Only Margin Is in Question in Russian Vote

With Party's Victory, Putin Will Gain Validation of Policies, Assurance of Future Power

MOSCOW, Dec. 1 -- Russians go to the polls Sunday ostensibly to elect a parliament, but that order of business has been almost completely sidelined by a campaign designed and run by the leading pro-Kremlin party as a referendum on President Vladimir Putin.

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The United Russia party, whose list of candidates is headed by Putin, is certain of victory in voting for the 450-seat lower house of parliament, called the Duma. The only remaining questions are the margin of victory and whether it will be sufficiently overwhelming to give Putin what he has called the "moral authority" to ensure the continuity of his policies after a new president is elected next year.

"The result of the parliamentary elections will, without a doubt, set the tone for the elections for a new president," Putin, 55, said in a televised address Thursday in which he urged Russians to vote for United Russia.

The elections, in other words, are not about who serves in the next parliament, a completely tame institution in Russian politics, but are about Putin's enduring power in a yet undefined role.

With the kind of massive majority United Russia expects, Putin can use parliament as a check on his successor should he or she deviate from his policies, destabilize the fragile balance within the ruling elite or become too comfortable in an office Putin may well return to.

The constitution prohibits Putin from serving a third consecutive term, but he can return in 2012 or earlier if, for some reason, the new president resigns.

The drive to secure a victory has led authorities to relentlessly exploit state-controlled media and harass and intimidate opposition parties into potential oblivion.

According to the most recent opinion polls, only two parties are assured of seats in parliament -- United Russia and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the weak successor of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Garry Kasparov, a chess grandmaster and dogged Putin opponent, said the elections will lead to "total domination by United Russia."

"Russia today does not correspond to even the most primitive idea of a democratic state," he said Friday after he was released from a five-day jail term for organizing an illegal march in Moscow. Russia, he said, is "an authoritarian state with a very serious tendency toward single-party dictatorship."

An increasing number of parties have echoed that view, though some reluctantly. The Union of Right Forces, for instance, had long distanced itself from Kasparov, believing that the system still afforded the group's sedate brand of opposition some room to maneuver.

But in recent weeks, the party has joined Kasparov's street protests, attacked Putin for what it sees as a developing "cult of personality," and inveighed against an electoral atmosphere that brooks no serious opposition to United Russia.