Now he is ridiculed as another faltering Leonid Brezhnev, the Cold War Soviet leader so uninspired that some were uncertain if he was alive or dead.
For Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, things are rolling backward even as he advances to almost certain victory in Sunday’s presidential poll.
Hundreds of thousands of Russians have turned out on city streets to demand that he leave. Once-apolitical yuppies looked up from their iPads and joined the throng. Even older people who were pitched under the avtobus by Boris Yeltsin’s shock-therapy reforms are calling for Putin’s exit.
So why does he rate a healthy 60 per cent in the pre-election polls, on track for another six years in the Kremlin?
“The media show that civil society is waking up and taking part for the first time in many years,” said political science professor Piotr Dutkiewicz of Carleton University. “But the population of Russia is 140 million and the protests are much more limited.”
Although middle-class Russians, a far smaller group than in the West, are at the vanguard of the protest movement, they are joined by a broad spectrum of others, from hard-line nationalists to environmentalists, democrats, free marketers and human-rights activists. Loosely led and at the moment centreless, the protest movement is still finding its political identity and is uncertain of its future.
But in Russia’s sprawling regions, the picture blurs.
“Outside the Golden Ring (near Moscow), Russia is still a desperately poor country,” said Jeffrey Kahn, a Russia expert at Southern Methodist University. “People, when polled, will routinely express support for human rights and rule of law. But at the same time they believe their short-term needs are best fulfilled by Putin.”
On a recent tour of Russia’s regions, Putin won rousing cheers from factory workers and rural dwellers. But his opponents cast doubt on the spontaneity of the support, and suggested that coercion may have been used to drum up the crowds.
Nevertheless, as prime minister, Putin has a sharp edge over his scarcely visible rivals. His ability to hand out perks and benefits may trump political discontent, especially in smaller centres where protest is rare.
“Another advantage is very strong control over what appears on television,” said Joshua Tucker of New York University, an expert on Russian voting. “It’s a major source of news, especially outside Moscow. There’s a real difference between those who get their information from TV and those who use the Internet.”
There’s also a lack of alternative candidates — whose registration is controlled by the authorities. Running against Putin are leaders of parties that are unappealing to the majority of Russians.
“They’re mainly old faces that have been known for about 20 years,” Dutkiewicz said. “The only new face is (Mikhail) Prokhorov. But he’s a billionaire, (a type) that the majority doesn’t agree with.”
But if Putin wins, will the protest movement go back to sleep?
“The movement has actually been growing since 2007,” said Graeme Robertson of University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who has studied protest in Russia since the fall of communism. “Then what really touched a nerve was evidence of fraud in the (December 2011) State Duma election. It was very well publicized and obvious. People, especially in Moscow, were offended.”
Protesters have planned actions directly after the presidential poll. Putin warned against unsanctioned protests Wednesday, saying that a rogue opposition member could “knock someone off and blame the authorities for that”: a thinly veiled threat.
While a Putin win is widely expected, the scope of his victory is less certain.
“The real question is how many votes Putin gets and how legitimate people think they are,” Tucker said. “If he doesn’t get 50 per cent in the first round, it will go on to a second.
“The scenario the Kremlin wants to avoid is a one-on-one with another candidate. It would lead to guessing what his real support actually is.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Olivia Ward
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