Fri, Mar 12, 2004 page9

• Russia's poor put their trust in the president

  • By Nick Paton Walsh / THE GUARDIAN
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  Natasha lives in a one-room house in the depths of Vostochni-Chernovsky, a remote and desolate village in the Siberian wasteland of Chita.

  The 26-year-old earns $US5.40 a day at the local shop, income she shares with her husband -- a US$3.60-a-day security guard for a local company -- her mother and her six-month year-old daughter Aliona.

  Over the last four years, the self-acclaimed miracle of Russian economic growth and political stability of President Vladimir Putin's first term has brought about no positive change in her life, or the lives of most of the residents in Chita, a third of whom live below the poverty line.

  Three years ago, her family had to sell their flat in town to pay off debts, and then moved out into the "suburbs" -- to this graying, dusty cottage in Vostochni. Since then, she said, "Prices for bread, energy and everything have just gone up and up, but my wages have stayed the same."

  Life is worse than ever. Yet in next Sunday's presidential elections her response to this enveloping misery will be simple.

  "I'll vote for Putin, of course," she said.

  Bouncing baby Aliona up and down in their cramped and humid kitchen-cum-bedroom, she said, "I don't really know why. Maybe things will get better."

  Her mother, Olga, 49, had a basic explanation as to why Moscow had done so little to improve her family's lot.

  "Putin simply has not had time. He's had a lot of catastrophes to deal with. There is terrorism, and lots of disasters," she said.

  For Natasha and her mother, Putin's leadership is defined by his appearances on state-controlled television when he's addressing the crisis of the day.

  The Kremlin is in Moscow, a dream city, unaffordable and distant, a one-way ticket there costing the equivalent of two months' average wages. And so, in Chita, as in many of Russia's regions, Putin has attained the status of a fairy-tale paternal leader, which his image advisers have so keenly sought to create.

  "For many, it's enough that Putin even visited [in August 2002]," said Yevgeny Drobotushenko, a local political analyst. "He's the second president since [Leonid] Brezhnev to bother coming here."

  Chita is a forgotten wintry desert. The air is so dry that it rarely snows and the air fills with the smell of factory smoke or industrial dust in the parched frost of winter. The town's flat streets sit between two mountain ranges, battered by the wind tunnel they create. It has not rained for six months.

  There are no raw materials to bring riches to Chita. Instead they must eke out a living from selling the region's plentiful wood, or by trade with the neighboring economic powerhouse of China. It is one of the poorest regions in Russia yet it is also expected to give Putin one of his highest endorsements across the country.

  "Even in depressed places like this," said Dmitri Orezhkin of the Mercator research center, "Putin can expect a vote of 60 to 70 percent, or even higher."

  Putin's critics say this reflects the president's monopoly on the media, a control that may help to explain why most people in Chita can say for whom they will vote, but few can say why.

  "In Chita, there is the state TV channel, and a private one in which the local government holds the majority of the shares," said Oleg Kuznetsov, a local independent member of parliament.

  "Putin gets 10 times more coverage than the competitors," he said.

  He added that the print media all depend in some way on the local government, run by the governor, Ravil Geniatulin, an independent strongman who is a Putin loyalist.

  In a simultaneous vote on Sunday, Geniatulin will seek a third term, something only made possible last year when the Kremlin changed the law.

  "The propaganda is very effective," Kuznetsov added. "The Russian, Christian mentality leads to a strong belief in the written word. There is also a traditional need for a khozain -- a strong paternal ruler. When they see Putin on TV he is a virtual warrior, fighting big business, Chechen terrorism or corruption."

  He added, "The Yeltsin era was an attempt to bring democracy, but in their hearts people knew this never truly arrived. Today there is no such thing in Russia. Debating its condition is like asking me how well my computer works when I only have a typewriter."

  Four local analysts agreed that Putin's first term brought no reform or improvements in Chita, bar his renowned stability.

  Kuznetsov insists that the Kremlin will be forced into making some sort of reform in its second term or risk an economic crash, especially if there is a drop in oil prices -- currently inflated and providing Moscow with revenues high enough to ensure that pensions and wages are paid.

  Orezhkin added, "People are now feeling stability, and the 2004 vote for Putin will, like the 2000 vote, be one for hope."

  But hope in a future democracy is fading. A group of students asked to conduct a straw poll seemed as keen to vote for Putin as they were to move abroad to work as computing engineers, and considered politics a dirty business. Only a small minority felt Putin was building democracy in Russia.

  At the Vagonremontnoye Delo Factory, where old train engines have been stripped and repaired since before Soviet times, Nikolai, 51, has spent the last 30 years scavenging electrical parts.

  He lives in a state-owned flat, but finds his wages of US$288 a month don't rise quickly enough to keep up with the cost of bread and heating fuel. He admits that any change for the better can only happen in Chita with money from Moscow, but all the same says, "I will vote for Putin. There is no alternative."

  Yuri, 55, an engineer, says he will not vote for Putin. But he struggles to name any of the other candidates.

  "We have a joke here," he says. "In America, you find out who wins the elections two months after they've finished. In Russia, we know two months beforehand."

  The other candidates for the presidency are Sergei Glazyev, Irina Khakamada, Nikolai Kharitonov, Sergei Mironov and Oleg Malyshkin.

  Glazyev, a former communist and experienced economist, has fallen out with the Rodina party that he helped create and led to huge success in December's parliamentary elections. Now running effectively as an independent, has accused the Kremlin of likening him to Hitler. A poll in January gave him 3 percent.

  Khakamada, a libertarian connected to the Union of Rightist Forces party, was originally compromised by rumors that she ran at the Kremlin's request to inject some excitement into the race. Later she attacked Putin's handling of the Nord Ost theater siege. She is expected to poll 1 percent to 2 percent.

  Kharitonov is the Communist party's candidate, standing in for leader Gennady Zyuganov, who boycotted the race, complaining that the use of the state media in the parliamentary elections turned them into a farce. He has threatened to withdraw. He is expected to poll 1 percent to 2 percent.

  Mironov is the head of the upper chamber of the parliament and the Party of Life. A staunch Putin supporter, he supports tougher measures against criminals and is expected to poll 1 percent to 2 percent.

  Malyshkin is standing in for angry nationalist Vladimir Zhironovsky, leader of the misleadingly named Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, a party highly loyal to Putin. He is expected to poll 1 percent to 2 percent.
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