Russia-Friendly Politicians Needed
The Price of the Question
The conflict in Georgia between Mikhail Saakashvili and opposition shows that Russia’s role in former Soviet republics is still in decline. The Kremlin has no game of its own in this dispute as the Georgian president’s opponents led by Irakly Okruashvili are no less averse to Moscow. Russian establishment will surely accuse Saakashvili of trampling on democracy and will take a chance to tease Americans who support Tbilisi. But Moscow cannot do more than that. If something extraordinary happens tomorrow and Okruashvili becomes president, he will carry out policies as Western-leaning as current authorities in Tbilisi do.
Let’s suppose that Russia and Georgia’s mutual aversion is based on the issue of unrecognized republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. They in fact remain to be Russia’s protectorate, so it would be odd to assume that there is at least one politician in Tbilisi to choose pro-Russian orientation strategically. At a pinch Russia is used as one of the many resources of a political game – something that the leader of populist Labor Party Shalva Natelashvili does. Only those on political sidelines support Russia in earnest. Some of them like allies of Igor Giorgadze were sentenced to prison terms in Tbilisi accused of masterminding a plot to overthrow the constitutional rule. No one, however, was there to come forward and speak up. Quite a different thing happened to the Okruashvili case when his arrest drew thousands of people to the streets.
Pro-Russian politicians are in shortage in other CIS countries as well. In Ukraine, out of all parties running in the recent election only Natalya Vitrenko’s Progressive Socialists, who mustered 2 percent of the vote, were openly oriented to Russia. The local Communists supported Russia, or rather Soviet nostalgia, in an old habit. The Regions of Ukraine, though, initiated the signature gathering to hold a referendum on the state status of Russian and the NATO membership. Most Ukrainians oppose the accession to the NATO, so the poll’s result will be easy to predict. Ukrainian observers note that this campaign is very unlikely to have any legal consequences and it was just one way to mobilize quite passive voters in Ukrainian East.
Moscow is believed to work very little with up-and-coming politicians in former Soviet republics because most of its allies are outsiders. But maybe it is not the case. Several years ago, Moscow seemed to be the leader of modernization in the CIS both in terms of economy and politics. The situation has dramatically changed, and Russia is now seen as an old empire which is eager to recover its lost eminence and, therefore, cannot attract many of its neighbors.
Alexey Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technologies
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 05, 2007
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