Last Spring when together with Semyon Zhavoronkov and Aleksey Nezhivoy we made public the report “Gale Warning” on corruption in opposition political parties, we couldn’t even imagine that the initiative will have so far-reaching effect. The issue came into vogue and soon the political beau monde was ventilating the theme of corruption in the high ranks of power. Communists, United Russia, Liberals, the brand new Fair Russia – all were pointing at their rivals and were sharing their “revelations” with the general public.

The situation would suggest the scriptural: “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?”, if not for the fact that the amount of logs in their eyes is enough to make log rafts and float them to China or Finland.

In the situation where few politicians can redeem their good names, they all shuffle off the blame on each other.

Political life in Russia is corrupt to such an extent that it is next to impossible not to descend to corrupt practices. The more rigid become the laws and rules of the game, the more there is space for corruption, behind-the-scene deals, manipulating and palm-greasing. Citizens are barred from participating in the political process. And it is more and more dominated by professionals for whom policy-making is a business that demands investment and is supposed to return a profit.

Growing concern about corruption in the high ranks of power is a kind of protective reaction of elites themselves. And though this is not a safe topic and letting the public into details in the run-up to elections is not in the interest of the candidates, discussing corruption is safer than discussing any other issue. What in particular? Just any!

Being more or less corrupt is not the main problem of the Russian politicians – their main problem is that they all are cast in the same mould. What’s the point in coming to polls if the only difference among the candidates is in the incomprehensible and not very attractive labels? Party leaders have nothing substantial to offer to their electorate. In the essence, they even have nothing to debate over. In order to attract attention of the public MPs and party functionaries take part in reality shows and flaunt the details of their private life. Alas, they have little success – voiceless girls from pop-groups excite much more interest.

People watch the election campaign sorely perplexed and yawning. All the more that the agency to which we are supposed to send our representatives doesn’t have much influence on the country’s political life. The State Duma is interesting only to those who from day to day sit on its benches. Theoretically, when an MP takes the floor, be it the rostrum of the Russian powerless and irrelevant quasi-parliament, he uses this chance to popularize his ideas. But there is no theory describing what shall do an MP that has no ideas at all.

So, let us put aside our faceless State Duma. For the real intrigue will begin during the presidential elections in 2008. Frankly, we are keen to know the name of Putin’s successor. Will it be Dmitry Medvedev, Sergey Ivanov or any other man of an average age with an average Russian surname? Here I feel tremendous potential as for the plot and the intrigue. The main actors take the event extremely seriously for they are preparing to struggle for the place in the Kremlin! And though they see themselves as participants of a historical drama, to the onlookers they appear to be comedians in a low comedy.

People follow the developments of the presidential race with the same slight interest that they have to the reality shows – they can watch it, but in the essence this isn’t their concern. They don’t show us week and strong points of the candidates and even if they do, this doesn’t change much in our routine life. Do you see the difference between the “siloviki” (a bloc of military and security top officials) and the “liberals”? Do you believe this can change our life, housing rent or work? No, you don’t.

Do you think it is our state priority to be in advance of the Saudi Arabia in the amount of oil production? Or maybe you desperately want to catch up with Portugal? Is it that important to you when a new cruiser will be floated out?

When the Soviet journalists covered election campaigns in the capitalist countries, the headlines often sounded like “Uncontested elections”. And it is the only way to describe the political process in contemporary Russia.

Journalists and political scientists continue to comment the presidential race; but the audience has left the grand stand. Human rights activists complain about low civic consciousness. But they overlook the fact that actually this is our position - to hell with you!

Obviously, citizens deprived of the means to self-actualization in politics turn to their private life. Their problems are not a subject of public discussion. The reason for all this is quite simple –“political class” is quite unanimous in its disdain to the voters in its unwillingness to listen to them. They believe that the sole way of communication to the electorate is demagogy and manipulation.

History proves that such arrogance in many cases is severely punished. However the “x-hour” hasn’t struck yet and nobody knows if it strikes at all. That is why the show is going on.

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Director of The Institute of Globalization and Social Movements

February 15, 2007