The model of the Kremlin’s “sovereign democracy” provides that the citizens of Russia have the right to elect Putin several times in their lifetime, the well-known candidates for the Duma (the list of which is approved by the Kremlin), the tame and disenfranchised regional Legislative Assembly and municipal deputies.
Local self-government (the basis of democracy in developed countries) is rigidly centralized and is located in the administrative vertical as a structural unit of local executive Gauleiters descended from the Kremlin.
Direct elections of heads of federal administrative-territorial units were abolished almost twenty years ago. The terrorist attack in Beslan in the fall of 2004 was used as an excuse. Direct elections of mayors of federal centres remained in four cities. And their time is numbered.
The parade of democracy with competitive parliamentary elections, direct elections of heads of regions and mayors of regional capitals is a thing of the past. Residents’ participation and influence on local self-government have been reduced to almost zero. There is no attempt to please and act in the interests of local residents from the representatives of the regional authorities. They are just a cog in a rigid centralized vertical of power, whose task is to “take away” and “divide” in a disciplined manner.
Everything started in a completely different way. In the early 1990s, heads of regions in the Russian Federation were elected by direct elections. They were influential players in the country and often challenged the centre, fiercely defending their interests. In contrast to the “broken” governors and heads of federal entities, the central government supported the directly elected mayors, creating a dualism of power and a natural confrontation between the two centres of power: regional and municipal.
When Putin came to power, he began to build a rigid executive vertical, disregarding the country’s constitutional federal status. Therefore, from the beginning of 2005, the direct elections of the heads of the subjects of the federation were stopped, cynically using the terrorist attack in Beslan as a pretext.
Now the place of the governor or the head of the federal entity was occupied by a faceless jacket, and the heads of the federal capitals remained the elected mayors, whose legitimacy in the eyes of society, and therefore popularity and influence, quite often overshadowed the governor. Despite the frantic use of administrative resources, forceful pressure, and falsification of election results, opposition politicians broke through to power in the cities and defeated Kremlin appointees in the elections. As of 2003, direct general elections of mayors were held in 75 capitals of the subjects of the Federation.
To combat this and prove that municipal power is not formed from below by direct elections of local residents, but solely at the request of the Kremlin Tsar, in 2003 Putin initiated a reform of local self-government, the purpose of which was to make municipal power dependent on its regional appointees; budgetary dependence, but even more the right of governors to seek the resignation of disapproving mayors. Although, at that stage by the hands of municipal deputies.
But the most important thing: a new principle of formation of city local self-government bodies was introduced. Putin divided representative and executive-administrative functions.
Now the mayor, who could be elected by direct election or from among the deputies, actually became the speaker of the municipal parliament. The real power was transferred to a hired employee, the so-called city manager, who was appointed by the deputies based on the results of the competition. Those who wanted to manage the finances and other resources of the city were elected by a commission, two-thirds of which was formed by the municipality, and one-third was represented by the regional parliament. In this way, the so-called structure of weak mayors was formed, whose influence was significantly reduced. A new dualism of power in cities, an elected (directly or indirectly) weak mayor who enjoyed the support of the citizens, but had no real powers, and an appointed official, unknown to the general public, who automatically became a link in the rigid executive vertical of power.
The reform in connection with the different expiration dates of the powers of regional and municipal parliaments and mayors dragged on for almost 10 years, but the trend was obvious – in 2013, direct elections of mayors of regional capitals remained only in 32 regions, in most regions direct elections were cancelled, cities began city managers that are assigned to drive. Moreover, the pogrom of local self-government began in the European part of Russia. Ryazan (2004), Pskov (2005), Belgorod (2006), and Kursk (2007) were the first to lose the right to elect the heads of capitals of federal centres. Each time, the reason for cancelling direct mayoral elections was the community’s election of an opposition candidate to the post of mayor. So, for example, it happened in Ryazan, where General Georgy Shpak, who had just been appointed governor, got rid of his recent competitor in the elections, the communist Pavel Mamatov, simply by preventing the latter from being re-elected to the post of mayor by cancelling direct elections. In Smolensk, the direct election of the mayor was cancelled in 2010, after the self-nominated Eduard Kachanovskyi won the elections. In the same year, a similar thing happened in Murmansk, in which the candidate for power was unexpectedly defeated by the self-nominated Sergei Subbotin.
Putin stubbornly, in violation of the Constitution and federal principles, built a highly centralized hierarchical structure that controlled and distributed financial flows from the federal level to the regional level, and from there to the municipal level. Obviously, there was no room for “random passengers” at this corruption feeding trough.
As of 2015, only 19 regional capitals held direct mayoral elections. But this was also a pain in Putin’s eyes, and he initiated a new “municipal reform”, the goal of which was very simple, to deprive local residents of the right to elect the mayor of their city.
Now the system of dual power and a weak mayor was abolished. Power was concentrated in one hand, but now the “strong mayor” was appointed through a competition, and the governor’s quota in the competition commission was already half and he had the preference to head the commission and the right to a decisive vote. Now, any objectionable applicant had no chance of passing through the sieve of the competitive commission, even in the presence of a city council disloyal to the governor.
Since then, the cancellation of mayoral elections not only in the capitals of federal entities but also in ordinary cities and towns has become a scourge. The subjects of the federation proudly reported that direct elections were over. Moreover, the transition to a new system of appointing mayors took place without taking into account the position of cities, these norms were simply imperatively fixed in regional legislation. Until the 2000s, this was done by the municipalities themselves, and then the governors had to convince, persuade and negotiate with local deputies. Now there is no need to convince, in the rigid system of the established hierarchy, municipalities are subordinates who are not convinced but are imperatively required to follow instructions.
The pogrom of local self-government and the direct election of mayors did not stop but only intensified during the Russian aggression in Ukraine.
In December 2023, the Legislative Assembly of the Novosibirsk region passed a law on the cancellation of mayoral elections in Novosibirsk and the city of scientists – Koltsovo. Novosibirsk was one of the last cities of millionaires, where the mayor was elected, not appointed. Now, out of 12 cities with millionaires, only Moscow and St. Petersburg were left to hold mayoral elections. The reason was that in 2019, a candidate from the government lost in the city for the second time in a row, and the communist Anatoliy Lokot won. Moreover, the second place was taken by the head of Navalny’s local headquarters, businessman Sergey Boyko. Therefore, on the initiative of the governor, they decided to close the democracy parade. In December 2022, they did the same in Tomsk.
On 28 March 2024, the People’s Khural of Buryatia, on the initiative of the head of the republic Aleksey Tsydenov, cancelled the direct elections of the mayor of Ulan-Ude, which were to be held in September of the same year and for which funds had already been allocated from the budget. The reason for the cancellation of direct elections was the understanding that the pro-government candidate, who was dragged out last time, now has no chance of winning at all. The reason for the cancellation was called “the need to save money” and “the difficult situation in Russia”. Of course, how could we not do without the “sinister Pindos and Ukrainian Nazis” here as well?
Now, apart from Moscow and St. Petersburg, the relict to elect mayors remained in only four federal cities: Yakutsk, Khabarovsk, Anadyr and Abakan. Having dealt with local self-government in the Siberian Federal District (where it lasted the longest), the authorities will proceed to eliminate islands of self-government in the Far East.
As a result, mayors appointed from above have no incentives to work in the interests of citizens. Now the management of the city is an intra-elite agreement, where the opinion of local residents is not important at all. The mayor, whom no one knows, is an impersonal character who comes from nowhere and after “earning” quickly (mostly no more than two years) goes nowhere.
Therefore, there is no strategy in the development of cities, except to steal and run away.
The community in the understanding of the creators of “sovereign democracy” is not about the right to vote, it is about the duty to die for the “tsar” and the “fatherland”, and of course it is necessary to take this right away from Ukrainians who stubbornly and shamelessly still vote mayors in every town, from the smallest to the largest…
