MARINA, a middle-aged Muscovite with dark hair and piercing eyes, is unhappy—about rising prices, rampant corruption and even Russia’s confrontation with the West. But she is not ready for a change of course. “People are unsatisfied, but we’re afraid of change,” she declares. “Gorbachev had some nice ideas, but see how that turned out? I don’t want Russia to be destroyed.” So it comes as no surprise that Marina, and most of her compatriots, voted for more of the same when they took to the polls on September 18th for elections to the Duma, the national parliament.
The results were never in question. The ruling United Russia party of President Vladimir Putin secured more than three-quarters of the Duma’s 450 seats. These are apportioned under a hybrid system: half are chosen proportionally, according to the votes won by each party list; and the other half are contested by individual candidates. Mr Putin said the strong endorsement for United Russia was “the reaction of our citizens to foreign pressure on Russia” and a vote in favour of stability. Three obedient “systemic opposition” parties will remain in the Duma. But two liberal anti-Kremlin parties, Yabloko and Parnas, garnered less than 2% each and failed to enter the parliament; in the vote for individual candidates, Dmitry Gudkov, the last opposition figure in the previous Duma, was swept away. In any case, the distribution of deputies among pro-Putin parties has little effect on Russia’s policies. What the Kremlin says, the Duma does.
The most telling statistic of the day was the turnout, which at 48% was the lowest since the fall of the Soviet Union. Moscow and St Petersburg, home to the urban middle class, were especially inactive. Fewer than 35% of Muscovites showed up at the polls, down from some 66% in 2011. The decision not to vote reflects the apathy and sense of powerlessness felt by Russia’s population. Many keep saying that “ot nas nichego ne zavisit,” meaning “nothing depends on us”.
The Kremlin also did its best to deprive the election of any drama. The vote was moved up from December to September, leaving little time for voters to engage with the campaign after their summer holidays. Ella Pamfilova, a respected human-rights ombudsman, was put in charge of the Central Electoral Commission and told to keep the vote clean. Although accusations of fraud trickled in regularly throughout the day, including several videos capturing blatant ballot-stuffing, the election appeared less compromised than in 2011, when widespread rigging triggered mass rallies. Fresh protests are unlikely.
That does not mean that Russians are content. A grinding economic crisis has taken its toll. Russia’s central bank predicts that GDP will contract by 0.7% this year, after a 3.7% drop last year. Many complain of rising prices and falling wages. “You go into the store and your money gets you nothing,” says Marina (who declined to state her last name, quipping, “Tomorrow they’ll burn my car”). Corruption rankles with voters, especially as they seek to live on less. “It’s unbearable,” she adds, shaking her head. Labour unrest is bubbling. One-third of Russians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.
For all the malaise, politics has turned into a referendum on Mr Putin—and he remains highly popular, despite falling approval ratings for local authorities. “I think he wants what’s best for Russia,” Marina says. With the opposition neutralised and plagued by infighting, there is nowhere else to turn. Resistance, as the Kremlin has shown, can only end badly. Several demonstrators arrested after the protests of 2011 remain in prison. Alexey Navalny, the face of those protests, has been convicted and barred from running for elected office; Boris Nemtsov, another opposition leader, was assassinated (several Chechens have been charged in connection with the crime).
As attention turns to the presidential elections in 2018, when most expect Mr Putin to stand for a fourth term, the repressive trend seems set to continue. It was probably no coincidence that, on election night, Kommersant, an authoritative daily, reported on leaked plans to create a powerful new Ministry of State Security (MGB). This would merge the Federal Security Service (FSB), the KGB’s main successor agency, with the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), which handles espionage abroad, and the Federal Guard Service (FSO), which is responsible for protecting government officials. The reorganisation would return the security services to the centralised form of the old KGB.
The new ministry and United Russia’s dominance of the Duma ought to end any illusion that the Russian system could allow resistance from within, argues Oleg Kashin, a prominent columnist. “Power and the state in Russia are one and the same,” he writes. “And any citizens’ participation in politics is not expected.”