RUSSIA'S RADICAL LIBERALS - SPS PARTY SHIFTS INTO

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 MOSCOW 005417

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/16/2017
TAGS: PGOV PINR PREL KDEM RS
SUBJECT: RUSSIA'S RADICAL LIBERALS - SPS PARTY SHIFTS INTO
OPPOSITION

REF: A. MOSCOW 02582

B. MOSCOW 05355

C. MOSCOW 04967

Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reason: 1.4 (d).

Summary
--------------


1. (C) The announcement this week that Russia's Union of
Right Forces (SPS) will take part in "Dissenters' Marches"
marks the final step in the party's rapid evolution from a
"constructive opponent" to total opposition. Over the past
six weeks, SPS leaders have radically changed their electoral
strategy away from a "gentleman's agreement" with the Kremlin
to direct attacks on Putin, including an appeal to the
Supreme Court to have him removed from the ballot. SPS
leaders explain their increasingly radical approach as a
reaction to unwarranted government attacks. Others see the
party leadership's more aggressive tactics as a calculated
electoral strategy to garner votes from "non-traditional"
sources. Already, some here believe that the party's core
constituency is unlikely to follow the leadership into "total
opposition," potentially leading to divisions and defections.
Moscow's political observers see little hope that the new
strategy will provide sufficient impetus to propel the party
across the 7 percent threshold for participation in the Duma.
END SUMMARY.

A Party at War
--------------


2. (C) In a conversation on November 10, SPS deputy leader
Leonid Gozman linked the start of the party's conflict with
the Kremlin to Putin's October 1 decision to head United
Russia's (YR) Duma ticket. From that moment, criticism of YR
-- the party that SPS saw as its primary opponent in the Duma
campaign -- by definition became criticism of Putin himself.
Gozman claimed that the Kremlin was "not interested" in
having SPS in the legislature and instead had pinned its
hopes on a two-party Duma, with the Communists as a
"comfortable" partner. In part, he believed that the
administration hoped that such a scenario would help gain
sympathy from the West, which would see YR as "the new
liberals" pitted against revanchist leftists.


3. (C) To achieve their electoral goals, YR needs at least 60
percent of the vote on December 2, but Gozman claimed that
the Kremlin has insisted on taking 75 to 80 percent of the
vote, some of which must come from SPS. To that end, he said
that the Kremlin had issued a directive to regional leaders
that gave primacy to attacks against SPS. Gozman's catalogue
of "black methods" used across Russia against the rightists
tracked with those detailed by SPS Head Nikita Belykh at
November 2 press conference, including:

-- The seizure of campaign materials in Omsk, Krasnoyarsk,
Moscow, Perm, and Izhevsk;
-- Arson attacks on SPS buildings and homes of party
activists;
-- "Spontaneous" demonstrations against SPS officials and
buildings;
-- Hacker attacks against the SPS party website;
-- The distribution in several regions of leaflets claiming
that had been SPS was hiring campaign workers with AIDS.


4. (C) Gozman also said that the administration had blocked
funding, setting a "Berlin wall" between the electricity
giant United Energy Systems (UES),whose top officials hold
leading positions in SPS, and the party. (Gozman saw no
conflict of interest in the management of a largely
state-owned entity using company funds to support one
political party.) Businessmen who had previously contributed
to party coffers no longer make contributions or even loans,
out of "fear," according to Gozman. Without other funding
streams, SPS leaders are relying on their own considerable
fortunes to finance the campaign.


5. (C) Gozman also accused the administration of bringing
pressure on individual party members and prominent political
players to keep them from taking part in the election.
According to press reports, at least 6 SPS candidates,
including wrestler Vakha Yevloyev in Ingushetiia, have
abandoned their campaigns. Political scientist Dmitriy
Oreshkin told Embassy that even though he is on the SPS list
in Chelyabinsk, he has not traveled there because
administrative harassment would make such a trip "senseless."
In this environment, SPS officials explain the recent
decisions by some regional Duma candidates to withdraw from
the race as a result of administration turning the screws.
Gozman alleged that even Republican Party Head Vladimir

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Ryzhkov was flirting with a Kremlin offer that would remove
him from the political landscape. (Gozman -- no fan of
Ryzhkov -- said that SPS had also made "some proposals" to
the popular liberal politician.)

Going for the Kremlin Jugular
--------------


6. (C) Gozman and other party leaders trumpet SPS as the only
party to directly criticize Putin. The party has adopted a
sharp twist on the ubiquitous United Russia maxim, using --
"Putin's Plan - A Path to a Dead-End" -- as its election
slogan. In debates and public comments, the party has
hammered the administration on corruption issues and the
emergence of a cult of personality around Putin. In an
election debate last week, Boris Nemtsov even jabbed that
Putin is the "cleanest spot in Russia," since he had been
"licked clean" by a coterie of sycophants. SPS commercials
juxtapose Nemtsov's criticisms of the emerging Putin cult
with images of Soviet era leaders in their limousines.


7. (SBU) SPS has also pursued YR through the courts and
Central Election Commission, complaining that Putin's "Direct
Line" press conference was a three-hour political
advertisement before the official launch of the "agitation"
phase of the campaign. (The CEC ruled that the event was
"informational" and thus not a violation.) On November 15,
Belykh called a press conference to announce his party's
appeal to the Supreme Court to annul Putin's registration as
a candidate for the Duma, in light of what the rightists see
as violations of electoral legislation and the use of his
office to organize administrative pressure against SPS.


8. (C) SPS's most radical step was the announcement this week
that it would take part in the "Dissenters' March" in Moscow
and St. Petersburg before the elections. According to Deputy
Editor of the newspaper Vzglad Sergey Ilin, Nemtsov first
mooted the idea on his "Live Journal" blogsite, but it was
quickly picked up and confirmed by Belykh on November 12.
Such a decision marks a turning point for the party
leadership, who recognize that it crosses a Kremlin red line.
(Gozman told Embassy last May that SPS avoided "Other Russia"
because association with them would trigger immediate
political "decapitation" by the Kremlin (ref a).) It remains
to be seen how the "anti-establishment" movement will relate
to SPS, which had long avoided contact because of the
prominent role played by the radical National Bolsheviks, or
how the Kremlin will respond.

A Little Context
--------------

9. (SBU) There is likely more going on with SPS than the
party leadership's spin would have us believe. Regarding the
assertion that the Kremlin has a particular vendetta against
the rightists, other parties also complain about similarly
heavy-handed measures (ref B). For example, a November 9
article in the Kommersant newspaper revealed that all
political parties, including the Liberal Democratic Party of
Russia (LDPR) and the Communist Party of the Russian
Federation (KPRF) have had election materials confiscated and
have complained about the use of administration resources
against their regional branches.


10. (SBU) Comparison to other parties also provides context
for considering SPS's financial woes. According to the
Central Election Commission, SPS was the third most
successful campaigner with a total income of $27 million, as
of the end of October. After subtracting the required $15
million ruble deposit for those parties not currently sitting
in the Duma, SPS has a war chest of $12 million, placing the
party in fourth place behind YR ($80 million),LDPR ($72
million) and the KPRF ($20 million). However, SPS's funds
dwarf those of SR and Yabloko, whose hold $6.5 and $4.25
million respectively.

The Chicken or the Egg
--------------


11. (SBU) Even party members such as Dmitriy Oreshkin find it
difficult to resolve the "chicken or the egg" question: did
SPS go oppositional because its deal with the Kremlin
collapsed, or did the deal collapse because SPS went
oppositional? Certainly, there is convincing evidence that
central and especially regional authorities are stepping up
their pressure on SPS, but it is less clear whether such
measures are the cause of the party's more radical shift or a
result thereof. Some, including Vzglad Deputy Editor Ilin,
see the influence of SPS Duma deputy and political scientist
Anton Bakov as guiding the party toward an election strategy
that flaunts the "rules of the road" to attract the protest
vote. As such, this new tactic would follow the party's

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earlier decision to herald social justice issues, including
pandering to pensioners, as a means to broaden the party's
attraction to rural voters and senior citizens -- groups that
tend to participate in elections. Others speculate that SPS
may have followed the "rules of the game" long enough to get
through the registration process before launching a very
different sort of political campaign, using "Other Russia" in
a calculated bid to draw voters from Russia's
anti-establishment camp.


12. (SBU) Speaking about the defections of top SPS regional
candidates, Deputy Director of the Center for Political
Technologies Aleksey Makarkin told Nezavisimaya Gazeta that
SPS has grounds to blame the regime, which has used
administrative pressure to minimize political risk and
restrict certain rights. However, he views the
radicalization of the party as playing a significant role as
well. Regional businessmen form the base of the party's
support and Makarkin doubts that many of them are willing to
follow the party leadership into full opposition. Thus
comments by "defectors" such as the former head of the
party's Nizhniy Novgorod branch that the party leadership has
opted for slogans of "We don't like Putin" and "We support
pensioners," rather than the traditional liberal messages of
market and democratic reform, may accurately express the
disappointment that he and other party members feel about the
direction of the SPS campaign.


13. (SBU) COMMENT: One perhaps unintended result of the more
aggressive SPS campaign has been to force other political
parties to "step up to the plate" and offer their own
criticisms of Putin and the administration. SPS's eagerness
to point fingers at the Kremlin has compelled even the wily
Vladimir Zhirinovskiy to turn at least some of his vitriolic
criticism away from the easy targets of the KPRF and SR and
to complain about the Kremlin's policies. Gozman's
allegation that the Kremlin sees SPS as its primary opponent
could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the party
leadership does indeed follow through with its plans to join
the "Dissenters Marches" this fall, we expect the authorities
to ramp up even further their campaign against SPS leaders.
At the same time, we will be watching to see if the decision
to cross this particular Rubicon leads to an increase in the
party's popularity (estimated at about 1 percent of the
population, according to polling) or to further defections or
even the collapse of the party.


BURNS