The significance of Russia’s impending parliamentary elections is generally either grossly overstated or seriously understated. On the one hand, they certainly won’t be able to change anything about the form and substance of the verticalized political system in which “everything is decided in advance,” as virtually any focus group participant will tell you these days. On the other hand, the elections are happening for a reason, and not just because the constitution mandates them: the indifferent public could easily be persuaded to scrap the costly elections, just as it consented to the constitutional changes last year that will potentially allow Russian President Vladimir Putin to remain in power until 2036.
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Andrei Kolesnikov: Will Russia’s Duma elections change anything at all?
A man casts his ballot during the first day of the three-day parliamentary election in Moscow on Sept. 17, 2021.
