Above the party

Vladimir Putin made a choice between United Russia and the Popular Front

Vladimir Putin, who had abandoned the Popular Front, again turned his attention to his brainchild. The leader of United Russia decided to form his election headquarters on the basis not of a party, but of a front. According to the official version, director Stanislav Govorukhin will lead the headquarters. Thus, Putin once again demonstrated his desire to act as a supra-party politician.

The All-Russian Popular Front was born in May 2011. Putin decided to unite various social movements and organizations around himself. In the end, there were several thousand of them, but the first to enter was, of course, United Russia, loyal Putin to Vladimir . In the first months, the work to create the front was extremely active: at first they began to register not only movements, but also enterprises, and then ordinary citizens were allowed to join.

No one could really explain why exactly the Popular Front was created. In general, the explanations boiled down to the fact that society needs to be consolidated around Putin. However, the most reasonable reason for creating this structure was the upcoming elections to the State Duma. Political scientists unanimously called the Popular Front an election project that should support the falling ratings of United Russia. President Dmitry Medvedev argued that the creation of the ONF is understandable from the point of view of electoral technologies. United Russia did not hide the fact that thanks to the front they were planning to regain a constitutional majority in the State Duma.

However, the closer the elections got, the less often references to the Popular Front appeared in the news. Moreover, Vladimir Putin began to distance himself from United Russia. At the first part of the United Russia congress on September 24, he unexpectedly refused to head the party list in the elections. Moreover, he explained his decision by a certain tradition, according to which United Russia members must be led to elections by the president, although this happened only once (in 2007, the United Russia list was single-handedly headed by Putin).

As a result, Dmitry Medvedev became the number one of United Russia in the elections, and Putin initially distanced himself from the election campaign. True, at the very last moment he had to take part in several joint events together with the current head of state. This was probably due to a critical drop in United Russia's ratings: it began to decline a long time ago, and by election day it had reached forty percent . In some regions, according to media reports , it was significantly lower.

After the State Duma elections, the prime minister's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov , said that Putin “was never directly associated with the party,” and should be considered as an “independent politician.” In a subsequent interview , however, he already said that “it is incorrect to talk about any attempt to distance Putin from United Russia.” However, the meeting of the prime minister with the coordination council of the Popular Front showed that this distance is increasing.

According to the results of the State Duma elections, United Russia received 49.32 percent of the votes. Preliminary calculations show that the party can count on approximately 238 mandates. For comparison: in 2007, United Russia had 64.3 percent of the votes and 315 seats in the State Duma. Thanks to this, United Russia members completely controlled the State Duma for four years. Now, in order to pass individual bills, they will have to negotiate with at least one more party.

The elections (although their transparency is questionable among observers) showed that Putin's rating did not help pull out United Russia. At the same time, it became clear that the falling rating of United Russia members was also reducing Putin’s rating. The prime minister obviously understands this. “They say that the party in power is a party associated with theft and corruption,” he said at a meeting with the heads of his offices in the regions. “This is a stamp not of a specific political force, but of power.” This is probably why the prime minister decided to separate the concepts of “United Russia” (that is, power) and “Putin”.

Despite the fact that it was his party that nominated him for president, during the election campaign the emphasis will obviously be on the Popular Front. That is, Putin decided to act as a supra-party candidate.

At a meeting with the coordination council of the Popular Front on December 8, the prime minister first of all warned United Russia members not to take away the mandates of the “front-line soldiers” elected on the “United Russia” lists. According to him, in a number of regions, party representatives began to put pressure on candidates from the ONF with a demand to give up seats in the State Duma. “I have very tender feelings towards United Russia... but I appeal to you and to those candidates who were on the lists not to succumb to any pressure of this kind, not to hand over any mandates anywhere,” the prime minister warned.

Stanislav Govorukhin. Photo by RIA Novosti, Sergey Pyatakov

Next, Vladimir Putin, launching into lengthy discussions about the open structure of his campaign headquarters, offered to head it to director Stanislav Govorukhin. This cultural figure, by the way, at the United Russia congress proposed that the party nominate Putin for president. Vladimir Putin's headquarters will include Sverdlovsk metallurgist Valery Yakushev and Alexey Romanov from the FSB, who also spoke at the congress.

In addition to them, the current prime minister’s election team included Leonid Roshal , the head of the organization for protecting the rights of motorists “Freedom of Elections” Vyacheslav Lysakov, the author of the “people’s program” Nikolai Fedorov and several other people less known to the general public. Among the characters summoned by Putin to the headquarters there are United Russia members, but the backbone of the structure consists of people who are not members of United Russia.

Stanislav Govorukhin, in whose opinion Putin is almost the only possible presidential candidate, gladly accepted his leader’s offer. “I will take on this, of course, with soul and seriously, but I cannot guarantee you now that your choice is ideal and that you have chosen exactly the right person, since there is no experience,” said the director, who in 2000 participated in presidential elections and lost to Putin.

According to him, he can’t even call leading Putin’s headquarters a job, because he enjoys it. “If we consider the art of politics and the art of directing as related arts (and they are similar in many ways, by the way), then for me this is still a new genre,” Govorukhin added. The rest of the “front-line soldiers” were not asked for consent to work at the headquarters.

According to Gazeta.ru , in fact, Vladimir Putin’s headquarters will be headed by the head of the government apparatus, Vyacheslav Volodin , and the deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov . As the media wrote , these officials had a conflict during the preparation of the United Russia list for the elections. Govorukhin, according to Gazeta.ru’s source, was appointed to the post of chief of staff in order to “separate the conflicting parties at the expense of a third figure.”

Vladimir Tsybulsky

Above the party

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