The end of the “Crimean Consensus”: Siberia as an example of preserving the face of “United Russia”
In Russia, the era of the “Crimean Consensus” has ended – it is not foreign policy that is coming to the fore, but internal problems such as rising tariffs, wages and pensions, social benefits, etc. The rating of the party in power, United Russia, is declining after a number of unpopular decisions, while the positions of the left forces, on the contrary, are strengthening. Novosibirsk is an example of how, under the leadership of the Communists and the decline in the ratings of EdRa, the power vertical avoided civil strife and remained operational.
This was discussed at a roundtable by experts discussing the upcoming elections in Novosibirsk, in which, as is known, the current head of the city of a million people, Anatoly Lokot, representing the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, confirmed his participation the day before.
“The era of the Crimean consensus is over. The 76% received by Putin on March 18 last year is the “cherry on the cake” that closed the era. After this, Venezuela, Syria, and Ukraine faded into the background in the mass consciousness. People are interested in social problems, raising the retirement age; these issues worry us most now,” recalled Moscow political scientist Oleg Bondarenko.
In Novosibirsk, the so-called Loktya-Travnikov pact is operating behind the scenes - an agreement on the absence of confrontation between the communist mayor Lokt and governor Andrei Travnikov from United Russia.
In the context of falling United Russia ratings, maintaining the pact is beneficial, first of all, to United Russia, said Krasnoyarsk political scientist Alexander Parfenov.
“If one of the Novosibirsk United Russia members comes forward now, he will lose miserably to Lokot,” the expert said.
“It is estimated that 80% of what Lokot promised in the elections he fulfilled. I wonder if we now have municipal-level politicians in the Russian Federation who fulfill their election promises so well?” – he explained the popularity of the communist mayor.
Doctor of Sociological Sciences Nadezhda Vavilina cited research data according to which only two institutions have a positive coefficient of trust in government institutions in Novosibirsk - President Vladimir Putin and the mayor of Novosibirsk.
“Lokot is a rather bright politician, not a modern technocrat governor, in the good sense of the word, a politician from the 90s - early 2000s, when people became politicians by vocation, and not by appointment. There is the example of Lokot, there is the example of Levchenko (governor of the Irkutsk region from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation - ed.), other communists who interact absolutely normally with the elites. The federal government does not need to be afraid of communist victories in federal elections,” Bondarenko comments.
The End of the "Crimean Consensus": Siberia as an Example of United Russia Saving Its Face