Mirror, Mirror On The Wall…

"We are choosing a tsar," Viktor Shenderovich tells me, "And that's the problem."

Shenderovich is one of Russia's best known political commentators and satirists, and a week before the presidential election he was fatalistic - and a little sanguine - about what was coming.

It looks as though acting Russian president Vladimir Putin will win this election, either in the first round on March 26, or in a second round if he fails to receive 53 percent of the vote and is forced into a run-off. Like so much about contemporary Russia, the election somehow incorporates contradictions into an imperfect whole.

There are 12 candidates for president, and in that respect the public does indeed have a choice. There is a communist candidate, and a liberal candidate and a nationalist candidate. But the outcome is already known, and in that respect it is an election with no choice at all.

Shenderovich and others I spoke to say the election reflects the contradictions of Russian society itself. The country is enjoying its new freedoms, and looks forward to more of them, but at the same time wants to be led there by a benevolent, authoritarian hand.

"What is government, after all," says Shenderovich, "except a bunch of managers we pay to run the country. But that is an absolutely foreign concept in Russia.

"It doesn't even enter the head of most voters that they are choosing a manager. The majority of voters believe they are choosing a tsar. There are good tsars and bad tsars. Let's hope this will be a good one. It's a feudal consciousness."

Shenderovich writes for the most popular television program in Russia (after the news), a political satire called Puppets. Every Sunday night, likenesses of the country's political leaders act out a skit, which is always irreverent and often outrageous.

Last week's episode showed the puppet Putin cruising the streets of Moscow picking up puppet prostitutes. The hookers, naturally, were his political rivals. It was the rawest of metaphors: the government as one big bordello. It was also very, very funny.

Puppets is one of the clearest indications that things really have evolved in Russia, even though there are occasional calls to take it off the air. (Last week's episode brought a howl of protest in the Duma, Russia's parliament.) But Shenderovich isn't particularly worried.

"It's only an unpleasant symptom," he says, "that part of society is not ready for this kind of free speech."

Putin himself hasn't objected to Puppets; in fact, he almost seems proud that he's now important enough to be satirized. A book of interviews with Putin which appeared last week included, among Putin family photographs, a photo of the clay model used to make his puppet.

"I don't think anything terrible is going to happen after the election,"says Shenderovich. "I'm not a Putin sympathizer, and I'm not going to vote for him but we don't need to demonize him or the situation. "

He said Putin is a modern man who presents a hopeful picture precisely because he is without ideology, a pragmatist. He knows Russia needs to fix its tax laws, reform the army, attract investment.

"Putin is the same as our society, good and bad," says Shenderovich. "If Russian society had been against the war in Chechnya, if it were more inclined toward democracy, then there wouldn't have been a war in Chechnya and we would be having a different kind of election.

"Russia can become a big North Korea, or move closer to the rest of the world. Putin doesn't even think about moving in the direction of North Korea.

"Maybe South Korea,"says Shenderovich with a mischievous smile, as he went back to work on next week's episode of Puppets.

Written By MARK KATKOV
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