Russian Idol

As I write, it is one month prior to the March 4 presidential election, and few doubt that Vladimir Putin will be elected to an unprecedented third presidential term. The only open question is whether he will be elected in the first or the second round of voting, an absolute majority of votes being required.

In the middle of February, a VTsIOM poll showed Putin’s support climbing, to 53 percent of the electorate. Given margins of error and nearly 10 percent of Russians already saying they would not vote, a first round win seemed a bit uncertain, barring massive voter fraud, of course. [No worries: Russian Life History Editor Tamara Eidelman is serving as an election observer. She’s blogging about it at russianlife.com/blog]

When Putin first stood for election in 2000, he did so against over a dozen candidates. He won with just 52.94 percent of the tally. Or, rounding up, 53 percent. From this, one would be inclined to conclude that a bare majority of Russians will vote for any candidate (“even a tree stump” one Russian friend joked) who promises stability and continuation of the status quo, no matter if he has been hand-selected by his predecessor (2000) or by himself (2012).

Given that the other 47 percent of Russians cannot come close to uniting around a single opposition candidate (a reality abetted by a decade-long policy of denying television air time to serious opposition politicians), Putin will glide to victory thanks not just to the public’s yearning for stability, but to the lack of a clear alternative. In fact the only intriguing electoral possibility is that the plethora of opposition candidates may gain enough votes to force a runoff and that this time it won’t be Putin versus Gennady Zyuganov, but someone more interesting and articulate, like Mikhail Prokhorov.

Yet the March election is the least of Putin’s worries.

As well covered in Russian Life and elsewhere, there is a rising, broadening tide of discontent in Russia, expressed in renewed enthusiasm for taking to the streets, for reclaiming hard-won democratic institutions. Combine this with popular dissatisfaction with the Putin-Medvedev tandem’s tenure – only about a third of the electorate seems reasonably satisfied with the course of economic and social policy - and the future looks rocky.

The Kremlin’s budgetary planning (i.e. solvency) requires that world oil prices stay at or above $120 per barrel for the foreseeable future, which is far from a foregone conclusion. And even with this, the Kremlin expects over the next two years to cut state expenditures by 30 percent on health, 33 percent on education and 76 percent on utilities.

The first crisis may be over utilities. Putin has promised that utility costs will not increase faster than inflation, currently predicted at 6 percent for 2012. But if world oil prices fall and the Russian economy, which has been floating on an oil bubble since 2000 (when oil was $27 a barrel), takes a hit, all bets are off. A summer spike in utility bills would stoke the passions of the opposition, now much better organized and itching for fights. And they might be joined in their discontent by a new ally: that conservative chunk of the electorate which just wants things to stay as they are.

Enjoy the issue.