Letter From the Editors

In the Soviet cartoon “Hedgehog in the Fog” (Yozhik v tumane), the eponymous hedgehog wanders around a foggy forest, running into shady and mysterious characters. In the end, he manages to find his way home to his friend the bear, and they have tea with jam in relative safety. Much like the cartoon yozhik, Russian voters this week were adrift in the fog of the regional election campaign. Votes in 83 regions of the country resulted in a United Russia sweep. The ruling party also managed to get payback for 2019, when opposition candidates managed to get seats in Moscow Duma elections, writes Republic.

The only “fresh faces” in these elections are Ukraine war veterans and associates of Wagner founder Yevgeny Prigozhin. In fact, two districts in the Tomsk City Duma that were held by Navalny supporters went to Sergei Sechenov, founder of the SMO Veterans’ Association, and “Z-patriot” Diana Smoleva, respectively. Still, CEC chief Ella Pamfilova cheerfully reported that the relatively high turnout shows that “even in difficult times, voting is an extremely important tradition to Russian people.” According to her, “people were saying everywhere that voting is their sacred duty, that they feel responsible for their country’s future.” Even a real-life hedgehog made an appearance in Samara Province: It climbed inside a ballot box and election officials ended up treating it to some milk (maybe it promised to vote for United Russia).

Such fluff pieces surrounding the elections, coupled with Pamfilova’s enthusiasm, bring back associations with the not-too-distant past. As NG’s editor in chief Konstantin Remchukov points out, elections in Russia have officially returned to Soviet standards – “cohesive, unified, monolithic, and problematic on the everyday level.” Because who has time to worry about high unemployment rates in places like Chechnya and Dagestan when Russia’s statehood is on the line? So much like in Soviet times, the masses are being asked to defer their everyday comforts – which today include “access to the Internet, social platforms, trips abroad” – for loftier goals like rallying around the regime.

Even the tame establishment opposition, which was handed out some crumbs in the form of a few seats here and there, lost whatever relevance it had left. Mainly because “parties are no longer political players; instead, they are being played, like chess pieces, in the game of politics,” writes NG’s Ivan Rodin. Of course, Remchukov warns, this “attempt to cut society off from these standards of normality under the guise of conservatism and traditional values is a recipe for reactionary behavior.” And the economic picture is not as rosy as the authorities want people to believe. According to a report by the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting, Russia will need at least a decade of 3%+ economic growth to fix “its mounting social problems, normalize the modernization cycle and strengthen its social institutions.” And while in 2024, the Russian economy is expected to grow by an impressive 3.9%, such growth is unsustainable: “The way the economy is currently structured, we are unlikely to grow above 2% to 2.5% a year,” the Economic Development Ministry admitted recently. And that’s in the best-case scenario.

Meanwhile, in the US, the ongoing presidential campaign has no time for fluff pieces about confused hedgehogs. According to the FBI and the NSA, Iranian hackers allegedly sent documents from Donald Trump’s headquarters to his Democratic rivals. The timing could not have been worse, as newly elected Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, set to visit New York for the UN GA, indicated that Tehran was open to resuming talks on the ill-fated nuclear deal. According to Middle East expert Leonid Tsukanov, the accusations of Iranian hacking should be taken with a grain of salt: They are mainly used to show a candidate’s “resilience” in the face of “outside influence.” As the fog keeps thickening, let’s hope the hedgehog still manages to find his way home.