The violent police repression of the anti-Putin demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, with bloody beatings and mass arrests, and “revolutionary” proclamations by the exiled ex-oligarch Boris Berezovsky, officially signal the beginning—an ugly beginning—of the long Russian electoral campaign in advance of the December vote for the renewal of parliament and for that of March for the presidential election. Elections in which the future of Russia, democratic or authoritarian, is in play. Up to now, the needle of the scale points to a decisive return to a new autocratic regime in which nationalistic ideology and xenophobia take the place of communism.

Succession and the new electoral law. In order to protect the results of the next elections, Vladimir Putin has moved astutely. He cannot be a candidate for president again in March, but he has already guaranteed the victory of  his most faithful successor, who with all probability will be the nationalist hawk Sergei Ivanov, already minister of Defense, “elevated” in February to the post of vice premier. To make sure that the Duma that will emerge from the vote of December 2 becomes full of Putinian “ultras” who will support every one of his decisions, the head of the Kremlin has imposed, in effect in 2005, an electoral reform that in fact abolishes a system of many parties in favor of a single-party regime. The new electoral law stiffens the criteria for the registration of parties, raising from 5 to 7 per cent the obstruction for taking seats and foreseeing the abolition of the uninominal majoritarian system (in favor of a pure proportionality) with which up to this time half of the members of parliament were elected and thanks to which the anti-Putin opposition succeeded in sending some people to the Duma.

Bipolarism with a Russian sauce.  In a parallel action, Putin—in the name of “bipolarism”—has solicited the creation of an “institutional” opposition party of the center-left that rivals the presidential government party of the center-right, Russia United. Thus, last October, from the union of the national socialist and populist Native Land, Pensioners and Life parties was born A Just Russia, that—by admission of its leader Sergei Mironov, noted supporter of Putin—“will develop a role of opposition to Russia United, but will support the president.” The declared mission of A Just Russia: to erode the consensus of the two principal nationalist antiliberal opposition parties, or the Communists of Gennady Zuganov and the Ultranationalists of Vladimir Zirinowski. All things considered, the only Putinian party, Russia United--plus A Just Russia--will have an absolute majority in the Duma, a Duma in which the weak and quarrelsome forces of liberal anti-Putin opposition, that is, Yabloko and the Union of Forces of the Right, probably will not even succeed in entering.

Towards a revolution in the Ukrainian style? To overturn this gloomy scenario there is an attempt at a new anti-Putin and pro-occidental movement that is inspired by the “colored revolutions” of Ukraine and Georgia. Behind this movement there is for now the couple formed by the ex-chess champion Gary Kasparov and the ex-prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, with their party Another Russia, which has organized the demonstrations repressed over the weekend, knowing that it would end this way because they were unauthorized demonstrations, thus voluntarily raising the level of political clash exactly as the movements in the public square of Kiev and Tbilisi did in their time. Beyond these similarities Boris Berezovsky is also coming down into the field, the ex-oligarch accused by Putin of having stolen fifty million dollars in the privatization of Aeroflot during the Yeltsin years (a realistic accusation) and even of financing the Chechen guerrillas (a less realistic accusation). From his gilded London exile, where he lives like a political refugee, Berezovsky has revealed himself at this time to be engaged in the preparation of a revolution in the Ukrainian style to overthrow the Putin regime. It seems that it may be he, and his money, behind the birth of a new anti-Putin party, Great Russia. The Russian magistracy is investigating.