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The Strongman Always Rules Twice

After covering Mexico's Bicentenary of Independence in 2010, Matthew Clayfield is now preparing to provide independent coverage of Russia's 2012 election.

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  • Location:Sydney, Australia

  • Category:Writing

In August, Mikhail Gorbachev gave an interview with the German news magazine Der Spiegel, marking the twentieth anniversary of the attempted coup against his presidency that hastened the fall of the Soviet Union. In it, he was highly critical of the Russian Federations former president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who will return to his former office in the Kremlin at the conclusion of the current election cycle.

 

Sometimes United Russia reminds me of the old Soviet Communist Party, Gorbachev said when asked about the pro-Putin party. Putin wants to stay in power, but not so that he can finally solve our most pressing problems: education, health care, poverty. The people are not being asked, and the parties are puppets of the regime. Or as Anna Politkovskaya said before she gunned down in her Moscow apartment building in 2006: We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss.

 

For the past twelve months, Moscow-based journalists in need of a story have liked to tout the idea that Russia might finally have a real presidential race on its hands. This idea, which always smacked of a beat-up, was finally dashed on the rocks of the United Russia congress on September 24, when incumbent President Dmitri Medvedev proposed that Putin return to the presidency. After stepping down from the role only four years ago, Putin will now be eligible to rule until 2024. If his first two terms maimed Russia's fledgling democracy, the mere fact of his return for a third might be said to have finally killed it.

 

Putin, Medvedev and United Russia have all experienced sharp declines in their poll numbers since the beginning of this year. The example of the Arab Spring, not to mention that of the post-election protests in Lukashenkos Belarus in December 2010, remains fresh in the minds of many, including plenty who otherwise might have tended towards apathy. Protests against the regime have popped up sporadically throughout this year. Should there be any signs of electoral fraud when Putin's inevitable victory is announced in March, Russia will be the place to watch. The only question that remains about this election is whether or not the electorate will stand for it.

 

In 2010, IndieGoGo contributors helped freelance foreign correspondent Matthew Clayfield and photojournalist Austin Andrews travel around Mexico between that countrys Bicentenary of Independence and its Centenary of Revolution. The work they produced during that period appeared in The Australian, Crikey and RealClearWorld, as well as on their website, Disposable Words. A book based on their trip, Blood Still Drips: A Mexican Journal, is currently in the works.

 

Matthew is now planning to spend three months in the Commonwealth of Independent States during the lead up to, and immediate aftermath of, Russias presidential election. Taking in Siberia, Moscow, St Petersburg, Belarus, Ukraine, the Southern Federal District and the Northern Caucasus, his freelance dispatches and blog posts will provide a first-hand look, at once both epic and intimate, political and personal, at a Potemkin democracy and its disaffected electorate at a moment that many fear represents the completion of its political regression.

The trip is to be the first of an estimated five through the countries of the former USSR that will later constitute a book-length study of the region nearly a quarter of a century after the the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reader contributions will constitute approximately one quarter of this first trip's total budget and will go towards travel, accommodation and equipment.


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