Russia’s elections are more than political theatre
For the Kremlin, parliamentary elections remain a mechanism for political participation, feedback and legitimacy.
Russia’s parliamentary elections offer an excellent opportunity for a new round in the information war between the West and Russia. Western politicians, experts and journalists have been given yet another convenient occasion to tell their target audiences that democracy has long ceased to exist in Russia; that the federal parliament, like any other representative body, in practice determines nothing in Russian life; and that all genuinely important decisions for the country are made not even by the government but exclusively in the Kremlin, by an extremely narrow circle of individuals accountable to no one.
Therefore, in the view of many critics of the Russian authorities, elections in Russia need not have been held at all: their outcome was predetermined by Kremlin political strategists and, in any event, will have no significant impact on the country’s future.
And yet even the most biased outside observer could hardly fail to notice the obvious: the Russian authorities made consistent and persistent efforts to ensure that these elections attracted the highest possible participation and were conducted successfully under current electoral law. For at least the past several months, the country had experienced heightened political activity.
It is hardly likely that the Kremlin felt an urgent need to erect elaborate and expensive but not especially durable scenery on the Russian political stage when the reaction of the potential audience to the forthcoming theatrical production was known in advance. It seems more logical to assume that the Russian authorities need elections not as cosmetic decoration for the façade of their political system, designed to attract the indifferent gaze of an outside observer, but as a quite effective and, above all, much-needed mechanism for maintaining dialogue between the authorities and society in the difficult geopolitical and socio-economic conditions of autumn 2026.