Russia's Election Surprise

Russia is not a land accustomed to elections--to say nothing of electoral surprises. But last week the country got a big one. Within an hour of the polls' closing in Russian parliamentary elections Sunday night, a new and fairly mysterious party called Unity took the lead and held it for most of the night as results came in from across Russia's 11 time zones. And though in the final tally Unity had slipped behind the Communist Party, it was an astounding upset. A group that was founded just three months ago and that had scarcely campaigned will be a major force in the new Duma.

This was, however, an unusual election, and not just in the outcome. Outwardly democratic, it was in fact an exercise in political ruthlessness. The TV marathons that tracked Unity's surge were the nearest to Western-style elections that these polls got. Much of the campaign was an enigma. There were few rallies, cross-country tours by party leaders, debates or televised appeals. Instead there was what Russian politicians euphemistically call technology: a stream of invective on state TV. Most of this was instigated by the Kremlin and aimed at discrediting the one bloc thought to present any risk to Boris Yeltsin: the Fatherland-All Russia coalition, led by former Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov and Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov.

The "technology" worked. While the Unity Party ended up neck and neck with the communists, Fatherland-All Russia came in a disappointing third. It was an expression of what Russian philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev described as Russia's split soul: torn between the attraction of anarchy on the one hand and the desire for a firm ruler on the other. Some past elections have demonstrated the anarchic side. This time, though, Russians opted for a ruler.

They found him in 47-year-old Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: his youth, his sportsman's bearing, his precisely phrased and brutally delivered statements--all so different from the doddering Yeltsin and his mangled, half-incomprehensible public utterances. In the past few months, as Russian troops have streamed into Chechnya, Putin's popularity has soared. And though the presidential elections won't take place until next June, the Duma outcome was widely seen as a sign of Putin's strength. A vote for Unity was, in most Russian minds, a vote for Putin. Immediately after last week's results were known, the Prime Minister's aides fanned out among the news bureaus of Moscow, driving home the message that their boss was a shoo-in for the presidency. They admitted slight embarrassment about the wildly biased coverage of the campaign on state TV. But, they maintained, Putin's endorsement of Unity was essential.

Unity's leaders, almost invisible during the campaign, were silent after it. It is a peculiar party. Unity has virtually no platform, almost no organization (especially in contrast to the nation's Communist Party) and only a handful of visible leaders. What it does have is the backing of the Kremlin. The party was formed last September by Sergei Shoigu, who serves as Putin's Emergencies Minister, a position in which he dealt with natural and man-made disasters.