ANALYSIS:RUSSIAN PRIME minister Vladimir Putin's statement that his opponents have the right to free assembly and that there should be dialogue between them and the authorities is the most moderate made since his United Russia party lost 77 seats in the dubious elections of December 4th. How genuine this statement is will be judged by how the police and security forces behave at upcoming street protests.
But some of those leading the street protests don’t want dialogue. They want confrontation and they have reached prominence for two reasons. The first is the obviously flawed electoral process; second is Putin’s “managed democracy” that has drastically reduced the range of political choice open to Russians. While hundreds have been arrested, not all anti-government gatherings have been as large or as violent as those portrayed by the broadcast media.
The portrayal of events by Murdoch TV station Fox News has been bizarre and patently dishonest. A clip showing petrol bombs being thrown, cars overturned and set on fire, and demonstrators clashing violently with police gave the impression that Russia was on the verge of civil war.
On closer observation it became obvious that something was amiss. There were palm trees in the background and there are no palm trees in Moscow.
The “news” station was using footage from earlier riots in Athens and interspersing them with shots of young Russians commenting on the falsification of the election results.
In essence the demonstrations have been quite small in proportion to Moscow’s population of 15 million but there can be little doubt that most Russians want their country to be more democratic.
On the other hand not all those demonstrating against Russia’s election results want democracy. The list of those arrested shows this clearly.
Eduard Limonov, leader of Another Russia, and the country’s most popular blogger Alexei Navalny both come from the far-right of Russian nationalism. Others such as Boris Nemtsov once a leading government member under Boris Yeltsin are genuine democrats but lack militant support or militant traditions.
Navalny recently appeared as the main speaker at a far-right rally before the elections. Limonov spoke strongly against what he described as a “police state” when I visited him at his apartment in the Moscow suburbs. His bookshelves gave a different message with their serried ranks of Nietzsche and Hitler’s Mein Kampf. He also admitted to me that he had bought Kalashnikovs and other weapons in an attempt to cause an uprising in parts of Kazakhstan inhabited by ethnic Russians, an activity which landed him in jail.
Nemtsov may be a democrat but comes from a tradition in which street protests are frowned on. His bible, the only book on his shelves when I met him recently, is Statecraft by Margaret Thatcher.
The pro-Putin demonstrators from United Russia’s youth movement Nashi (Ourselves) are more homogenous in that their adulation for their leaders is overwhelming, but their street politics has been far less spontaneous.
Those who took to the streets when I was in Moscow on December 6th and were prepared to speak to journalists had been brought to Moscow in buses from towns in the region and elsewhere.
The most significant absence on the streets of Moscow has been the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the main beneficiaries of the fall in United Russia’s support.
The communist party’s support is stronger among older people but in more recent times there has been an increase in support among young people.
Among those who did not live through the communist era, to support the party has become almost trendy. But the most significant reason for the communists gaining more than 90 seats in the Duma has been the view that they are the only truly independent opposition in parliament.
The far-right self-styled Liberal Democrats under the madcap Vladimir Zhirinovsky huff and puff about their opposition to the Putin-Medvedev tandem but when it comes to votes in parliament they support the government without exception.
The other party in the Duma, the Social Democratic “A Just Russia” is simply a breakaway from United Russia that many believe remains under Putin’s control. The communists, therefore, have had some justification in claiming to be the only independent opposition.
Attempts by President Dmitry Medvedev to claim the recent elections were completely above board are beyond belief. Suggestions that it was all about the West trying to have an influence in Russian politics have a ready audience in a country whose history has seen a succession of invasions from the west ranging from the Poles in the 17th century, through Napoleon in the 19th, Hitler in the 20th as well as a near paranoia about the intentions of the US.
But the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe whose Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights provided the largest and most professional group of observers is not entirely a western organisation. Russia itself is a member of this group whose methodology is beyond reproach.
For seasoned and obviously impartial diplomats such as Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini of Switzerland to give her name to a statement that described the election count as “characterised by frequent procedural violations and instances of apparent manipulations, including serious indications of ballot box stuffing” is a major reflection on the state of democracy in Russia.
It is something Putin and Medvedev should be prepared to accept in the way they accepted her report on the 2008 war with Georgia in which she concluded that it was the Georgians who fired the first shots.
Séamus Martin reported from Russia for The Irish Timeson this month's parliamentary elections. His five-part documentary on the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of the new Russia will begin on RTÉ Radio One on January 7th at 7.30pm