A Russian Diary

the months that followed, right up until March 14, 2004, when Putin was indeed elected, the checks and balances within the state vanished, and the only restraint was the president's conscience

consider that the Union of Right Forces played an enormous part in unleashing the Chechen war. It was the only party that could in any way be described as democrat‍

democratic and in favor of civil society, yet they chose to say that the Russian Army was being reborn in Chechnya, and that anybody who thought otherwise was a traitor who was stabbing the Russian troops in the back.”

Vasilii Aksyonov complained that the liberals had failed to exploit the unsavoriness of the Yukos affair.

2003 a majority of our citizens heartily supported the imprisonment, through the efforts of members of United Russia, of the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky* head of the Yukos oil company.

The electorate was offered a variety of patriotism to suit every taste. Rodina offered rather heroic patriotism; United Russia, moderate patriotism; and the Liberal Democrat Party, outright chauvinism.

The Rodina Party is another chauvinistic organization, led by Dmitry Rogozin* and created by the Kremlin's spin doctors specifically for this election.

Overall in Saratov Province, United Russia gained 48.2 percent of the vote without feeling the need to publish or defend a manifesto. The Communists got 15.7 percent, the Liberal Democrats* (Vladimir Zhirinovsky's* party) 8.9 percent, the nationalistic Rodina (Motherland) Party* 5.7 percent. The only embarrassment was that more than 10 percent of the votes cast were for “None of the above.” One-tenth of the voters had come to the polling station, drunk the vodka, and told the lot of them to go to hell.

The province's electoral commission had a hotline to take reports of irregularities during the campaign and the voting, but 80 percent of the calls were simply attempts to blackmail the local utility companies. People threatened not to vote unless their leaking pipes were mended or their radiators repaired.

The Saratov election campaign was marked by violence, with candidates not approved of by United Russia being beaten up by “unidentified assailants” and choosing to pull out of the race.