United Russia Scam?

The lede of the front-page, above-the-fold story in today's Moscow Times got me thinking:

Friday, March 11, 2005. Issue 3122. Page 1.
Kremlin Mulls Ditching United Russia
By Francesca Mereu Staff Writer

Worried about United Russia's falling popularity after its approval of controversial social reforms, senior Kremlin officials are planning to create a new party of power and ditch the Kremlin-controlled party ahead of the 2007 parliamentary elections, two sources familiar with the situation said.

The Kremlin, however, faces numerous hurdles to forming a new party -- hurdles that it unwittingly raised by deciding to overhaul the electoral system, political analysts said.

Widespread public anger over the monetization of social benefits -- which stripped millions of pensioners, disabled people, war veterans and others of state benefits in exchange for meager cash payments -- has largely been directed at the United Russia-dominated State Duma, rather than at President Vladimir Putin or the federal government.

Unprepared for the outcry and determined to maintain its grip on parliament, the Kremlin is looking to form a new party of power, the two sources said.

Both refused to go on the record with their comments, citing the sensitive nature of the issue. One is a well-placed official in the White House, the seat of the federal government, and the other is a well-connected official in the Kremlin. [...]

What this made me think of was the scheme, common in the business world here during the 1990's and earlier in this decade, of the one-day company (firma-odnodnevka). Shady business operators open a company and operate briefly without paying taxes; then they close the company down and open up a new one so that they are not liable for the violations of the old company. It can be seen, I suppose, some sort of shell game. The names of the companies change, sometimes more than one of them at a time is used for operations, but the people running the enterprise are always the same. So it goes with United Russia. Its masters have run afoul of the electorate and now they want to close up shop, move down the street and hang out a new shingle with a different name on it. But the people running the show will be the same.

Rapidly cycling "parties of power" are nothing new in Russia - there were several in rapid succession, I seem to recall, in the late 1990's. But the way that the MT lede distilled this situation really struck me as making United Russia's intentions sound just too similar to the way tax cheats operate.