How Russia’s election was fixed

IN MIKHAIL BULGAKOV’s great novel “The Master and Margarita”, set in Stalin’s Moscow in the 1930s, Satan’s mischievous company performs magic tricks in a comedy theatre. It showers the audience with banknotes. People leap and scramble to catch them as they flutter down. Next day, needless to say, they are all worthless.Russia’s general election, theatrically staged by the Kremlin between September 17th and 19th, had a touch of Bulgakov about it. Even so, United Russia, the party that supports President Vladimir Putin, had seen its popularity fall to less than 30% in polls taken ahead of the vote. Turnout was as low as ever. But as if by magic the ballot papers gave the Kremlin more than two-thirds of the seats—and a supermajority—in the Duma, Russia’s parliament.