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Discussing cables
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VZCZCXYZ0001
PP RUEHWEB
DE RUEHMO #0861/01 0881442
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 281442Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7364
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE PRIORITY
C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 000861
SIPDIS
SIPDIS
E.O. 12958: DECL: 03/28/2018
TAGS: PGOV KDEM SOCI PINR RS
SUBJECT: THE ART OF THE POSSIBLE IN THE JUST RUSSIA PARTY
Classified By: Political M/C Alice G. Wells. Reason: 1.4 (d).
¶1. (C) Summary: Four Duma deputies from the left-leaning,
Kremlin-sponsored Just Russia party offered us assessments of
their party in Russia's fifth Duma, which convened in January
after the December 2 parliamentary elections. As expected,
Just Russia has found it difficult to have an impact on
legislation in a Duma dominated by the ruling party, and
these deputies' ambivalence about their Kremlin-friendly
party was readily apparent. For these four deputies, Just
Russia has not turned out to be the vehicle for effective
policy they had hoped it would be, given Mironov's weak
leadership and the ruling party's setting of the agenda and
terms of debate; nevertheless, they took some credit for
behind the scenes influence and lobbying. Just Russia
continued to experience difficulties in the regions, where
the quality of its leaders varied significantly and local
United Russia leaders did not welcome the competition. End
summary.
An Unholy Alliance
------------------
¶2. (C) Current Just Russia Duma members Ivan Grachev and
Oksana Dmitriyeva migrated from Yabloko via the Party of
Industrialists and Entrepreneurs to Just Russia in advance of
the December 2007 Duma elections. Grachev and Dmitriyeva,
who are husband and wife, had been the only tandem deputies
in the third Duma, but Grachev was not elected to the fourth
Duma, where Dmitriyeva represented St. Petersburg's Nevskiy
district from 2004 - 2008.
¶3. (C) With the increase in the threshold for representation
in the Duma from five to seven percent and the change to a
Duma membership wholly elected from party lists, Dmitriyeva,
who had been a single-mandate Deputy in the fourth Duma,
understood that Grachev and she would have to affiliate with
a Kremlin-approved party if they were to remain active in
national politics. Dmitriyeva's good relationship with Just
Russia Chairman Sergey Mironov, himself a native of St.
Petersburg, and the name recognition she brought to the new
party as a prominent St. Petersburg politician combined to
seal the deal. Both Dmitriyeva and Grachev joined Just
Russia after it was created in October 2006. In December 2,
2007, Duma elections Dmitriyeva and Grachev both won one of
the 38 mandates Just Russia secured in the fifth Duma. In
the 450-seat Duma dominated by United Russia with 315 seats,
Just Russia came in a distant fourth following both the
Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR).
¶4. (C) Dmitriyeva was well aware that joining Just Russia,
which enthusiastically backed Putin successor Dmitriy
Medvedev's bid for the presidency, entailed compromise. In
conversations with us throughout the campaign, she attempted
to justify her choice: western-leaning liberals had been
marginalized, and she was not a street politician, Dmitriyeva
said. She thought that her close relationship to Mironov
would make her influential in Just Russia, especially on
economic issues, where the party had relatively little
expertise. Mironov's influence with the Kremlin would
translate into for his party that she and other like-minded
converts to the party could use to advance their own agendas.
¶5. (C) Dmitriyeva understood that Mironov was loyal to Putin,
but she thought that Just Russia would need to distinguish
itself from United Russia, and that it could safely do so on
economic issues. Without discarding their favorite projects,
Dmitriyeva and Grachev chose the "art of the possible." She
has continued her focus on social-economic development, while
Grachev has continued to push legislation concerned with
small business development and the slowly emerging mortgage
industry in Russia.
Dissatisfied, So Far
--------------------
¶6. (C) In a mid-March conversation, a subdued Dmitriyeva and
Grachev told us that they were "not happy with a single piece
of legislation that had been passed" since the new Duma
convened in January, and their ability to shape the law was
more limited than they had expected when elected. The
Presidential Administration, via United Russia, firmly
controlled the operations of the Duma, and Dmitriyeva
expressed dissatisfaction with the level of debate. As one
example of the difficulty Just Russia has had in influencing
the legislative process, Dmitriyeva noted that an alternative
budget the party proposed had not even been discussed before
it was defeated. She also alleged that United Russia
constantly used its constitutional majority to limit other
parties' ability to offer amendments.
¶7. (C) United Russia, according to Dmitriyeva, used its
Kremlin connections not just to shepherd legislation through
the Duma, but to engage in petty harassment of other Duma
deputies. Although the Duma had been in session for two
months, a number of the Just Russia deputies had yet to be
assigned office space. She described the current crop of
United Russia deputies
as "more passive" and "more faceless"
than their predecessors. Most of the United Russia deputies
treated the legislature as a "gentleman's club." They rarely
took the floor in debate on bills and, indeed, they often
were not present during the sessions. While Grachev agreed
that the United Russia contingent was weaker than its
predecessor, he cautiously endorsed the all-party list
elections as essential to constructing -- "eventually" -- a
"real party system."
¶8. (C) In a separate meeting, an even more pessimistic Duma
Deputy Gennadiy Gudkov dismissed suggestions that his Just
Russia party could be a counterweight to United Russia.
(Gudkov had earlier been elected to the fourth Duma from a
single-mandate district as leader of the People's Party.
Once elected, he joined the United Russia faction, and then
moved to Just Russia when the People's Party merged with it
in April 2007.) With the December 2 elections, Gudkov said,
the "return to a one-party system" had been accomplished.
That outcome was natural in the "ideological vacuum" that had
emerged following the discrediting of western-leaning liberal
parties and democracy itself in the '90s. Adding to Just
Russia's ineffectuality, he said, was Mironov's "absolute
personal loyalty" to Putin.
¶9. (C) Gudkov told us he had frequently urged Mironov to take
Just Russia's role as an alternative to United Russia more
seriously. He had urged that Mironov invite the more active
members of his party to form a "collegial body" that would
devise the party's strategy, in the face of overwhelming
United Russia numerical strength, for drawing media and
public attention to their differences with Kremlin-engineered
policies. Mironov had not reacted to his proposal.
Liberal Democrats and
Communists Unimpressive
-----------------------
¶10. (C) Gudkov was no more optimistic about possibilities for
the other "opposition" Duma parties -- the Communists and the
Liberal Democrats. While Dmitriyeva and Grachev had
described their Communist Party counterparts as "not bad,"
Gudkov thought the Communists were both too orthodox to be
effective in today's Russia, and too willing to compromise
with the Kremlin. Zhirinovskiy's Liberal Democrats were both
too loyal to Putin and too marginal a party to play a serious
role in Russia's political life. Gudkov predicted that the
lack of the feedback that a good legislature should provide
meant that problems were accumulating unrecognized and
unresolved by the government. Even dedicated legislators
like Grachev and Dmitriyeva, he said, had less contact with
the electorate, as the number of constituents in their
districts had increased greatly with the introduction of the
regional party list system.
Former Communist
More Upbeat
----------------
¶11. (C) Former Communist Party member Ilya Ponomarev in a
separate conversation was more optimistic about Just Russia's
prospects than his party colleagues. He labeled the Just
Russia faction the "strongest in the Duma." United Russia
deputies were "mere executors" of the Kremlin's will while
the Communists had been in the legislature too long to be
taken seriously. Ponomarev admitted, however, that Mironov
was not "a strong leader," and that he had surrounded himself
with "former classmates" who were personally loyal but
ineffective party workers.
¶12. (C) Still, Ponomarev said, Just Russia's core members
were already cooperating closely and would eventually develop
a strategy for making Just Russia more of a force in Russia's
political life. The most active Just Russia Duma deputies,
Ponomarev said, were Dmitriyeva, Grachev, Oleg Sheyn, Galina
Khovanskaya, Aleksandr Babakov, Svetlana Gorechova, Mikhail
Storshinov, and Valeriy Gartung.
¶13. (C) Aleksandr Morozov, a member of the Just Russia
Central Committee, agreed that United Russia has monopolized
the internal mechanics of the Duma, but claimed that Just
Russia was effective behind the scenes. He alleged, without
concrete examples, that his party had proposed several
important bills that United Russia had claimed credit for.
Morozov also claimed that Just Russia has been influential on
social and educational issues through its chairmanships of
the Science and Technology and Families, Women and Children
Committees.
Worse in the Regions
--------------------
¶14. (U) United Russia's easy control of the Duma was further
cemented in the eleven regions where elections were held on
March 2. In addition to polling well below United Russia,
Just Russia generally fared less well than the Communists and
the Liberal Democratic Party. In Yaroslavl, the party was
administratively excluded from the ballot. In Bashkiriya, it
finished a distant third, with less than four percent of the
vote, to United Russia and the Communists, while in
Ingushetiya it received just two of the Duma's twenty-seven
seats. In Ivanovo, Just Russia finished fourth, again behind
United Russia, the Communists, and LDPR.
¶15. (C) In the regions where it was not excluded, Just Russia
managed three to fourteen percent of the vote. Dmitriyeva
contended that the wide dispersion was traceable to the
capabilities of the local Just Russia leadership. Morozov
added that the party's results in the regions depended
considerably on the relationship between the local
administration and local party leaders. He said that in
Yaroslavl, local SR leader Anatoliy Greshnevikov, a fiery
critic of the local administration, had been removed from the
ballot. In other regions, such as Amur region, Kalmykiya and
Adygeya, the lack of a strong local party organization had
hampered Just Russia's efforts. In Rostov region, serious
internal party conflicts had resulted in the departure of a
large number of the leadership. On the other hand, Morozov
noted that in Sakha, the leader of the party ranks second in
popularity only to Putin and, as a result, the party won
almost fifteen percent of the vote.
Comment
-------
¶16. (C) Dmitriyeva, Grachev and Gudkov turned to Just Russia
because they felt they had no other vehicle for participating
in politics. United Russia's overwhelming majority in the
Duma and Just Russia Chairman Mironov's inability to
simultaneously demonstrate his loyalty to the Kremlin while
charting a distinct course for the party have meant that the
activists' hopes that they could make their presence felt
from within the tent have not been realized. A system where
the Presidential Administration drafts most legislation and
the ability of the Duma to pursue an independent legislative
agenda is correspondingly reduced, means that their hopes
were probably misplaced. The prospects of any legislator
making a significant impact under the current arrangement are
low.
BURNS
Wikileaks: Russia 