By Susan B. Glasser
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, December 6, 2003; Page A01

MOSCOW, Dec. 5 -- The party has neither a legislative program nor an ideology. Its leaders refuse to debate, and its main selling point is that it already runs the country. Its all-things-to-all-people message on campaign posters features both Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Indeed, United Russia exists less as a political party than as a vehicle to promote the standing of one man, President Vladimir Putin.

By all accounts it has been an extraordinarily successful strategy.

United Russia is poised to collect more votes in national parliamentary elections Sunday than any party has in the dozen years since the Soviet collapse, according to polls and analysts. The results could cripple the Communists, who were the biggest vote-getters in the last two Russian legislative elections.

"United Russia has a very simple message -- it's the party of the president," said Kremlin pollster Alexander Oslon. "It's just one thing -- it's Putin. That factor of Putin is the decisive one."

The party commands nearly 30 percent of the electorate in surveys, and independent analysts say it could receive 35 percent or more Sunday. Its effort, the analysts said, has been bolstered by Putin's endorsement, a media barrage on state-controlled television and harassment of opponents by state institutions, the political weapon that Russians call "administrative resources."

The campaign crowns four years of consolidation of power by Putin, who has taken over or shut down independent television networks, weakened the role of regional leaders and installed a new cadre of officials who, like him, served in the Soviet KGB. The Russian political world he has built has more order but less competition than the one he inherited.

His aides speak of "managed democracy" and depict United Russia -- which offers a fuzzy blend of capitalism, socialism and nationalism when it addresses policy -- as more a grand governing coalition than an ideas-driven party. Many analysts fear its success could weaken attempts to create a vibrant and accountable multiparty system in Russia, but many voters have signed on, equating more robust democracy with the chaos and economic decline of the 1990s.

Now, the Kremlin hopes to use United Russia and a handful of smaller pro-presidential parties to come close to a two-thirds majority in the lower house of parliament, the State Duma. That would give Putin unchecked power to push through legislation and even amend the constitution to eliminate the presidential two-term limit, as some supporters want to do.

But political analysts said the goal is even more ambitious: a long-term project to institutionalize a ruling party that could hold on to power like Japan's Liberal Democrats, who have ruled almost uninterrupted since 1955, or the Institutional Revolutionary Party that governed Mexico for 71 years.

"This is a project to help rule Russia for decades," said Michael McFaul, a Stanford University expert on Russian elections. "It's a fusion of the party and the state in a way never possible in the 1990s."

Other attempts to create what Russians call a "party of power" have failed in recent years, faltering on the unpopularity of the previous president, Boris Yeltsin, and rifts in the ruling elite. But United Russia's fortunes have been buoyed by exceptional public support for Putin, whose approval rating now exceeds 80 percent.

"They should put a mask of Putin on every candidate," joked Vyacheslav Nikonov, a strategist for United Russia. "I am always telling them that's the only thing they need."

The party's message is summed up in a TV ad that is running across the country: An old woman is stopped on the street and asked who she will vote for. "I am for the president," she says, "and that means for United Russia." United Russia's slogan is equally to the point: "Together with the president."

Created in December 2001 as the brainchild of Kremlin officials, it is a merger of Unity, the party hastily assembled four years ago to back Putin, and its 1999 rival Fatherland-All Russia, headed by former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov and Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

The reborn party, headed by Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov, has enlisted Russia's most powerful regional leaders as well as its top federal officials. Some 30 regional governors and presidents are heading the national party list on Sunday, though they plan to remain in their current offices rather than take seats in parliament. (Other members will take the seats.) Other candidates range from celebrity figure skaters to wealthy businessmen.

Typical is Konstantin Titov, governor of Samara who ran against Putin in 2000 but has now promised to deliver 40 percent of his region's vote to United Russia. In exchange, some Samara politicians believe, the Kremlin has agreed to quash any legal challenge to Titov running for a third term as governor.

"It turned out we have the same political views," Titov said in an interview. "He's helping me a lot. If the president works this way, I should stand by him." He did not reply when asked if he made a deal with the Kremlin for support.

Putin, who like his predecessor Yeltsin has not officially joined a party, publicly endorsed United Russia in September. He did it again last week, calling it "a party I can work with." Boosted by this and the popular, Kremlin-inspired prosecution of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, United Russia drew far ahead in the polls after starting the autumn dead even with the Communists.

It now claims 675,000 members, but analysts say it has little grass-roots presence and draws much of its power from bureaucrats who are recruited to mobilize the powers of the state. Despite a legal spending limit of $8.3 million per party, many experts believe hundreds of millions of dollars have been poured into the United Russia effort -- an estimated $400 million, according to Igor Bunin, head of the Center for Political Technologies.

"United Russia is totally just administrative resources," said Yekaterina Yegorova, a consultant whose firm is working for 40 United Russia candidates. "This party doesn't have any organization, ideology or leadership."

In a sharply worded report, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe this week criticized "unequal campaign opportunities" and "clear bias" in the media on behalf of United Russia.

News was so tilted that 56 percent of all news coverage on one state network in November was about Putin or United Russia, the OSCE found. In the Saratov region, children were made to write essays extolling United Russia -- or, if they preferred, the virtues of the local United Russia candidate.

Such tactics have left rivals fuming. Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov said Putin is running a "war of extermination" against his party. Boris Nemtsov of the Union of Right Forces called United Russia glitzy packaging that disguises "a gray mass of people who fulfill the instructions of the bosses."

Many opponents claim there is no better example of United Russia's heavy-handed campaign than in Moscow, where Luzhkov, the mayor, is running for reelection while on the United Russia party list for parliament.

In a popular supermarket chain, United Russia has bought what it calls an "advertising contract" requiring all clerks to wear party baseball caps and buttons, regardless of their political views. On Moscow's billboards and the state-run Metro, United Russia ads dominate.

Gryzlov and other party leaders refused to be interviewed for this article, as did 20 United Russia candidates and the party's top campaign staff. They also don't routinely talk to independent Russian media.

Refusing to participate in nationally televised debates, Gryzlov recently said publicly that his party would not let itself be placed at the same level as the others. He compared it to a legendary hockey player sharing the ice with "a substitute goalkeeper for a street hockey team."

"From the point of view of the West and the U.S., I know it sounds very bad -- how can you not participate in debates," said Martin Shakkum, a United Russia candidate from the Moscow region and one of the few candidates who agreed to be interviewed. "But consider the level of development of Russian democracy -- it's very weak and society is not well prepared for this."

United Russia is running an "issue-less" campaign and proud of it, said Nikonov, the strategist. "People just hate all ideologies."

Voters, added pollster Oslon, are not bothered by the party's lack of a program or its refusal to debate. Indeed, one of his polls found that United Russia was judged to have won the televised debates -- without having participated.

"For the majority of the population, it's enough for them to see and hear Putin's activity. The economy's growing, order's being enforced, respect from other countries is growing," Oslon said. "The GNP is being doubled. Court and army and education and pension reforms are underway. . . . Budget workers' salaries are going up, as are pensions. What else do you need?"

For an electorate still influenced by Soviet-era deference to authority, the call to support the popular president seems to have been effective. "We'll just go and look on the ballot for Putin,' said Irina Martinova, a 20-year-old student. She planned to vote for Putin's party, she said, but she couldn't name it.

Her friend Olga Glozovskaya nodded. "Most other parties aren't interesting to us," she said. "And besides, it's our duty to vote for the president."

Correspondent Peter Baker contributed to this report.