Russia's 2021 Parliamentary Elections: A Snapshot of the Momentum

The final results of the 17-19 September 2021 State Duma elections shore up the 'Putin system' in principle until the 2024 presidential elections, when the current head of state could run again to remain as de facto president for life, or launch an heir.

Interestingly, from 2021 the mechanism set by Chapter 5, Article 96 of the Russian Constitution, which deals with the Federal Assembly, comes into operation, setting the term of service of the State Duma with a five-year limitation and each seat is allocated by a parallel ballot: one ballot for party lists and one ballot for a single candidate, with the April 2021 amendment to the Federal Law on Elections to the State Duma increasing the federal part of the party list from 10 to 15 candidates.

In the new lower house of parliament, the ruling United Russia party (49.82% of the vote) retains a qualified majority by reaching 324 seats out of 450 (and dropping 19 from the 2016 results), but which ensures it has the majority needed to undertake constitutional changes and for the assembly to continue to deserve the nickname of the Kremlin's "photocopying machine".

In fact, United Russia won 49.82 per cent of the party-list votes and 88 per cent of the single-member district votes, giving it more than two-thirds of the seats in the lower house, allowing it to change the constitution without the support of other parties. With United Russia's popularity at an all-time low (29 per cent) and aware of this, the Kremlin has not wanted to run the risk of losing its parliamentary majority. In recent months, the governing party has been given a facelift and popular figures, such as Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, have been placed at the head of the list.

Among other factors in United Russia's fall in popularity is the fact that on 14 June 2018, after the second cabinet of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced, without prior warning and with demonstrations banned, a reform to raise the retirement age for men from 60 to 65 and for women from 55 to 63, taking advantage of the World Cup in Russia. In fact, this was the factor that most marked United Russia's fall in the polls, fluctuating from around 35% to 25%. This led during the summer of 2018 to protests against Russia's pension reform, with particularly large protests taking place until October 2018, and with a particularly high peak between 18 July and 28-29 July; in particular, on 28 July, more than 10,000 people attended a rally in Moscow.

In an attempt to get the party's traditional base to turn out to vote, Putin prepared an extraordinary spending package consisting of a 'lump-sum payment' for families with school-age children, pensioners and military personnel. The payments, worth between 10,000 roubles (118.5 euros) and 15,000 roubles (177.53 euros), were paid in September to firefighters, policemen, prosecutors and soldiers, among others. The decrees said the payments were designed to protect the social needs of those receiving them. The Kremlin leader also promised similar payments in July to pensioners, many of whom have been hit by rising food prices and inflation of 6.5 per cent, well above the central bank's 4 per cent target. In fact, it was not the first time, and more recently, that the Kremlin has used this ploy to secure the outcome of the 2020 referendum held between 25 June and 1 July to approve or reject changes to the constitution, including one that would allow Putin, in power since late 1999, to serve two more six-year terms in the Kremlin instead of stepping down in 2024, Putin approved the handing out of shopping vouchers to those who took part, with Alexei Nemeryuk claiming that 2 million certificates worth a total of 10 billion roubles (about 118.5 million euros) would be given to residents to spend in shops and restaurants, under the guise of reviving consumer demand after the coronavirus blockade was largely lifted just that week.

In mid-June 2021 President Putin promised to spend heavily on infrastructure, education and health. With real wages falling and inflation rising, his ratings are at a multi-year low, according to a poll by the Levada Center, an independent pollster. It showed that only 27 per cent of Russians supported the party in March, down from 31 per cent in August. Putin proposed extending an infrastructure loan programme until 2026 and a 100 billion rouble (about 1.185 billion euros) pandemic recovery programme. He also pledged more funds for road construction and reiterated his support for a ban on exports of some types of timber from 1 January 2022.

In Moscow, the authorities have also raffled off prizes for people who voted online that could even win cars and flats.

As can be seen, previous polls suggested that dissatisfaction with the economic measures of recent years and accusations of corruption would dent United Russia. But the decline is small compared to the 2016 election, when it won 334 seats, having gone from 54.2% in 2016, to 49.84% in 2021, when it was projected at 25-30%. The final result meets its goal of exceeding two-thirds in the Duma.

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) is close to 19% (18.93% and 57 seats, 15 seats more than in 2016), after the 25% promised by polls at the polls, and with the diversion of the protest vote on its candidates, including the Smart Voting promoted by the imprisoned Alexei Navalny, and echoed by The New York Times.

The Smart Voting app has been used twice before in regional elections, helping opposition candidates win 20 of 45 seats in the 2019 Moscow City Duma elections and United Russia lose its majority in the legislatures of the cities of Novosibirsk, Tambov and Tomsk. For that reason, the state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor announced the blocking of the app.

On 3 September, the Moscow Arbitration Court ordered Internet search engines Google and Russia's Yandex, the two most widely used, to stop displaying the search term "Умное гололосование" ("smart vote", in Russian) in their search results, after a wool company called Woolintertrade registered a trademark with the phrase over the summer, and demanded that the phrase be removed from search results. According to a report by BBC Russian, the company, founded in Dagestan, may have links to the Russian police.

On 6 September, access to Smart Voting's website in Russia was cut off, and Volkov claimed that the authorities had used a TSPU (technical tools to counter threats) system as part of the Sovereign Internet Law. Roskomnadzor stated that the website was blocked because it was being used to "continue the activities and holding events of an extremist organisation".

After the blocking of Google Docs came the final offensive, as The New York Times reports, and Google and Apple caved in to the Kremlin by removing Navalny's app promoting 'smart voting'. But only 6.6 per cent in the constituencies supported CPRF candidates on the single-member lists. In fact, one of its leading figures, strawberry farmer and 2018 presidential candidate Pavel Grudinin, was also vetoed from running, which leads me to think of a split among the establishment, the search for a new balance of power after Putin... or all of the above, but certainly not all together. or all together, but it is certainly not "spontaneous".

The first results of the vote count in the Russian Far East, where discontent against the Kremlin sparked unprecedented protests last year, gave unexpected victories to the Communists and other opposition parties. The communists were also the most recommended candidates to defeat United Russia in Navalny's team's 'smart vote' list. Ziuganov's party has been the main beneficiary of the Kremlin party's attrition. The reduction in expected support that emerged from the count infuriated the leadership of the CPRF, which threatened protests.

Lenin's words were raised, but this time as an absolute farce, as Marx pointed out ("History repeats itself twice: the first time as a tragedy and the second time as a farce"). In short, the "farce" of Lenin and his "What is to be done" is still in the air, because now there is a dilemma between maintaining the acquiescent opposition (and very much in Putin's favour, because the Russian establishment, which is either showing signs of fracture or is preparing to look for a successor and a change in the distribution of power... or all together, as I said above), or trying to make the leap towards real dissidence, but honestly, the second option seems very unrealistic.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky's even more Kremlin-friendly Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) will sit in the Duma, with fewer seats (18 seats less, down to 21 seats), as will the inoffensive, very inoffensive centre-left "Just Russia" (SRZP), which overtakes the LDPR with 27 seats and four seats more than in 2016.

In contrast, New People, led by Alexey Nechayev, the founder of the Russian cosmetics company Faberlic, made its debut with 5.32% and 13 seats. The party was born with the approval of the higher echelons of power as it is useful for intercepting protest votes and voters exhausted by the inaction of the parliamentary framework. That Alexey Nechayev does cosmetics and might be thought to be cooperating in making up the elections... is a sense of humour.

For months, the Russian authorities have repressed and harassed any dissenting voice, from opponents to independent media to civil organisations. In short, everything should go according to the Kremlin. Even if the execution of the script required great efforts and "election technology" tricks before, during and, one suspects, after the vote. Perhaps even too much, in particular:

Open ballot boxes for three days

Possibility to vote via mobile phone, with subsequent opaque recounts

Pre-emptive exclusion of the most intransigent opposition and, in general, of the most uncomfortable candidates.

Jailing prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny, who recovered from a poisoning attempt last year, and surreal videos in between

Clone candidates to mislead voters and split the opposition vote

Black propaganda aimed at harming dissident candidates

Carousels (voters passing through several ballot boxes)

Bunching of ballots together

Dead people on voter lists (I would take this as an homage to Gogol and his book "Dead Souls", culture must be encouraged)

Unsealed counting machines

Home voting reaching 50% of the electorate

Unregistered voters

One ballot box or another disappearing

Observers forbidden to take photos or are expelled

A very large etcetera

The election observation NGO Golos, which was blocked by the Kremlin, also denounced irregularities. The Electoral Commission admitted the irregularities, but assured that they did not affect the final result.

To this must be added the mobilisation of the electorate loyal to the Russian establishment pact manifested in Putin on the one hand, and United Russia as a political party (Putin is not officially a member of United Russia), and which gives its support to the political formation and Vladimir Putin, whether out of conviction or purely out of interest: the turnout was 51.72% of the electorate, some 3.84 percentage points higher than in 2016. This highlights the choice of many of those eligible to vote to stay at home because they have already ensured that there are very few real choices left to voters... and this is the result that gives rise to a "new" State Duma.

But make no mistake: social discontent is clearly on the rise because of the economic situation and the pandemic, because of the loss of living standards that has been going on for years, corruption and the loss of quality of infrastructure. The proof is in Putin's annual State of the Federation address - much less geopolitics, fewer references to "the West" and its manoeuvres, and more promises of improvement. And this is because people are fed up, and have had enough of Russian establishment nationalism and business.

In short, a weakened Kremlin at the helm of a weakened Russia emerges more perched in power, but in practice reinforced by elections, which in Russia are above all an exercise in verifying the stability of the system. And for now it is holding on.