lbo-talk-digest V1 #5906

[ChrisD(RJ)]

Kuchma was re-elected. Yeltsin was also re-elected, at a time when he had a
single-digit approval rating. He also spent 30 times the legal limit for
campaign spending just bribing journalists. Get the picture? :)

- -Yes, but this means that political conscience level isn?t so high. I
don?t
- -know a president that was re elected after his policies led the GNP
- -to decrease by 50% and caused 3-5 million excess deaths (all of
- -these withouth a civil war).

					Alexandre Fenelon

------------------

What they did in 1996 was bar Yeltsin's opposition (that is, the CPRF) from
the electronic media and threaten that, if the CP won, there would either be
a return to Stalinism (a bullshit threat; the CPRF are social democrats) or
a civil war (a real possibility). Even so, Zyuganov almost won. In fact, he
may actually have won --there is good reason to suspect that the votes were
fiddled with.

Most Russians, I think, are just too tired to get interested in politics.
Plus, there's massive cynicism. As an acquaintance said to me, "People
always think the new tsar is going to be better than the old tsar, and
they're always wrong."

Chris Doss
The Russia Journal