Third Rome: Will Russia Save Europe From Itself?

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Critics, however, claim the changes were aimed at facilitating a win for the ruling United Russia party. During this election cycle, the Kremlin has moved to further tighten its grip on the opposition. Despite the crackdown, United ��ܲ�������’s decreasing popularity represents a valuable opportunity for the opposition to strengthen its position as a political alternative to the status quo.  

Important Test

This election have been an important test for United Russia, whose goal was to keep its supermajority in the Duma. The party has progressively lost popularity since the controversial pension reforms of 2016, coupled with chronic problems such as widespread corruption and socioeconomic issues. Statistics published by the Levada Center in March showed that of those interviewed would vote for United Russia in the upcoming election, the lowest rating since the party’s consolidation in the early 2000s.

The 450 seats in the Duma are allocated via a — half through a party-list proportional vote with a 5% threshold and half via a majority in single-mandate constituencies. The electoral system was in 2014 when the first-past-the-post component was introduced, granting United Russia a comfortable in the 2016 elections.

It is crucial to notice that the electoral system is not the only element pointing at deficiencies in Russia’s democratic procedures. Opposition candidates are not admitted to run for elections. Those parties allowed to participate are labeled as because, even if formally independent, they remain subordinated to United Russia.

This year, has been low — around 52% according to official figures or just 38% as per — because of the general climate of distrust and dissatisfaction. Despite its increasing unpopularity, United Russia managed to obtain an absolute majority, 49.82% of the votes and securing 324 seats in the Duma. Yet United Russia lost public consensus compared to 2016, when it won 56% of the vote. Until this year, the party has steadily increased its control over parliament since 2003, when it only obtained a with 37%.

The fact that the party predictably won 88% of the single-seat constituencies allowed it to hold on to its supermajority, vital to furthering the government’s agenda. Among its challengers, the Communist Party (KPRF) obtained a satisfying result, getting almost 19% of the votes. Another element worth noticing is the access of a to the Duma for the first time in the country’s history.

Dirty Tactics

Unsurprisingly, candidates even loosely connected with Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which has been designated an in June, were from running. However, the group has invented an interesting method to challenge United Russia: so-called , already tested during the Moscow elections in 2019. At the time, the tactic was , with 23 of the 40 candidates it backed elected. According to Navalny, Smart Voting helped United Russia‘s majority in three cities in last year’s regional elections.

Before this year’s legislative elections, a dedicated website and app were developed by Navalny supporters to help voters pick the best option to maximize the chance of beating pro-Kremlin candidates, thus avoiding dispersing the votes toward several oppositional candidates.

Under pressure from the Kremlin, however, both Google and Apple from their respective stores after their Russian employees were with jail terms. When organizers turned to YouTube to explain Smart Voting, the video was removed. This is not the first time the Russian government has attempted to subordinate tech companies. The messenger Telegram was completely banned in Russia for two years because it refused to share with the security services.

The 2021 elections have been marred by a number of controversies and alleged fraud. During the campaign, smear tactics and other dirty tricks were employed against candidates not running with United Russia. For example, a of the notorious rapist Viktor Mokhov wearing a T-shirt and cap showing the KPRF logo and praising its leader, Gennady Zyuganov, was shown across several media outlets a few weeks before the election. In May, a group of women depicting themselves as part of the Ukrainian collective Femen a protest supporting the KPRF candidate Nina Ostanina.

In the months before the vote, articles describing scandals and petty crimes committed by KPRF candidates started to appear in tabloids and newspapers. A “” in support of the right-wing LDPR party on a boat on the river Neva in St. Petersburg was staged to divert potential voters; the party’s electoral base is staunchly conservative.

Another dirty tactic was the emergence of so-called spoiler candidates to break up the vote. A few days before the election, Boris Vishnevski, a candidate for the liberal-democratic Yabloko party, lamented that candidates with the same name and appearance were registered in an apparent attempt to disperse votes. According to an by the Russian newspaper Kommersant, spoiler candidates have also been deployed against KPRF.

Numerous surveillance videos from several polling stations around the country showed ballots being tampered with. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe was not able to because of the pandemic. The fact that United Russia reached almost 50% of the vote compared to the 40% anticipated by opinion polls is likewise suspicious, especially in Moscow, where the party’s support is among the lowest in the country.

Moreover, after a significant in reporting results, online votes suspiciously reversed predictions and past voting patterns, granting victory to United Russia candidates in 15 electoral districts across the capital. In the of Sergey Shpilkin, an independent election analyst, “Electronic voting is an absolute evil — a black box that no one controls.” 

Least Free

The 2021 legislative elections represented only a partial victory for United Russia. Even though the party succeeded in securing control of parliament, controversies around the vote have further weakened its legitimacy. Conversely, the Communist Party has strengthened its presence in the Duma, possibly also thanks to Navalny’s Smart Voting.

KPFR is also possibly evolving from a systemic opposition party to a more of the Kremlin, especially after several of its politicians have denounced the many irregularities that occurred before and during the elections. Moreover, the party successfully led a demonstration against the alleged fraud last Saturday, that mass arrests have been performed just before the event.

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Several commentators have emphasized how these elections have been the in ��ܲ�������’s modern history. Indeed, the country seems to be further strengthening its authoritarian grip in face of its weakening electoral appeal. After the elections, two more independent organizations, the online magazine Mediazona and the police monitoring project OVD-Info, have been added to the rapidly growing list of , while have been pressed against Navalny, who is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for parole violation.

It remains to be seen if the opposition could find ways to elude the pervasive control of the Russian state and coordinate united action, especially since disunity was the main cause of failure in 2011-12. Moreover, KPFR will have to decide whether it wants to remain “systemic” or join the opposition. Such a prospective alliance looks very fragile because of the neo-Stalinist leaning of a significant part of the KPRF leadership as opposed to the liberal slant of Alexei Navalny and his movement.

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The Westernizers called for Russia to modernize its economy and political institutions to become part of the advanced European intellectual space. In contrast, the did not see the autocratic and religious political culture as backward but rather as an expression of the uniqueness of Russian identity that ought to be preserved.

US, NATO and the Question of Russia

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Throughout the Soviet experience, Europe and the West have retained this position of alterity and, at times, enmity, especially due to the USSR’s long-lasting confrontation with the US and NATO that characterized the Cold War years. Nowadays, Russian identity vis-à-vis Europe is again a topic of heated debate.

Indeed, relations between Moscow and its Western neighbors have become increasingly , especially since the events in Ukraine that led to the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. In particular, a renewed oppositional stance toward the EU and NATO has allowed some interesting reworking of ideas around the relationship between Moscow and the West.  

Conservative Thought

The turbulent events of 2013 and 2014 marked a crucial point, when political instability in Ukraine — a country Moscow considers a historic and strategic ally — and the ousting of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovich, created the conditions for the annexation of Crimea, provoking a Western response in the form of sanctions.

An unsurprising consequence of these developments was Russia’s to the old Slavophile civilizational discourse to distance itself from Europe. But together with a new Russian imperial narrative to justify its hegemonic tendencies toward other post-Soviet countries, another, more ambiguous discourse has been disseminated by the Kremlin and Russian conservatives.

First of all, it is essential to emphasize that the Russian conservative milieu is varied and comprises people who are at least partially critical of President Vladimir Putin, but whose ideas are still to the Kremlin not to be considered opposition figures. These include the controversial neo-Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin, the outspoken imperialist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and the hard-line nationalist Alexander Prokhanov. The intellectual debate taking place within this circle is contributing to the of the Russian government. 

Particularly because of the renewed tensions, it is not surprising that the Kremlin is disseminating anti-Western discourses, both domestically and abroad. Mainly thanks to a well-developed web of alternative media, such as RT and Sputnik, directed at Western audiences, Russia is attempting to market itself as a civilizational alternative centered on “traditional values,” especially among those in the West who are with current politics.

An interesting way of both marketing Russia as an anti-Western civilization but still maintaining that active thread to Europe is by designating Russia as the “Third Rome.”

This idea is both simple and enticing. It entails a reinterpretation of the Third Rome prophecy formulated in the 16^th century, according to which Moscow is the third and last Christian kingdom after the fall of Rome and Constantinople. Consistent with the characterizing Christian philosophy, Moscow is as destined to represent Christianity in its last and decisive struggle against the forces of the Antichrist: “Two Romes have fallen, the Third stands and a fourth shall never be.”

The first is of course Ancient Rome, which adopted Christianity as its state religion in the 4^th century under Emperor Constantine but fell to the a century later, and the second is Byzantium, which succumbed to the in 1453. Reinterpreted in modern terms, according to the anti-liberal and anti-Western worldview that has become part of the official discourse in Russia, the country is resignified as the political heir of the Christian and as the last standing of Christian moral values amidst a world corrupted by cultural decadence and moral relativism.

This trope has the effect of distancing Russia from the West while at the same time reclaiming Russian conservative values as quintessentially European. Indeed, the central claim is that Russia is now the last country that completely abides by the Christian values Europe once supposedly stood for, as seen in the Kremlin support for family values, characterized by traditional gender roles, opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and the rejection of multiculturalism.

The West is seen as , as a sort of parasitic entity that has swallowed its true soul, and it is Russia that is to save Europe from decline.

Transnational Implications

Disseminated by pro-Russian media and other sympathetic outlets, such ideas have found the approval of far-right activists in Europe and beyond. At the International Conservative Forum in Saint Petersburg organized in 2015 by the Russian ultra-nationalist party Rodina (Motherland), Nick Griffin, the former leader of the British National Party, and Roberto Fiore, leader of Italy’s neo-fascist party Forza Nuova (New Force), underlined how Russia is the only country today that could save the West from the encroachment of the global elites and Islamization.

Griffin and Fiore both commented on how Russia represents the and also the hope for a multipolar future against the “New World Order,” with not-so-subtle conspiratorial undertones.

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Even if these ideas deal with the perception of Europe, they may also be easily reframed into a broader civilizational nuance. Matthew Heimbach, an American white supremacist and the founder of the Traditional Workers Movement, does not hide his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. In a 2016 tweet, he emphasized how his government has itself “as the defender of Christendom and the Third Rome, and has demonstrated a rediscovered purpose of supporting Tradition, Christianity, and identity.” 

In more recent times, observers have the proliferation of Byzantine themes in QAnon circles and among similar conspiracy groups, remarking the continuity between this bizarre phenomenon and the official statements of the Russian government defining itself as the rightful heir of Byzantium. In a period marked by increasing tensions between Russia and the West, it is of paramount importance to continue monitoring the evolution of such ideas and their potential impact both in Russia and beyond.

*[51�Թ� is a  partner of the .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Third Rome: Will Russia Save Europe From Itself? appeared first on 51�Թ�.