidates will get something, but the majority of the spots will be obtained by independent (and for the most part centrist) deputies.

To figure out how these percentages of the vote will translate into numbers of seats is, at this

point, impossible since we do not yet know what part of the votes for the party lists will be given to small parties that don’t make it to the Parliament. We dare to propose that their representation in the Duma will be much higher then in 1995 when these types of “lost” votes were 49%.

The above information provides enough evidence to conclude that:

* In the third Duma after the fall of the Communist regime, there will be two powerful fractions which will be comparable in size – “Fatherland” and the Communist Party – which will be in sharp competition for the division of leadership posts in the Duma and for influence over the swing deputies;

* The other two lists that will pass into the Duma, “Yabloko” and the LDPR, will form strong fractions which could protect the traditional influences that their parties have had on decisions in parliament;

* The formation of three groups of deputies (formed, in contrast to the factions automatically created by the parties clearing the 5% barrier, on a spontaneous basis) is extremely likely: the Agrarian group of “village” deputies; the solely technical union of regional lobbyists, similar to the old Duma’s group called “Russian Regions;” and groups of liberal deputies from single mandate districts.

The Kremlin will no longer be able to play its traditional game, Demon-stration of Strength, on the pretext of a war against the “bastion of communism.”

The first two of these could appear if “Fatherland” tries to repeat the experience of the Communists in the previous Duma – to delegate their own deputies to this group in order to allow it to reach the sought-after figure of 35 deputies [the minimum for forming an officially recognized group in the Duma – HH].

This strategy would allow them to capture more of the leadership positions in the committees and the Duma Council, and similarly effectively to control the “daughter” groups – since recalling their own deputies would automatically result in the deregistration of these groups.

The Liberal group will appear in the case where Our Home is Russia and the right-wingers together take over no less than 35 deputies of the single mandate districts.

* Thus, in place of the unipolar Duma, in which the Communists have a powerful fraction and a mechanism of reliable influence over two leftist groups of deputies, there will be a bipolar model – with two powerful players to the left and in the center and with an exposed right flank. The rest of the fractions could join in different unions with one of the favorites, but it is clear that “Fatherland” will enjoy far greater opportunities to form broad Duma coalitions;

* The general config-uration of the third Duma, therefore, will be significantly different from the first, where the main lines of contradiction were “for or against the President” and from the second, where the main intrigue in key questions was opposition to the Communist majority.

The Third Duma will not be “Red” (and not even “dark pink”), but at the same time it will not feature significant power for the Yeltsin loyalists. There will no longer be grounds nor the opportunity for the traditional Kremlin game (“Demonstration of Strength”) in front of the Duma on the pretext of a war against the “bastion of communism.”

As a result, the balance of political power and authority of the branches of power that has been typical for Russia during the past five years will cease to exist.

The prediction of “the end of the bipolarity” made by Stanford researcher Michael McFaul will come true despite the delay. “Repair work” on the political regime established by Yeltsin will begin a half year before the expiration date of the regime’s authority.

STEPASHIN + YABLOKO:

THE LIBERALS’ LAST CHANCE?

Vladimir Gelman

Professor, European University at St. Petersburg

Fulbright Scholar, Davis Center for Russian Studies, Harvard University

The hallmark of the current campaign season has proven to be the active creation of pre-election coalitions as an alternative to the myriad small political parties we saw in the Duma elections of 1995.

In view of the results of the 1995 elections (only four of the 43 parties that ran reached the 5% barrier, and these four collectively barely garnered more than 50% of the total vote), one can confidently assert that there is little chance that any of the four-year-old alliances will be reshuffled.

But if the creation of a new “party of power” (or, more precisely, “party of the status quo”) under the banner of Fatherland-All Russia was predictable, the maneuvers of the liberal parties and their leaders produced some unexpected results:

First, there was the failure to form a right-wing bloc with Kremlin loyalties that would have united all the parties and their leaders who had taken turns replacing one another as head of government for the past seven years, including Yegor Gaidar of Right Cause, Viktor Chernomyrdin of Our Home is Russia, Sergei Kirienko of the New Force party, and Sergei Stepashin, who was fired the day before the beginning of the campaign.

Second, we did not see a “party of former power” not only because of the ideological differences among the former government leaders and their parties but also because of the divergence of interests among the Russian right.

Liberals have a chance to become a real “third force” in Russian politics, competing with the “party of power” and the Communists.

The loss of their high-status positions in the government has deprived the leaders of Right Cause and New Force of mass support and influence among the Russian elite. On the eve of the elections, they had nothing to lose; only sharp criticism of and consistent opposition to the Government would give them any chance for political survival.

In contrast, while Our Home is Russia has lost its crown as “the party of power,” and together with it a good part of its former influence, it nevertheless was striving to remain part of the establishment and to avoid confrontation with “the party of power” (Fatherland-All Russia) as well as with the Kremlin.

Finally, the attempts to find in Stepashin an image of unifying leader for the right-wingers turned out to be unsuccessful; negotiations to create a coalition came to a dead end.

As a result, the right-wing liberals created a coalition consisting of Right Cause, New Force, and a variety of small parties, while Our Home is Russia will approach election day on its own.

While public opinion polls strongly indicate that right-wing parties stand little chance of exceeding the 5% barrier if they do not enter into coalitions, these data hardly imply that coalition-building will lead to an automatic increase in votes.

On the contrary, the logic of inter-party competition suggests that in the current situation the right-wingers’ main rivals in the struggle for votes would not be communists or nationalists (no one on the right would vote for them anyway) but their ideological kin and potential allies from an unformed coalition.

At a time when the right-liberals had wound up divided, the Yavlinsky-led left-liberals from Yabloko had succeeded in maintaining unity. A consistent policy of opposition had allowed Yabloko to preserve a stable electorate for a long time, and all observers agreed that the party would easily surpass the 5% barrier in future elections.

However, Yabloko’s chances of significantly expanding its presence in parliament (and thus having the opportunity to form a government) appeared to be low. The stance of perpetual opposition foreclosed for Yavlinsky and his followers the possibility of augmenting their voter support (who wants to vote for a party that

doesn’t have any chance at power?).

Therefore a situation could have materialized in the 1999 elections situation similar to the one in the present Duma, in which right-wing fragmentation together with Yabloko’s limited performance in the 1995 elections left the liberals at the margins of the Duma without much chance of implementing their policies.

However, the alliance between Yabloko and Stepashin, which caught many observers by surprise, may increase the liberals’ chances.

Stepashin, currently No. 2 on Yabloko’s pre-election list (immediately after Yavlinsky), may bring considerable new support to the liberal camp in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Much more important, though, is Stepashin’s intention to run in future presidential elections. According to polls conducted by VTsIOM in mid-August, Stepashin’s presidential rating was at 11% (lower than Zyuganov, Primakov, and Luzhkov, each of whom received between 15 and 20 percent of the votes of those polled, but higher than Yavlinsky, who received only 6%). Such a showing could have been a good start for a presidential campaign had Stepashin remained Prime Minister.

But deprived of his administrative resources, Stepashin needed party support that could become the basis of a future campaign, and, in turn, comprise the backbone of his “team” – that is, his government in the event of victory, or his shadow cabinet in case of defeat at the polls.

In other words, the Yabloko-Stepashin union looks worthwhile for both sides, though so far there is no guarantee of the stability of the new coalition. But, given a favorable confluence of circumstances, liberals have a chance to become a real “third force” in Russian politics, competing with the “party of power” and the Communists.

Yavlinsky and Stepashin, both born in 1952, are in the prime of life, with a store of energy and time sufficient for success.

In this respect, we can view the race in St. Petersburg’s district 209, where Stepashin will be battling current Duma chairman and No.2 on the Communist Party list Gennady Seleznev, as an index to Stepashin’s prospects.

Alongside the ideological divisions among Russia’s political parties, there are also significant generational divisions. All their differences notwithstanding, the Communists and Fatherland-All Russia are united by the ages of their leaders: most are 50 to 60 years old.

The liberal-right, on the other hand, belong to a different generation: the 30-to-40-year-old “children of perestroika.”

Yavlinsky and Stepashin, both born in 1952, belong to a middle generation, in the prime of life and with a store of energy and time sufficient for success. In light of all this, the political chances for Russia’s liberals in the near future are linked solely to a Yabloko-Stepashin coalition.

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

HOW THE FATHERLAND-ALL RUSSIA ALLIANCE IS NOTHING NEW

Grigory Golosov, Professor, European University at St. Petersburg

One of the paradoxes of Russian electoral politics is that voter preferences are simultaneously predictable and unpredictable.

They are unpredictable because voters quite easily betray those parties for which they voted in the past elections. They are predictable because general ideological tendencies, or “blocs” as they are sometimes called, enjoy relatively stable levels of support.

The most important source of this unpredictable “party-switching” is most likely the underdevelopment of the party system. For example, the movement Our Home is Russia, which appeared in the electoral arena in 1995, acquired a significant number of supporters from the defunct “party of power” Russia’s Choice, later renamed Russia’s Democratic Choice.

New organizations occupy niches that have already been carved out for them. Now, when it is generally known who the main players are for the 1999 elections, it is important to understand which of the niches they are trying to claim.

The most stable of the Russian electoral niches is the “left.” The Communist Party (KPRF) lays claim to the lion’s share of the sympathies of the “leftist” voters.

The “party of power” is once again in its place.

Moreover, the elections of 1995 showed that a significant number of voters are ready to support even more radical communists. At that time, the radical voters were won over by the bloc called “Communists-Working Russia-for the Soviet Union” (KTR), the organizational basis for which was provided by the Russian Communist Workers’ Party.

However, having lost one of its most popular leaders, the KTR is no longer a threat to the KPRF. In their place, Viktor Ilyukhin’s Movement in Support of the Army (DPA) is trying to garner the support of the leftists.

The rest of the leftist parties are insignificant, which means that it is not too important whether the Communist Party takes part in the elections using their own name or the name of the notorious bloc “For Victory” because regardless, this bloc will remain merely fictional.

Yabloko is still firmly in place as the “democratic opposition.” It is quite possible that this bloc has strengthened its ties with former Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin.

But more important is the fact that none of the other participants in the elections can rely on this niche as a base of support. This first and foremost concerns the coalition of right-wing forces, for which Russia’s Democratic Choice serves as the organizational nucleus. The 1995 elections clearly demonstrated the narrowness of its electorate.

The results of the upcoming election may in large part mirror the results of the 1995 election.

Will Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s LDPR make it into the new Duma? The only basis for a negative answer to this question is the appearance of Aleksandr Lebed in the parliamentary elections.

However, one shouldn’t forget that in the 1995 elections, attempts to “capture” the supporters of the LDPR were made by both the Congress of Russian Communities (KRO) and (more openly) Aleksandr Rutskoi’s “Derzhava” movement. The LDPR didn’t disappear then and it is entirely possible that it won’t disappear this time around. A great deal depends on the strategy of Lebed and his patrons as he enters the campaign.

On the other hand, it is well known that over the last few years the LDPR has squandered its image as the opposition nationalist party. However, it is possible that anticommunist sentiment will help compensate for these other losses.

The “dark horse” of 1999 is the “National Bloc,” created with the leading participation of the neo-nazi “Russian National Unity.” It is possible that the appearance of this bloc will somewhat change power relations within the nationalist part of the party spectrum.

Finally, we come to the “party of power.” The thinking here is quite simple: Our Home is Russia (OHR) has been dislodged from its niche by the organization of “bosses” known as the bloc Fatherland-All Russia. This shift can be shown by simply comparing the geography of voting for OHR in 1995 with the composition of the new party (that is, with the character of its administrative resources). The union of the larger part of the Agrarian Party with Fatherland-All Russia does not change this picture, as close observers have long pointed out that by its nature the Agrarian Party is not so much a left-wing party as a party of control of the agrarian electorate.

Below is a simple table that outlines the electoral picture of the three Duma elections:

| |1993 |1995 |1999 |

|Leftists |Communist Party |Communist Party |Communist Party/For Victory! |

| | |KTR (radical communists) |Movement in Support of Army |

|Nationalists |LDPR (Zhirinovsky) |LDPR |LDPR |

| | |KRO |Lebed |

|Staunch |Yabloko |Yabloko |Yabloko |

|Democratic Opposition | | | |

|Moderate Democratic |Russian Movement for |Russia’s Democratic Choice - |Right-wing coalition |

|Opposition |Democratic Reform |United Democrats | |

|“Party of Power” |Russia’s Choice |Our Home is Russia |Fatherland-All Russia |

| | | | |

There are grounds to suppose that the results of the upcoming elections will in large part mirror the results received by the blocs in the 1995 election. There could be some adjustments caused by the factors described below.

First, the level of fragmentation of votes that might occur within a bloc could change in some instances. When looking at this it is important to keep in mind the number of small parties and coalitions that are registered to take part in the elections.

Initial predictions (perhaps erroneous) are that in the democratic camp, the number of unsuccessful tickets will get smaller while in the “leftist” camp they will grow.

It is also possible that the combined voting for the “left” and for the “right” will grow even smaller. However, whether this will actually happen directly depends on how convincing the “leftist-center” image of the “party of power” is, cemented in place by Yevgeny Primakov. At this point, it is too soon to tell.

In this way, judging by the initial lineup of candidates, the 1999 campaign does not look to hold any large surprises. In 1995, the plan by the Yeltsin administration to create two powerful blocs – the right-center and left-center – never came to fruition due to the collapse of the “left-center.” Today it seems that a similar fate has met the “right-center.”

However, the “party of power” is once again in its place. All other changes are insignificant.

RUSSIA’S FIRST BIG CENTRIST PARTY

AND THE FIASCOS SUFFERED BY THE LEFT AND RIGHT

Sergei Markov, Director, Institute for Political Studies, Moscow

A powerful center has been created for the first time in Russia while the leftists and rightists have suffered a fiasco.

Just three months ago, quite a number of organizations existed in Russia’s political arena that were able to compete in the elections either alone or in a coalition and it was not clear how, in the end, Russia’s political space would be organized.

Over the course of three months, intensive negotiations took place on who would join which coalition, on which conditions, and who would be the leader. There were several coalition projects competing with one another:

1. The Big Centrist Project of Yuri Luzhkov. Luzhkov proposed the creation of a big centrist coalition that would form around the movement “Fatherland” and would include a large quantity of centrist organizations. First and foremost, this meant the so-called “governors’ blocs” All Russia and Voice of Russia. This plan called for Yevgeny Primakov to lead the coalition.

During the formation process, this coalition ran into a series of problems. First of all, there was powerful pressure from the Kremlin on governors aimed at preventing the formation of a big centrist and essentially anti-Kremlin coalition.

Second, the governors and Primakov proved to be quite cautious: the governors were prepared to join Luzhkov’s coalition only if Primakov were to lead it, but Primakov was prepared to lead the coalition only if the governors would join it.

The governors were prepared to join Luzh-kov’s coalition only if Prim-akov led it, but Primakov was prepared to lead it only if the governors joined it.

The organizers, mainly Yuri Luzhkov and campaign chairman Georgy Boos, succeeded in overcoming all obstacles and the large centrist coalition was created almost exactly as had been planned. The organizers even succeeded in prying the Agrarian Party away from the Communists.

As a result, a prototype, in essence, of a new “party of power” was effectively formed, a party that could contend for victory not only in the parliamentary elections, but also in the presidential ones.

The coalition is led by Yevgeny Primakov, the most popular politician in Russia and the most likely victor in the presidential elections of the year 2000. Various polls give this coalition from 20 to 35 percent of the votes.

2. The Kremlin Project: “Big Russia.” The Kremlin proposed creating a big center-right coalition that could form a faction in the Duma comparable in size to that of the leftists (led by the Communist Party) and with that of Luzhkov’s centrists.

According to the Kremlin analysts’ plans, this coalition was to contain liberal organizations like Right Cause, New Force, Our Home is Russia, and the governors’ blocs, primarily All Russia and Voice of Russia.

This Kremlin Project collapsed completely. The governors did not want to fall over the cliff along with the Kremlin and Our Home did not want to be diluted amongst the radical liberals, who were very active but also very unpopular.

Running separately, polls show Our Home is Russia receiving 3-6 percent of the votes and the “Union of Right-Wing Forces” (which includes the movements of Yegor Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, Sergei Kirienko, Irina Khakamada, and Konstantin Titov) receiving 2-5 percent.

But it is possible that the Union of Right-Wing Forces’ aggressive campaign for the youth vote combined with its solid financing will permit it realistically to have a chance of clearing the five-percent barrier.

3. The Broad Left-Patriotic Coalition Project. This project’s initiator, the Communist Party, proposed broadening its circle of allies (which had traditionally included the Agrarian Party, the movement Spiritual Heritage, and the Movement in Support of the Army) to include a

series of left-center organizations and trade unions.

The Kremlin Project collapsed completely.

The Communists not only failed to attract new allies, but they lost the most influential of their older allies. The Agrarian Party, the most traditional allies of the Communists, joined the new party of power headed by Primakov-Luzhkov. The movement Spiritual Heritage went down this same path. The Movement in Support of the Army, headed by Viktor Ilyukhin and Albert Makashov, tried to create their own electoral bloc.

The main reason for the collapse of the leftist coalition project was the inability of the Communist leadership to work out a realistic strategy for the Communists to come to power, either independently or in coalition with other political forces, in the foreseeable future.

Those politicians allied with the Communists that wanted to be part of the party of power abandoned the Communists. And left-center organizations like the Agrarian Party and Spiritual Heritage wound up on the verge of splitting internally: their leaderships moved toward the Luzhkov-Primakov bloc while many of their local branch organizations will either remain with the Communists or will be politically demoralized. Polls predict the Communists will get from 20 to 30 percent of the votes.

With the formation of coalitions, the first stage of the election campaign is complete. In the next stage of the campaign, in September, the following tasks lie ahead for these coalitions:

* Collecting the signatures and officially registering the blocs to get on the ballot;

* Accumulating financial, informational and organizational resources;

* Working out their main slogans and their overall strategies for the election campaign.

TRANSLATORS:

Alexander Benko, Melissa Carr, Ben Dunlap, Henry Hale, Dave Hosford, Marina Jovanovic, Isabelle Kaplan

SOURCES FOR IMAGES USED IN RUSSIAN ELECTION WATCH No.2:

Putin: Gazeta.Ru, gazeta.ru, August 27, 1999

Primakov: Gazeta.Ru August 17, 1999

Luzhkov: Gazeta.Ru August 27, 1999

Stepashin & Yavlinsky: Gazeta.Ru August 25, 1999

Zyuganov: Gazeta.Ru August 30

Union of Right-Wing Forces Troika: Gazeta.Ru August 24, 1999

Boris Berezovsky: Gazeta.Ru August 27, 1999

Rossel: National News Service, nns.ru, available September 1, 1999

SDI PROJECT, JFK SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

79 JFK STREET CAMBRIDGE, MA 02138

Phone: (617) 496-1565 Fax: (617) 496-8779

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The Strengthening Democratic Institutions Project works to catalyze support for three great transformations underway in Russia, Ukraine and the other republics of the former Soviet Union: to sustainable democracies, free market economies, and cooperative international relations. The Project seeks to understand Western stakes in these transformations, identify strategies for advancing Western interests, and encourage initiatives that increase the likelihood of success. It provides targeted intellectual and technical assistance to governments, international agencies, private institutions, and individuals seeking to facilitate these three great transformations.

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