Virtual politics

According to Dr Andrew Wilson [UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies], we are perfectly right to be a little perplexed, because nothing is as it seems. In his book 'Virtual Politics', Wilson argues that much of what passes for democratic participation in most of the countries of the former Soviet Union is entirely fake, a carefully choreographed performance designed to maintain the political status quo. …

After a brief flurry of popular protest in Russia and its neighbours after the implosion of the Soviet Union, Wilson argues, political elites entrenched their position and democratic impulses ossified into scorn for politics of all stripes. In a world in which a return to totalitarianism is considered unacceptable, says Wilson, virtual politics "is the way that elites seek to manage, manipulate and contain democracy". …

The democratic process, according to Wilson, is choreographed by a cadre of "political technologists" - many of whom learned their craft as apparatchiks in Soviet times. Whole parties and politicians are launched as TV projects, and then dropped as soon as they outlive their usefulness; electoral rolls are tinkered with; fake opinion polls and sociological surveys are drummed up to intimidate and demoralise opponents; "shell parties" are regularly constructed out of thin air, or real parties cloned to confuse the electorate. The politicians are usually only avatars, says Wilson, like the easily clickable icons of cyberspace. …

Such is our inability to see through the political fog, according to Wilson, that the study of post-Soviet politics might soon revert to something similar to Kremlinology - the painstaking study of Soviet announcements and rituals that was used to divine what was really happening in the corridors of Soviet power. …

James Harkin, 'The Guardian'