Erstellt am: 8. 12. 2011 - 14:35 Uhr

How 271 Votes Became 662

Will the irregularities in the Russian parlamentary elections trigger a "Russian Spring"?

Charles Maynes

by Charles Maynes, journalist in Moscow

This week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton became the latest high ranking official to cast doubt over Russia's parliamentary elections, calling the December 4th vote, "neither free nor fair."

In doing so, Mrs. Clinton echoed the views not only of OSCE election observers on the ground but Russia's online community, which has been in the lead with charges of falsification.

Vasily Popov

Opposition members rally near Triumphalnaya Square, December 6th

Examples of possible election fraud has spread through, among other things, a myriad of online videos that range from the convincing (see ballot stuffing) to somewhat perplexing (see disappearing ink pens).

Online Anger Spills onto the Streets of Moscow

"Putin is a Thief" and "Russia without Putin" have become the rallying cries of the protests, which consumed Moscow for a second straight night on Tuesday. The rallies have been met by mass arrests, tales of police brutality, and marshaling of pro-Kremlin youth organizations to counter with their own noise.

Vasily Popov

Pro-Kremlin 'Nashi' supporters, Triumphalnaya Square, December 6th

Fueling the protesters' anger is not merely votes stolen -- a poll conducted before the election found that more than half of all Russians believed the elections would be dirty -- but the idea that United Russia operatives manipulated the vote so blatantly. So badly.

Nobody, the rules goes, likes being played for a fool.

Take, for example, Dmitri Surnin. An editor with the Moscow weekly 'My Raion Moskva" newspaper, Surnin volunteered as an election observer at Moscow polling station 1701 on Sunday. And admits, he walked away from experience, mildly impressed. He'd been there until the end of the vote count. "If there was any ballot stuffing, it was minimal." As far as Surnin was concerned, he could vouch for the vote.

Moreover, the initial results, signed and sealed on Sunday night, upended conventional wisdom.

Surin

• Communist Party: 285
• United Russia: 271
• A Just Russia: 218
• Yabloko: 167
• Right Cause: 16
• Patriots of Russia: 15

Surin

In short, a small victory for the Communists -- with a respectable second place finish for Vladimir Putin's United Russia party.

Yet when Surnin checked the official election commission website the next morning he found the results for polling booth 1701 dramatically reconfigured. United Russia had garnered a commanding majority with 662 votes, the majority of which came at the expense of A Just Russia and Yabloko.

Surnin was furious. Writing in a public post to his Facebook account, he offered to tell his story - and provide documentation - to anyone willing to hear him out.

Even more, he vowed:

"Every resident in every one of those buildings will know who stole their vote. They'll know the names and the telephone numbers. And if they toss my newspaper (Moi Raion Moskva) out of mailboxes, I'll print out my own fliers and give them out by hand ... that's the least I can do."

Vasily Popov

Russian Spring?

What's unusual about these protests is that anger with the elections now extends to young Russian urbanites -- 'hipsters', in other words, most of whom have stayed out of politics until now. And so Ipads livestream the protests, Twitter shares the latest rumors of arrests, and Facebook (and its Russian equivalent Vkontakte) spread invitations to rallies that spawn invitations to rallies. The next protest in Moscow is scheduled for Saturday. Activists in St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, and Novosibirsk say they will follow suit.

Meanwhile, Russia's state-run media -- and national television in particular -- remains silent about the upheaval. As usual.

But the amount of online buzz around the protests has some wondering, could this be Russia's 'Tahrir moment'? Unlikely, most observers say. The opposition - united for the moment against what they call "the Party of Crooks and Thieves" - have barely managed to stay to remain speaking terms in the past. And Mr. Putin, with plans to run for the Presidency in March of 2012, remains popular among large parts of the population.

Yet if there is to be something like a "Russian Spring" -- in whatever form -- its roots will trace back to ham-fisted attempts to manage the December vote.

For it's made disgust with United Russia not only common.

It's made it cool.

Vasily Popov