Trouble in Moscow
Personality cult
The mass media have created a veritable Luzhkov personality cult. Several newspapers publish his picture and "wise sayings" in each issue. His portrait is more and more often to be seen in municipal offices and on the streets, and Moscow television every day devotes a whole program of local news to his achievements.
The mayor wields power in the capital with an iron hand, urging on those who do his bidding and punishing those who incur his displeasure. He sends the police to force a private cafe to plant trees by its entrance, and threatens to take buildings away from their owners unless the structures are repainted in a colour to his liking.
Russian provincial governors, meanwhile, appeal to him for help. Luzhkov takes every chance to compare himself to Yury Dolgoruky, the Prince of Vladimir who established the Kremlin. (Dolgoruky acquired his surname, which means "longarmed" , because he was constantly stretching out his arms to take other people's estates and wives).
The cult of the infallible city chief has also had an unexpected side effect. While Luzhkov has managed to claim the credit for everything good that happens in Moscow, his allies and partners get to answer for everything bad. The city duma has been especially unpopular. The 1997 elections are thus presenting the mayor with serious problems.
The leadership of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is clearly trying to avoid conflict with the powerful mayor. It has particular cause to do this because the vicemayor is Valery Shantsev, formerly the leader of the Communist group in the Moscow Soviet, and who today does not hide his links with the Communists. Challenger
However, a challenge to the existing order has been issued by the former chairperson of the Moscow Soviet, Nikolai Gonchar.
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After the disbanding of the soviet, Gonchar was elected by a huge majority to represent the capital in the Council of the Federation (the Russian "senate"). When direct elections to the council were abolished in 1995, Gonchar was elected to the State Duma.
Now he has declared his readiness to renounce his duma mandate in order to wage a fight for the post of chairperson of the city legislature.
Originally, Gonchar tried to put together a broad centre-left coalition on the basis of general democratic slogans. But by autumn, it was clear that most of Gonchar's more right-wing allies lacked the resolve to come out in open opposition to Luzhkov.
The "Our City" movement which Gonchar had founded lost most of its sponsors. But this radicalised it. As the campaign has unfolded, its main core has come to consist of members of the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) and of former Moscow activists of the Party of Labour, which collapsed in 1994.
The unwillingness of Moscow television to provide coverage to representatives of the opposition is inducing Gonchar and his supporters to take to "grassroots campaigning" ", and this is acting as a further spur to radicalisation. * Source: Green Left Weekly
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