30 Years of the "Vote or Lose" Campaign: How the 1996 Presidential Election in Russia Changed Political History
Exactly 30 years ago, on June 16, 1996, the first round of the country's second-ever presidential election took place. Boris Yeltsin's campaign, which had produced an incredible comeback from a mere 3% rating, largely determined the country's future and became the point of no return. We recall how the large-scale 1996 presidential election in Russia for the first time unleashed American political strategists, oligarchic money, and regional rock tours at full capacity.
Yeltsin's comeback
In early 1996, incumbent President Boris Yeltsin's approval ratings were phenomenally low—between 3% and 8%. The country was suffering the consequences of "shock therapy": devalued savings accounts, wage arrears, and social stratification. The protracted and bloody war in Chechnya only exacerbated the situation. What happened over the next six months was hailed by many observers as a political miracle: a candidate with a disastrous negative rating became president for a second term.
Main competitor
Yeltsin's main rival was the leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, Gennady Zyuganov. The Communists received the most votes in the December 1995 Duma elections, and Zyuganov's victory in the presidential elections seemed a foregone conclusion to many. But big business and the media were working against Zyuganov, and federal television channels weren't providing the same airtime as Yeltsin. Zyuganov publicly accused their leadership of supporting the incumbent president. Zyuganov's core constituency consisted of pensioners and Russians who had suffered under Yeltsin's reforms. There were many of them.
Coalition of oligarchs
Owners of major Russian businesses—Boris Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky, and others—fearing that the rise to power of communist Gennady Zyuganov could lead to the nationalization of private property, met at the Davos Economic Forum and agreed to support Boris Yeltsin's candidacy. Yeltsin's campaign was often financed in circumvention of official limits and permits. The most famous episode was the arrest of Sergei Lisovsky and Arkady Yevstafyev as they left Government House with a photocopier box containing $538,000 in cash.
"Vote or lose"
As part of the "Vote or Lose" campaign, the country's biggest rock and pop stars embarked on a campaign tour across Russia. The focus was on young people: rock performers and DJs were supposed to attract them to the polls and demonstrate that a vote for Yeltsin was a vote for freedom. The tour included Splin, Aquarium, Agata Kristi, Nautilus Pompilius, as well as pop stars Valery Leontiev, Irina Allegrova, and many others. On June 10, 1996, in Rostov-on-Don, during a performance by Yevgeny Osin's ensemble, Yeltsin took the stage and broke into a dance.
"God forbid!"
One of the campaign's most ambitious projects was the free newspaper "God Forbid!", which was published in millions of copies. "God forbid!" It didn't directly campaign for Yeltsin: its pages painted a bleak picture of a possible communist future—a return to repression, shortages, an Iron Curtain, and civil war. All of this added up to a single message: a communist victory would mean catastrophe.
American political strategists
For four months, a group of American political strategists worked secretly in Moscow, directing Yeltsin's election campaign. The team included veterans of the Clinton and Wilson gubernatorial campaigns. They employed the full arsenal of political marketing: regular public opinion polls, focus groups, and image-building for the candidate. The story only became public after the election, according to the magazine. Time put it on the cover under the title "Rescuing Boris: The Secret Story of How American Advisers Helped Yeltsin Win" Time, July 1996).
General Lebed
In the first round, on June 16, 1996, Yeltsin received 35,28% of the vote—three percentage points more than Zyuganov (32,03%). General Alexander Lebed came in third with 14,52%. The very next day, Yeltsin appointed him Secretary of the Security Council in exchange for urging voters to support the incumbent president in the runoff. According to available information, Lebed's participation in the election was part of a pre-planned strategy: he was intended to draw votes away from Zyuganov. The maneuver worked: on July 3, Yeltsin won the runoff, receiving 53,82% to Zyuganov's 40,31%. In October of that year, Lebed was dismissed.
Candidate's illness
A week before the second round, Yeltsin suffered a heart attack and disappeared from the public eye. His campaign did everything possible to cover up the incident: the press service announced that the president had caught a cold, and all scheduled meetings were canceled. The Kremlin released an edited video of Yeltsin—the original had to be edited because the president couldn't finish a single sentence. On election day, July 3, Yeltsin made only one public appearance: at the Barvikha sanatorium, where a polling station had been set up especially for him. He only informed the country in September, after his victory, that he needed heart surgery.
