The breaking political news of the last week: the Party of Life uniting with the Rodina (Motherland) party. Though, why is it political? It would be only logical to put it as business news, in the “Mergers & Acquisitions” section.

The owners of the two political parties are trying to find a way-out through creating a new brand after they have arrived at the conclusion those parties were fruitless. The motivation is so obvious that it is embarrassing to discuss it. Rodina turned out to have failed to win the President’s Administration’s liking. At a certain moment its former leader Dmitry Rogozin believed that he could make the next President. He made the wrong bet, and quarreled with the representatives of the Administration. He was allowed to play opposition, but he decided to actually fight for power. Additionally, he picked the worst friends ever. He recruited racists, anti-Semitists and nationalists of all kinds. It is not Rogozin alone who should be blamed for that, of course. In 2003 Rodina was being sculptured with the direct involvement of the President’s Administration, but it was made of waste and in haste. They were picking such personnel nobody was prepared to admit to any other project. Thus, it turned out to be devil knows what.

As Rogozin had no ideas of his own (let alone wise comments openly aimed at leading to believe that he should be made the chief patriot in our country), other party comrades got down to ideological work. They studied theory well – they read “Mein Kampf” and “The Protocols of Zion Wisemen” making remarks in pencil and thoroughly thinking the material over. The unattended nationalists found common language with one another: the ideology started to gain a clear fascist hue. It was a real present for the opponents of the Rodina in the President’s Administration. To begin with, the party was barred from elections for racist propaganda, after that finances dwindled away. Everything collapsed. It took less than three months for Rogozin to hoist the white flag.

Mr. Babakov, the main sponsor of the party was left with a heap of broken pots which he was desperately trying to fix for several months. He desperately grudged the money and time spent, but in vain. The stuff was initially rotten.

The motivation of Mr. Mironov was equally simple and obvious. He is not a small man in our country: the Speaker of the Federation Council. And he comes from St. Petersburg, by the way. The President’s fellow country-man. Crazy money was pumped into the Party of Life, but it cannot scrape over 2% in the national rating. And they did try! They even invited models to make the session hall looked good on TV. But the voter sees all.

And luck comes in quite handy: Rodina is for sale, the party that gained 9% of the vote during last elections. Putting 9 and 2 together makes 11%!

They considered that unnecessary to tell the Speaker that simple mathematical operations are not applicable to politics. It is likely that merging with the Party of Life will have a frustrating effect on the Rodina voters. A supporter of Rodina of today is a person who believes that all bad things in the country come from migrants and “the blacks”, and that the only Hitler’s mistake was attacking Russia. Fascist ideology did the party an ill turn during the registration for the elections. But there are those supporting such ideas. And the more openly and aggressively do these ideas are expressed, the more chances are there to win respective voters. So, the failure of the Rodina consists in not the party growing fascist, but in that its leaders shrank in the last moment and showed no resolve to follow that path in principle.

But such voters will never follow the dull and virtuous Mironov and scared and vetted Babakov. They would vote for Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Communist Party, or ignore the elections, but they will never drop their ballots in favor of Mironov and Babakov.

As a matter of fact, our heroes realize all that themselves, that’s why they are looking for a new political niche as soon as possible. And it seems they have found it! After some consultations the two dependable men decided to become leftists. Not just leftists, but “actual leftists”.

Broadly speaking, they have to be punished for treating the Russian language this way. It is not easy to pronounce that in English, and it sounds just mocking in Russian. But, the sense of humor was never a strong trait of domestic politicians’ character.

However, terminology is not the point. All this magnificently features a general state of mind of the Russian “political elite”. The people genuinely believe that with political technology and simple verbal combinations you can convince anybody in anything. They somehow believe that to be leftist you just have to declare that in public. There is no meaning, or essence in politics, only labels and brand-names devised by political technologists.

Alas, it is not that simple. In order to set up a leftist party you have to muster at least several leftists. And, which is more important, you have to be a part and parcel of social movements. And leftist policy is, in fact, the manifestation of those movements.

Since there is neither of the two, we will have to observe new discoveries in the sphere of political technologies. I clearly imagine a corps de ballet of models attending a uniting session and reading citations from the Communist Manifesto, or Mr. Mironov elaborating on the dangers of bourgeois parliamentary practices using the floor of the Federation Council.

It seems that the Speaker of the upper chamber has made a mistake again. He thought that he was acquiring a party, but he got another head-ache. Though, you cannot say the same about Babakov. He managed to get access to the Federation Council. There you find the budgetary process, deputy inquiries and many other tasty things.

All this reminds of a well known joke. First, a “new Russian” offers another to buy an elephant. A very useful animal. It waters the garden, and guards the house. A week later the lame buyer comes to him overwhelmed with horror. The whole house is destroyed, and the cellar is flooded. What is he supposed to do?

“Hm…”, the first businessman agrees. “You cannot sell an elephant with such sentiment!”

It is interesting which sentiment Mironov is going to approach Babakov after the 2007 election with?

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Director of The Institute for Globalization Studies.

August 3, 2006