When a famous person dies, people outside the circle of family and friends remember his most memorable deeds. Vladimir Churov, who worked as head of the CEC in 2011, is reminded of “146%” and other circumstances of the most high-profile elections to the State Duma. Journalist Gleb Cherkasov believes that Churov then had two tasks, and he coped with both, to the misfortune of the election institute.
Vladimir Churov had a bell on the table, he beat it at the very beginning of the conversation. This was not a very well-known detail, and therefore it was not beaten by informal cartoonists of that time – at least, I don’t remember jokes about this. Meanwhile, about Churov during his work at the head of the CEC, jokes were laid down and more memes were invented for sure than about all of his predecessors. In the flood of folk humor there is a great merit of Churov himself. He deliberately substituted for the evil jokes of “angry townspeople.” The Kremlin valued the chairman of the CEC, among other things, for his willingness to become an object of ridicule.
“Wrong” choices
The Duma elections in December 2011, which glorified Churov, also stand apart. In all of Russia’s recent history, neither before nor after the summing up of the voting results did not cause so many scandals and protests, never before or after the results of the elections did not lead to a political crisis. And so strong that in attempts to settle it, the last elections had to be called into question. It was that winter that President Dmitry Medvedev, at a meeting with the leaders of the newly created political parties, began to defend the results of the Duma elections from the white-ribbon protest and remembered the 1996 presidential elections, saying that there had been disorder before.
Medvedev then brought back to political life the theme of the re-election of Boris Yeltsin, which had previously been firmly established in the field of recent political memoirs. It turned out, I must say, that the outgoing president did it quite cleverly, since then the 1996 campaign has firmly taken first place among all the “wrong elections” in recent history. And, paradoxically, these were the only competitive presidential elections in the history of the country.
Now they remember a lot about them, and they remember even more often. But only the next day after the second round of the elections in July 1996, nothing special happened either in Moscow or in other cities and villages, even though they supported Yeltsin, even if they were part of the “red belt”. People woke up and went to work. Someone, perhaps, cursed, someone rejoiced at the end of the election campaign, someone sneered at the commies. There were no large-scale protests; the losing candidate Gennady Zyuganov did not gather rallies. Remembering the campaign sometimes, the leader of the Communist Party spoke more about unequal access to television or about a tough administrative regime, but much less about the counting of votes. Yes, and Nikolai Ryabov, who headed the Central Executive Committee at that time, was almost never joked about.
Numbers and people
In 2011, it was against the counting of votes that they protested.
There were many doubts about this before. For example, a funny incident occurred in the 2003 elections, when at night after the vote, the Yabloko party passed into the Duma, and in the morning, following the results of the vote count in Moscow and St. Petersburg, it ceased to pass. There was a certain amount of indignation and questions, but all this quickly turned into the topic of yesterday. Moreover, several people from Yabloko were immediately invited to good jobs.
In 2011, Yabloko again failed to enter the Duma. Among those who came to Bolotnaya Square there were many who voted for this party or watched the elections from Yabloko, but the protests should definitely not be associated with party affiliation.
But Vladimir Churov will go down in history as one of the symbols of the winter of 2011-2012. This was one of his two most important functions – to collect almost all the negativity. To cover up the entire system, which ensures not only the counting of votes, but also their influx into the necessary columns of the ballot. And in 2011-2012 – the main candidate in the presidential elections.
Having become the object of ridicule, Vladimir Churov helped the protesters to formulate their main task – the correct and accurate counting of votes in the upcoming presidential elections. The more citizens joked about Churov and more confidently signed up as observers, the more space for political maneuvering became. Elections are not only counting votes, but also nominating candidates and ensuring equal conditions for all participants, and finally, just competition. But for the most part, the participants in the non-political protest of 2011-2012 did not know this. Or they forgot, joking with opponents, the main of which was becoming more and more constantly making a reservation uncle with a beard. The informal slogan of that time was “we will not allow 146%”. So much was not needed, 63% was enough.
Churov will hold presidential elections in 2012 and retire in 2016, taking with him all the memes and bells. His place will be taken by Ella Pamfilova, with whom at first they will have high hopes, which will remain so. And there will be no more memes about her. And people who registered as observers in 2011-2012 will be disappointed in the next presidential election in 2018 both in political competition and in the institution of elections as such. Perhaps this is a consequence of some naivety, which at one time chose Vladimir Churov as the object of ridicule.
He completed his task. More precisely, even two. Much has been said about the first, but there was also the second. On the evening of December 9, on the eve of a large protest rally, the CEC, despite all the complaints and comments, approved the protocol of the 2011 parliamentary elections. After that, the protests had no chance. And no one wanted a revolution then, no matter how much pro-Kremlin propagandists talked about it.
Perhaps Russian elections have never been sterile and quite often did not involve serious competition. And, perhaps, in 2011 there was a chance to fix something or start to fix it. But this required the desire of at least two parties. One was not ready to demand, the second did not want to give in and offered the first one to quarrel with a man with a sob.