Campaign: Putin's bar

They tore off a voice Last Tuesday, the secretary of the Moscow Regional Committee of the Communist Party, Alexander Naumov, could not explain why they spoke about the leader of the Communist Party of the Communist Party of the Communist Party on TV in a complimentary spirit. Perhaps, in connection with the increased anti -Western rhetoric of Putin, Ironized Naumov, because it is embarrassing to attack the Communists in the heat of the external enemy. Naumov arrived with his right hand Gennady Zyuganov Vladimir Kashin to agitate in the Vidnoye Moscow Region, which is 5 km from the saints for the Communists of the Leninsky Glans. “Dear comrades,” Kashin turned to voters, “of course, Vladimir Vladimirovich is incomparably better than Boris Nikolaevich. He does not drink, an athlete. But over these eight years - not a single decent factory or science city. Longing is everywhere. "

This Newsweek number went to print on Friday at night, the day before the vote, and, according to sociologists, the Communist Party on the eve was the only party besides United Russia, which was a guarantee in the Duma. With great probability with United Russia and the Communists, the LDPR was held in the Duma, and the intrigue consisted in whether the 7-percent barrier was overcome by Sergei Mironov “Fair Russia” (see schedule).

When the magazine goes on sale, the results of the elections will be already known. But the main result of an extremely tense and nervous parliamentary campaign was not difficult to predict in advance: Putin’s party will receive a constitutional majority - more than 300 seats in the Duma. Well, the triumph of Putin himself, six months before resignation, as it were, from hand to hand, he received the mandate of trust from the people and, as it were, on legally, took the place of the national leader not indicated in the legislation. Putin asked him to be chosen - as he explained to give him the opportunity to ask those who will remain to manage Russia when he leaves. In other words - to allow him to remain the main face of the country in the form that he will determine himself. And he was chosen.

Putin changes the plan

Today we can safely say: at the start of the election race - somewhere at the end of spring - Putin suddenly changed the action plan abruptly. For two or three months, they went to prepare decisions, and from the second half of August the campaign moved to the active phase. “Until August 15, everything was in order,” says a source at the headquarters of “Fair Russia,” “and we were waiting for Putin in our youth camp near Smolensk.” Around the same time, employees of the United Russia headquarters did not complain under the record that, contrary to common sense, their campaign seemed to deliberately stopped from above: neither money, nor agitmaterials, now the headquarters in the regions were not formed.

Putin did not come to the young Mironovites. And instead of a fateful visit, the same party headquarters recalls, from the second half of August the "war of destruction" began. When, already at the end of September, the Mironovites approved the party spokes, without coordinating it with the Kremlin and putting it in it with the third number of the leader of the youth movement “Hurray!” Sergei Shargunov, according to Newsweek, on the table Putin immediately lay a denunciation of quotes from his anti -Putin statements. And Putin made it clear to Mironov - to exclude.

Then, in mid -September, according to the source in the Union of Right Forces, the Kremlin cut off his party from sources of financing: the ATP was left without money and “without Chubais”. Of the three planned campaign newspapers, only one managed to release only one, and even that voters practically did not reach: the police in the field arrested almost the entire multimillion circulation. Back in March, in the regional elections, the ATP performed quite successfully, and the Mironovites even claimed to be called Putin's party. But then both parties fell under the hard fire of the Kremlin. Elections with their new concept were fully controlled by the deputy head of the administration of President Vladislav Surkov.

Then, in September, Putin approved the little-known head of Rosfinmonitoring Victor Zubkov Prime Minister. And it was at the request of Putin, according to Newsweek, Zubkov immediately declared his presidential ambitions.

In September, the First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov was already considered an approved successor, and United Russia saw him the leader of his party list. The popular version even walked around the offices that Putin would release one successor to the elections from one party, and the other from the competing party. But Putin, as if everything had begun again - elections to parliament and presidential. And then, at the end of September, even before the Congress of United Russia, in the Kremlin, according to Newsweek, they began to form a public movement for Putin, which would have opposed those who are against “United Russia”, but supported Putin personally, and then would help him in the elections.

A year ago, turning on the green light of “Fair Russia”, Putin sent a signal that he was ready to become an arbitrator in a dispute of elites and parties. But he changed his mind and went to the start - as the only, in general, participant in the race and its future winner. On October 19, Shargunov was deleted from the Party Referee Russian Party. By that time, everyone already became clear to everyone: at the Congress of United Russia, the president single -handedly headed her party spokes, and the elections to the Duma turned into a referendum on the trust of Putin. With Putin, the head of United Russia immediately aimed at the constitutional majority, and Mironov finally realized that they were simply not in the Putin’s agenda.

It even got to the point that, in the fields of Mironov, they began to refuse to rent halls for agitation under various pretexts - before they did this except with the opposition from the “other Russia” announced by the internal enemy. Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky did not have such problems. Well, all other parties registered in the elections simply defined the role of statists in advance. For example, the Democratic Party and the Party of Social Justice used the time in the television battles in order to discredit the “Union of Right Forces”, when at the finish the Kremlin began to beat the right of all the guns.

With all his might

At the entrance to the city of Vidnoye, a billboard hung “show a high turnout in the elections to the State Duma on December 2. We prove that the Leninsky district is the best. ” Voluntarily or involuntarily working to increase this very turnout, the Communist Kashin with numbers in his hands proved to the old people gathered in the cinema, which was bad by Putin's regime. “You have ruined the village for these 16 years,” Kashin seemed to turn to “United Russia”, “you’ll send $ 30 billion abroad to buy food, and what it is, we know - 70% of poor -quality cereals and genetically modified material from which our children and grandchildren will not give birth.”

An oasis was instantly formed in the “Iskra”: there was nothing to do here Putin’s party. The one who came to listen to Pushin Putin is definitely not a decree: military pensioner Vladimir Nikolaevich, who served in long aviation and defending the White House in 1993, as he went to the cinema, first pushed the stand of United Russia first. A resident of the prominent Galina explained: instead of doing something for the country, Putin “The devil knows where” and he sells everything ”and sells everything - to whom electricity, to whom oil, to whom gas.

“37 million cattle were destroyed, there is a district in the chernozem zone, where not a single head of the dairy herd. What is it? - The picture drawn by Kashin was getting worse. - And consumption was reduced to 2100 kcal. There are irreversible processes in the body. Vitamin deficiency - 50%, protein - 30%. What are you doing with the country?! "

In fact, the Communists for Putin and his parties do not pose a danger (they have too different voters), and therefore they had long ago booked places in the Duma. Even before the start of the campaign, the Kremlin blocked the nationalists, not allowing them to register their party, and the systemic, as they say, LDPR Zhirinovsky was supposed to, experts say, and again delayed the ultra -right electorate.

The task that the Kremlin set “United Russia” in the summer was to be able to form a constitutional majority in the Duma, along with the LDPR or Mironovites. She looked completely solved, the election campaign was increasingly reminiscent of a demonstration performance, there was no intrigue, it became boring.

But here Putin made his main move, and the picture turned upside down: absolutely everyone who was involved in the campaign, governors, television men, enterprises, political technologists, voters, felt at one way or another. The last two months, according to one of the Kremlin employees, the presidential administration worked in fire regime. And Putin seemed to be nervous. And he could not hide the irritation by the party, which he headed, assures political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky. At least there is every reason to argue that it was his idea - to mention the rogues joined the party in a program campaign in Krasnoyarsk.

One way or another, Putin very much heated the situation. The meaning of his speech on November 21 at the forum of supporters in Luzhniki was to, against the backdrop of the “parties of the past” - the Communist Party and ATP - to advertise the modern source of modern and directed into the future by the informed source. The text was ready three weeks before the performance. It turned out as if Putin pointed a finger at enemies, ready to overthrow his regime. And then the leader of the “other Russia” Harry Kasparov and several more activists of the Marshy of the Disagent received five days of arrest each, which provoked another loud international scandal.

Experts explained: dramatizing a calm and stable atmosphere, Putin only sought to mobilize his supporters, push them to come to the polls. It turned out slightly beyond measure, says the source close to the Kremlin. And now the situation looks like Putin won at the cost of tremendous tension - but it is not quite clear who and what exactly the victory consists of.

It's time to declare the successor

Putin won the elections, and in the Kremlin, according to Newsweek, meanwhile, work is underway on the long -term development strategy of Russia - a set of probable scenarios with a tough description of possible forks, explains the source close to the Kremlin. According to him, in the Kremlin now the atmosphere is that Putin has recently begun or is about to begin the performance of presidential duties. But he, by coincidence, is just time to leave.

Putin arranged a referendum from the election to check the vertical for strength created by him, and then to clean it properly, the employee of the United Russia headquarters is sure. The party is really waiting for personnel purges following the results of the elections, including among governors. Now, with Putin, the influence of the party will certainly grow up, especially if he decides to lead it after the resignation or, according to the assumption of Belkovsky’s political scientist, stand at the head of her Duma faction.

In the meantime, in the meantime, they say about the inevitable merger and strengthening of the role of parliamentary committees and also wait for Putin - with him the Duma would become the center of power. Everyone is sure that on the so -called "completion of the party" on December 15, the party will nominate or support the Putin successor. In the 20s of December, the deadline expires.

In the short list of successors at the time of the Putin victory there are four surnames: old -timers Sergey Ivanov and Dmitry Medvedev, Boris Gryzlov - already on the party line, and in the post - Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov. To promote someone else, Putin simply does not have enough time. But the problem is the same: none of them can completely arrange it. From the fact that Putin became the national leader, the problem of 2008 has only aggravated, says Nikolai Petrov from the center of Carnegie. There is no one to put on, and Putin will again pull with the decision to the last.

At the end of November, Sergei Mironov tried to enlist Putin's support again. To do this, he went to London for a meeting of society on climate change, but in fact - to meet with the Prime Minister of Great Britain Gordon Brown. There were even rumors that Mironov was carrying a letter from Putin Brown.

Mironov was not missed to the territory of the residence of the British Prime Minister, where the meeting of the social social commission was held, and he had to run to the entrance under the pouring rain. Mironov also did not have letters, and instead of the meeting, a short handshake turned out - after Brown was indicated from a representative from Russia. Returning to Moscow, Mironov hurried to the president in order, taking advantage of the moment, to discuss the situation with the party, a source in the headquarters of the "SR" said. The reaction, from his words, was something like this: “Did you go to Brown? Fine. In this spirit and continue. ”

Strictly according to plan

Alena Stepanenko, Kirill Petrov

Since Vladimir Zhirinovsky unexpectedly won the Duma elections in 1993, mistakes have been expected from sociologists. But the success of the "homeland" in 2003, sociologists predicted quite accurately. As NEWSweek President Alexander Osonon explained, “to predict it is much more difficult when society is seething. Now there is no such situation. ”

The forecasting technique has also changed. When drawing up forecasts, these surveys are processed taking into account the characteristics of the psychology of respondents - to avoid the “Zhirinovsky effect”. There are “silent people”, “liar” - those who are afraid to openly declare their addictions - and “undefined”, who were about 13-15%a week before the election.

No hidden breakthroughs were expected. A month ago, the ATP, according to the VTsIOM forecast, claimed 5%, but he lost everything closer to the elections. As NEWSWeek explained by VTsIOM general director Valery Fedorov, this is due to “rational voting”-no one wants to give his vote for someone who does not take a 7 percent barrier.

The only thing that sociologists could not predict until Sunday were unable to predict - whether “Fair Russia” will take place and whether United Russia will gain even more votes. If he gains, sociologists in advance in advance this explanation: the matter is not in falsifications, but in the fact that the voter was fired from all propaganda guns until the very last day of agitation. However, the Osonon says, in the last week of voters they could even overfeed “United Russia”.