Judging Freedom - Gilbert Doctorow : Are There Still Communists in Russia?

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Gilbert Doctorow : Are There Still Communists in Russia?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Fragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish fighting for

freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Friday, September 25th, 2006, Gilbert Doctoro joins us now from St. Petersburg, Russia. Gilbert, welcome here, my dear friend. I want to talk to you mainly about the Russian elections because you've written about it extensively in the past several days. Big picture, your general impression of the Duma and local elections in Russia during the past week. I have to say in the outset that what I'm going to remark is preliminary. I have not yet seen the detailed region by region or state by state result of elections because the Russian elections of the last weekend over three days were at both the federal level

and at the local, what they call them, subjects of the Russian Federation, we would call them states or provinces, there are at least 47 of them, and most of them, not all of them, had elections for the governors and for the regional and municipal councils or legislatures in effect. And these were contested by something like nine parties, several of them had really fractional percentages of electoral support. Others had very substantial electoral support, and we'll get to that in a minute. But the elections at the federal level are to put in place Duma members. This is the lower house of the Russian parliament.

It is very active. It has a lot of legislative initiative. Much of what passes into law in Russia is actually coming from the deputies in the Duma, and particularly from the leading party in the Duma, the United Russia Party that is identified as Putin's party. The other parties, we get to in a moment, they have lesser share of votes. They have sometimes substantial electoral support.

But their actual hold on deputy seats is less than their vote in the total tally would indicate. We'll get to that. There's another reason why the elections, especially skewed in Russia. Before I make any commentary, I want to remark that one of the problems that any analyst has in dealing with the elections in any one country is to ignore abuses and distortions, which almost any country you can think of practices. Pure representative democracy is a nice fiction, something we learn in political science 101. But in practice, many countries have many means of keeping opposition away from power.

Russia is one of those countries, as I say, in that sense, it's in the majority. If you have to ask about problems with electoral, with manipulation, or with managing the elections, just ask Marine Le Pen in France what she has gone through to try to remain presidential candidate in the face of opposition from the man in power from Macron. But coming back to the overview, simplify the overview, the election has been heralded by the Kremlin as indicating solid, almost universal support for the government in a time of war. That's understandable, but they would say that. However, even their own figures, which were published immediately in Rasiska Gazeta,

in the most reliable voice of Russia media, showed the following points, which simple arithmetic give you a very different picture from what the over. overall vision of solidarity and full support, I would suggest. The electoral turnout was 60%, 59%, 56%. It depends on which preliminary or final figure you use. Well, round it off to 60 for the sake of your math. Right. The support of the United Russia Party was 56, 57%.

When you do the math, you've got 30, between 33 and 33, 36% of the eligible voters in Russia voted for Putin's party. Excuse me. That is not 90% support, as you would expect in Chechnya, where the elections would be distorted. That is not 80%, which President Putin has had is his level of support and approval ratings for the last several years. It's 36%. Now, that 36% will in fact probably control close between 50 and 70% of the Duma seats. because of peculiarities of the structure.

All right, but does the Duma, does the United Russia, President Putin's party, dominance in the Duma, approximately reflect the support for the party and for President Putin in the public arena? No. We ask two questions. One is in the public arena and the other is among the actual voters. And let's keep in mind. You can say, it's a wartime people who are afraid to go to the polls because of drone attacks on electoral districts. That did happen.

But that's to ignore the fact, the large part of the voters use the opportunity to vote electronically from their home computer. And so the question of threat to their lives didn't exist for those people. And for those who might be indisposed, either as invalids or aged or whatever other reason, or fear of going to an electoral district, of a possible attack. The electoral volunteers came to you. A lot of old people, a lot of people who were hospitalized or invalids or whatever, they were visited by electoral volunteers who took their votes by visiting them where they are. Lord, I want to make sure I didn't misunderstand you. You can vote online in Russia? Yes. Now, in case you think that would open up the possibility of the

of all kind of abuses, I maintain there were no abuses. For the simple reason... Well, you know that's unheard of here in the West. I know. But the Russians, ever since 2011, 2012, when there was a big revolt led by Navalny, which included some high-ranking members of the around Putin,

who came out and protested against the fragrant, fragrant, fragility. electoral flagrant, thank you, abuses, such as bureaucrats or officials being sent from one district to another to vote often, vote early and vote often. And that type of abuse was suppressed completely afterwards. And I don't believe they would have, they made for in-person voting, everything is video recorded and is available on the internet. so that those who want to monitor and spot and detect abuses could easily find them. I imagine they did similar protection for the electronic voting. But the main thing is the reason why I'm not speculating, but speaking from the actual results,

the results were such that they had to be accurate. They weren't as complementary to the Kremlin as one would expect if they were manipulated. it. It's just as a question of who's interpreting the results. If you're listening to Vladimir Salaviov, it's wow. The Kremlin got it all. If you're listening to some other people, they might question that. And I certainly question it just by the multiplication, the simple arithmetic multiplication that we did a couple of minutes ago. Now, when I call out abuse in the system, it's not I'm calling it out. was called out about three, four years ago by Geronovsky, the founder and leader of the LDPR, the ultra-nationalist, so to speak, party that still exists, and which got just under 10% support in these elections on the weekend. Geronovsky was a clown. We all know he was a clown, but it was a clown for a reason.

If he knew that if he weren't a clown, he would be excluded from politics. he would be driven out one reason or another. So he cloned around. He wore blazing red jackets and strange ties, and people could make light of him. And he stayed in power from the first days of the Duma. He was the longest serving member of the Duma when he died of COVID three years ago or something like that. Well, it's the federal government in Russia.

I'm going to guess, and you correct me if I'm wrong, The center of it is the presidency, not the Duma. Well, it depends on whom you're talking to. I received a comment from a fellow who obviously, this is on one of my internet platforms, WordPress, a fellow who obviously does a lot of reading, and he went a little further into the elections than I did, frankly speaking, because he wanted to prove a point which I then contested.

And his point was just what you said a moment ago, that the center of powers in the Duma, after all, a lot of legislation in Russia is in fact Duma initiated, not from the presidential administration initiated or from the cabinet initiated. But my interpretation is that's really missing the boat. The fact is that the Duma has been busy correcting and trying to mitigate the problems with the presidential administration and its close allies have created by who determines the economy. It's not the Duma. It is the president and the bank of Russia director, Nabilina.

She has set high, very high, crushingly high. Interest rates for the bank, I mean up to 22%. It would reach now, I think, is down 60%. that kills off the working capital of medium-sized enterprises and small. What is a mortgage for a house, if there is such an average, what is the mortgage rate to buy a house for a middle class couple in Russia? Well, if the leading rate, the prime rate, is 16%. You can imagine that the mortgage rate will not be much below that.

However, the mitigating legislation, which I say where the doom has been very busy, innovative in collaboration with the cabinet, of course, is to subsidize families with children. Let me ask you, let's go back to the election. Is there still a communist party in Russia? No. It calls itself the Communist Party, but it is communist only a name. They don't change the name because they would lose all. the old-timers who have fond recollection of communist days. And there is an aged part of the population. He's Uganov himself, the head of the party, since the 1990s. And he's not alone in that. Other party leaders also have been in their positions for decades.

He represents his generation, and that doesn't change the name because he would lose the vote of the old-timers. The content of his party, however, is social democratic in the Western. European sense. If he changed the name to social democratic, he would pick up young votes. But he'd dare and do that because he's sure to lose the old votes. All right. So this is not a communist party in the Karl Marx sense from each according to his ability to each according to his needs. And it's not a communist party in the old Soviet Union authoritarian sense. It's just a social democratic party that uses the word communist. Is that

Is that your explanation and understanding? That's correct, and I add an additional dimension to that. It is a law-abiding party that stands by the Constitution, though it's fully aware that the Russian Constitution from the early days of Yeltsin is essentially a president-dominated governance, and where there's very little recourse to what the president does either through legislation or through decry. Now, 1996, Mr. Zuganoff saved the country. He faced defeat that was completely manipulated by the Yeltsin administration, with the help of American advisors, of course. And if he had been like a Donald Trump or he would have refused to accept the results,

and Russia would have had a civil war. That was well known. Zirganov accepted the results. He bit his tongue and the country went on. And nobody here forgets that fact. So communists are law-abiding and constitutionalist. Are there people in the, I'm going to use the Americanized version of this, Putin administration, I don't know if that's the right terminology, who are not in his party.

Are there communists? Are there anti-war people? Are there non-Putin people in the administration? Oh, no. No, there are, the administration is split. I want to be clear about that. There are pro-Western people and there are more nationalist. If you want to call one patriotic, another unpatriotic, that's already moralizing and spreading opinions. Let's be more strict about our terminology. He has, in the case of Solanov, his minister of finance, is closely allied and working together with Nabilina at the bank, central bank, and they are liberals in the big L sense and pro-market people. Then you have others in the administration who are more

socialist-minded and Russian-minded than who are not looking for particularly close relations with the West. And they're pulling in another direction. And these two factions within the entourage of President Putin have been there from the beginning of his first term in office. They have not gone away, though the liberals have been reduced in number. Some fled abroad after the start of the special military operation. But still, they maintain a presence in the cabinet and in the administration of the president. Are there any anti-war parties, or at least people who ran for the Duma opposing the special military operation in Ukraine.

There was only one party that came out and expressed itself at all on the war, whether pro-war or anti-war, there are parties, out of the, say, nine parties who participated in these last elections, only one said anything about the war. And that is an anti-war party. Actually, it's an anti-Russia party. It's called Diabloca, which means Apple. And this party has been around for two decades more. And it has always been pulling in the other direction against a strong Russian government. They're the people who in 2014 and 15 said that Russia cannot possibly stand up against the United States

because of our miserably low GDP. We should just salute America and do what we're told to do. They don't command more than 2% of the electorate in Russia. The fact that they were banned was not surprising because they came out to denounce the war. And if you follow the logic of their critique, Russia would surrender. I know you're in St. Petersburg now, and of course I know you live in Brussels. What is the EU attitude toward the Russian elections? Well, they didn't have to wait for it to take place.

Their opinion was made up beforehand. The thieves would be unfair, non-transparent, and would reflect on the undemocratic nature of the regime in place. This is all nonsense. The elections were fair within the framework of the procedures here. As I said, there are specifics. We have gerrymandering in the states. You have equivalent in Russia.

It's expressed slightly differently, but it comes to the same thing. It's a way of controlling the outcome of the vote, whatever. people vote for, and that exists here too. But as I say, you have to, anyone who wants to do a critique of this election has to have also in parallel understanding of the similar abuses which go by different names in other countries like the United States. Well, what is President Putin's popularity at the present time? There must be some recent credible polls on this taken right before the election. Well, I think it was something like 70% approval rating, but this is very deceptive because

the question that were surely uppermost in people's minds, there are two questions. One is general well-being and prosperity, and the other is the war, fear that there'll be a general mobilization, concern over the drones, concern over the attacks on infrastructure. So these are two different issues, which is dominant, well, one assumes that the 70% approval rating showed that general well-being was dominant over war concerns. But we can't say because the public was not asked that. Is there a feeling that the special military operation military activity will be accelerated in an effort to bring it to an end? Well, I believe the feeling was picked up by the presidential administration by President Putin

and was implemented six weeks before the elections were held, which partly explains why they were as favorable to his party as they were, even though, as I say, only 36% of the electorate actually voted for his party. He changed his strategy dramatically from the go-slow War of Atrition to sudden-death-offer. Ukraine and blasting the hell out of Kiev, which I think was very popular and which persuaded the broad public that the corner has been turned and that the war will end quick sooner rather than later. So he reacted to public opinion definitely well before the elections took place, and that certainly gave a bonus or a plus to the chances of his party last

weekend. Some of your colleagues on this show are of the view that Kyiv, Ukraine in general, and Kiev in particular, are in for a long, bitter, cold winter with woefully inadequate energy supplies for heat and electricity. Excuse me. Do you share that view? Oh, so well-documented a view, interpretation of the realities today and of what's to come. So in that sense, for Ukraine and for Kiev in particular, the other cities, however, are similarly threatened, this could be a decisive coming months when there will be a flood of refugees out of Ukraine coming into Western Europe. And I think that is very much what the presidential administration has as its scenario for the further

development of this war and determination. I don't see how Ukraine can survive whatever lack of financial support that desperately would need in two months' time when the budget money runs out. The big earners of hard currency for Ukraine have now been stopped entirely by the blockade on import export, and by the destruction of metallurgy. The steel industry, three main plants, have been put out of commission in the last couple of weeks. So the grain was number one export, I think 30 billion. Steel was something like 15 billion. These are enormous losses for the Ukrainian economy. The question is when they will admit that they're going belly up. I don't think that they will see the spring. I don't think it'll go beyond a couple of months. Wow. Gilbert Doctor, thank you very much.

Safe travels to you. I appreciate all the notes and observations you send our way. We'll look forward to seeing you next week. Well, thanks so much. Sure, all the best. Coming up later today, Friday, from Thailand at 2 o'clock this afternoon Eastern, Pepe Escobar, at 4 o'clock this afternoon Eastern, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Larry Johnson back in the United States, Colonel Karen Koukowski, in the United States, and if he has Internet from Siberia, Scott Ritter, Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.

Thank you.