In Neo-Soviet Russia, a New Iron Curtain
Filed under: Eastern Europe
by Aleksandr Podrabinek*
February 7, 2008
Translated from the Russian by La Russophobe
The scandal was inescapable. The Kremlin's reasons for not allowing international election observers from the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) was one thing. But the excuse they came up with for this was so ridiculous it can hardly be mentioned in serious conversation.
What did the observers want to do? They wanted to come as a group of 75 people sometime before the day candidates would be registered for the presidential elections. They wanted to come and see how we do this. That was their mandate: to observe the elections and then share their observations and conclusions with the broader European society. The Soviet Union agreed with this mandate in Copenhagen in 1990, and a few years later it was reaffirmed in Russia. Regarding the number of observers and the time of their arrival, these were as normally required for the work of the ODIHR. Unlike [Russian Central Elections Committee (CEC) Chairman] Vladimir Churov and his comrades in the Kremlin, European legal experts understand elections consist not only of voting, but also of election campaigns, freedom of speech and mass media, freedom of political party activities, effective legal adjudication, equal access to television, and many other attributes of a democratic form of government. In order for the observers to give a favorable evaluation of the elections, they need to do their work carefully. Their work differs from the work of our people the way a renovation done to European standards differs from the typical Russian remont [TN: repair job] - in the quality of workmanship and the absence of crap. Work like theirs takes time, whereas haste results in the opposite.
Until recently, this carefulness invited indignation only from the “little father” Lukashenko - for obvious reasons - while in Russia it was viewed with equanimity. However, as elections in our Fatherland have steadily become more a parody and obvious crap, European standards have for the Kremlin become increasingly intolerable and even insulting.
The CEC expressed the Kremlin's mood. There would be no 75 people -- only 70. And no arriving ahead of time -- only on February 28 or 29, two or three days before the voting. After thinking about it for awhile and realizing that these demands looked a little silly, the CEC offered a new set of conditions: 75 people could come on February 20. The CEC even gave some attention to the matter and sent invitations to the observers - true, not to 75, but only 30 people. But the ODIHR stood its ground: the entire group of 75, and no later than February 15.
The Kremlin was insulted. "Our country is a sovereign state, and we will not allow the course of our election campaign to be corrected by anyone from outside," announced President Putin to his colleagues at the FSB. "A country with self respect does not accept ultimatums," echoed Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov.
Could any of the insulted government officials explain what harm Russia would suffer from an extra five, 45, or even 10,000 observers, coming for two weeks, a month, or even a year? How in general could the sovereignty of a state suffer from the presence of election observers?
The question is rhetorical. Everyone in the Kremlin knows the answer, but no one can say it. The issue is not in the sovereignty of the government, but in the legitimacy of the elections and, related to that, the legitimacy of the new president. In the absence of observers from ODIHR (and after them observers from the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly also declined to come), the elections would not be viewed as definitely illegitimate, but only very questionable. At international forums people would snigger and whisper behind the Russian president's back: "Ah, there he is, the one who was elected without observers." Not nice. Not fatal, and not ruinous to the country's sovereignty - but not nice.
But what could they do? The Kremlin was in a dilemma: either allow the observers to come in and see everything, after which they would declare the elections unfair and the Kremlin would have a scandal on its hands; or else keep them out them and get a scandal anyway. They chose the second. They decided to minimize the damage that falsified elections would bring to the country's prestige. Better to have them not see and guess, than have them see and expose.
Who do Kremlin officials think they're fooling with these childish deceptions? Especially against the background of elections now taking place in other countries. In the U.S., the presidential Election Day is still nine months away, but pre-election passions are already at a full boil: the competition of candidates, the primary elections, the public debates, the lining up of supporters behind their favorites - not a bunch of functionaries with stone faces, listless movements and eyes glazed over from their own vaporous rhetoric. A vibrant political life, animated emotions, living people.
In Serbia the new president was selected only after the second round of elections. People poured into the streets to celebrate the victory of their candidate; it was obvious that their joy was genuine, not dictated or bought with campaign money.
In Russia we get corpses, doubt and despair. It's like what David Samoylov said: "We don't share your belief in miracles, and because of that they don't happen to us." We don't believe in the power of freedom and democracy, and for that reason we have none. And with this, Europe can offer us no help - neither by having their observers attend our presidential elections, nor by their demonstrative absence.
-----------------
*Aleksandr Prodrabinek was a Soviet dissident in the 1970s & 1980s, during which time he served two terms in Siberia for his human rights work. Since 1987 he has edited of number of human rights-oriented journals, and is currently a correspondent for Novaya Gazeta.
del.icio.us | 
digg | 
technorati | 
stumble upon | 
furl | 
reddit