Campaign guidelines urge Russia’s ruling political party to hide its own branding at mass events to avoid voter backlash ahead of September elections

As Meduza has already reported, both Russia’s Presidential Administration and the ruling political party United Russia are concerned about a general climate of unpredictability in the country and its effect on their campaign ahead of State Duma elections scheduled for September 18–20. The ruling party plans to finalize and release its platform in late August.

“We’re running the campaign blind,” a source close to the Presidential Administration’s political bloc told Meduza.

Even as United Russia shows no hurry to draft a platform, the party’s federal leadership has prepared campaign guidelines and distributed them to its regional branches and to regional administrations.

The document advises regional party members to organize their campaigning around three “thematic lines”: “protection and care,” “pride and victory,” and “leadership and development.” The guidelines offer no examples of how regional branches might put any of these “lines” into practice at campaign events.

Perhaps the most tangible of the proposed themes is the Kremlin’s possible authorization to cast United Russia as “Putin’s party.” A decision on final approval, along with the release of the party’s official platform, is expected in late August.

In its election campaigns, United Russia has drawn on its association with the president repeatedly — and always carefully. The party has usually been content to cast itself as the political force backing Putin. The most memorable instance was the 2007 Duma race, when Putin himself headed the party’s federal candidate list. His image was the campaign’s centerpiece, anchored by the slogan “Putin’s Plan — Russia’s Victory.” Some materials were blunter still — a Krasnoyarsk billboard proclaimed: “United Russia is Putin’s Party!”

“In 2007 it made sense, because Putin was heading both the list and the party. Right now the formal leader is Medvedev, who wants to head the list,” a political strategist who works with regional administrations told Meduza. United Russia “hints” in nearly every campaign that it is “the force behind Putin,” the strategist said, but it should not do so as openly as the new guidelines apparently envision:

A slogan along the lines of “United Russia is Putin’s Party,” the strategist added, might be rolled out “if United Russia’s ratings continue to fall, to prop it up.”

The guidelines also address how regional officials should explain to voters why there is no platform in the middle of a campaign. The party’s solution — which a strategist who works with the Presidential Administration’s political bloc and has seen the guidelines called “basically acceptable” — is to have regional authorities invite citizens and civic organizations to help draft the platform. The initiative even has a name, “Creating the Future Together,” though the guidelines say nothing more about it.

“Not ‘we still haven’t come up with anything,’ but ‘we decided to consult you.’ But to work properly, this move needs to be deployed early — to extend the campaigning period,” the strategist explained.

The guidelines also set out a fixed slate of campaign events.

The proposed events, however, have nothing to do with ideology or even social promises. They comprise city days, harvest festivals, and courtyard days with fairs and concerts that regional administrations can hold with United Russia’s support — and the party wants this done “in the maximum number of localities.”

The guidelines specify separately that “branding the party’s participation” at these events is permissible only “on a scale and in a manner that will not generate a negative reaction” among Russians. Just what that scale and manner are is left for regional officials to determine on their own.

A political strategist who works with the Presidential Administration’s political bloc called organizing such festivals “a traditional technique,” but said it should be “far from the main element” of an election campaign.

“As it stands, these city days and harvest festivals are the only definite and clear element [in United Russia’s election campaign],” he said with a shrug.