Infighting Fractures Russian Opposition
Kremlin's Democratic Foes Help Marginalize Themselves With Suspicions, Old Feuds

By Peter Finn
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

MOSCOW -- Russia's Republican Party, a small liberal grouping led by parliamentary deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov, ceased to exist last Friday after the country's Supreme Court upheld a decision by the Ministry of Justice not to re-register the party.

"The decision was absolutely predictable," said Ryzhkov, 41, a four-term deputy and lonely voice in parliament who has railed against the Kremlin's centralization of power. "Independent politics no longer exists. It's the Kremlin's decision who can participate in electoral politics. And our courts just rubber-stamp these decisions."

But even as the Kremlin works to marginalize its democratic opponents, however weak, they help the process along with infighting, ego clashes and fear of the Kremlin's ability to expunge what little official status they still enjoy.

The parties and movements that make up Russia's democratic opposition are numbingly numerous; among its major strands are old-line parties such as Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces, which were significant players in the 1990s; Ryzhkov's now-defunct Republican Party; and Other Russia, a diverse and pugnacious coalition whose main strategist is chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov.

They expend a lot of energy accusing each other of being Kremlin stooges or second-guessing who might join forces with the Kremlin at any given moment. "The problem is very bad personal and political relations between the parties, old conflicts and a deficit of will to be united," Ryzhkov said in an interview. "We need more courage and to take risks."

Electoral laws pushed through parliament last year by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party have forced more than half of Russia's 35 parties to disband.

The Republican Party, for instance, ceased to exist because it was unable to prove it had more than 50,000 members nationally and branches in 45 regions each with more than 500 members, as required by a re-registration law. The party insists it has 60,000 members and is growing, but the Justice Ministry said it counted only about 40,000. The Supreme Court agreed.

The Kremlin, according to party activists and political analysts, has positioned two parties -- the dominant United Russia and the newly created Fair Russia, ostensibly a rival to the other -- as the principal choices for Russian voters. Both parties, while sniping at each other about economic and social policy, pledge absolute loyalty to President Vladimir Putin.

"It's an imitation democracy with the appearance of competition, but everything is controlled at the center," said Ryzhkov, who has no chance of returning to parliament unless another party takes him in. In December's national election, voters will cast ballots for a party, not individuals. The parties will appoint their legislative deputies.

Under electoral changes enacted last year, the threshold to enter parliament has been raised from 5 to 7 percent of the overall vote, further increasing the pressure on smaller parties. To survive as an electoral force, they must unite under one banner. So far, that has proved impossible.

For the last year, Ryzhkov and Nikita Belykh, leader of the Union of Right Forces, have been discussing some form of unification. "They are very cautious because they are a registered party," Ryzhkov said, "and any registered party depends on the Kremlin, because the Kremlin can stop any party at any time."

In this month's regional elections, the Union of Right Forces was tossed from the ballot in five of 13 races it wanted to contest. Belykh charges that there was electoral fraud where the party did run.

Still, the Union of Right Forces is reluctant to expand its base by drawing in Ryzhkov and his followers. "We have to understand that unifying with Ryzhkov is not the unification of democratic forces," Belykh said. "If we just unify with him, it could mean that the Kremlin will give more money to Yabloko."

Belykh said he had hoped for a broad new political configuration that would bring in Yabloko as well as Ryzhkov and others. But old feuds interfere. Hopes that Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky might reach some accord with Belykh, the party's new 31-year-old leader, have come to nothing.

"I've spent more than a year of my life communicating with" Yavlinsky, Belykh said. "He is a very complicated person. But I believe that despite his statements, the topic is not closed."

Yavlinsky was unavailable for an interview this week. But in interviews leading up to the March regional elections, Yavlinsky relentlessly attacked the Union of Right Forces.

It "is neither an opposition party nor a democratic party," Yavlinsky said last month in an interview with the newspaper Novye Izvestia. "I'd call it a neo-conservative, pro-government party."

Yavlinsky and Belykh will not join forces with Kasparov's Other Russia, saying they don't approve of the presence in the anti-Kremlin coalition of people they describe as radical nationalists and socialists.

Kasparov has attempted to galvanize a largely uninterested Russian public against what he calls Kremlin authoritarianism. His coalition has repeatedly attempted to hold demonstrations. It is routinely banned by the authorities and then violently suppressed when people show up on the street.

On Saturday, police in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod broke up a demonstration supported by Other Russia, arresting dozens of people. Dozens more activists were prevented from entering the city center, and organizers of the march said two of their colleagues have been charged with disseminating terrorist literature.

Some young Yabloko and Union of Right Forces members have joined these marches, but Kasparov and his allies seem as contemptuous of their leadership as they are of the Kremlin. "If you don't understand that Yabloko and [the union] are not in opposition and are completely pro-Kremlin, then we have nothing to talk about," said Denis Belunov, a spokesman for Kasparov. Belunov said Kasparov was traveling and unavailable for an interview this week.

With its opponents squabbling among themselves, the Kremlin is reportedly teeing up its own liberal party, called Free Russia. Little known until recently, the party nonetheless sailed through the re-registration process last year. The party says it has 70,000 members in 55 regions, figures its foes question.

Its leader is Mikhail Barshchevskiy, a lawyer and well-known media personality in Russia. He came aboard only in January. "It's a democratic and liberal party," said Barshchevskiy, 51, who said the party will appeal to intellectuals and the business elite who have lost interest in politics. He expressed hope also that the voters and ordinary members of Yabloko and the Union of Right Forces will join, but not the leaders.

The party has been dogged by charges that it is a Kremlin vehicle -- either to replace the Union of Right Forces or to use it to siphon off enough of the liberal vote to keep that group out of parliament.

Free Russia could then become another dish on the "Kremlin's menu," as Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, describes the spectrum of choice.

Barshchevskiy, who represents the Russian government at the Supreme and Constitutional courts, waves away such claims. He said the party will run in December and will criticize the government when necessary but without engaging in any "open struggle" with the Kremlin.

"When I hear things like 'Kremlin project,' I have a question: How could anyone make me play someone else's game?" Barshchevskiy asked. "Money? They don't have enough. Power? I don't need power. I hate it."

Barshchevskiy said the party may soon change its name to Civil Force because Free Russia -- following the pro-Putin United Russia and the pro-Putin Fair Russia -- sounds very much like more of the same.

Special correspondent Anna Masterova contributed to this report.