DUBNA, Russia, Nov 30 (Reuters) - A billboard over a slapdash jumble of shops on the muddy main street of this run-down town shows the face of the provincial governor, the logo of Vladimir Putin's ruling United Russia party and an upbeat message: Change for the better!
Alexandra Kuzmenko doubts that change is coming anytime soon, and she’s tired of waiting.
Long employed at the ironworks that was the life-blood of Dubna since Tsarist times but closed in the 1990s, she now works on a night watch and lives in a one-room flat without water in a sagging wooden house built in 1828 and deemed decrepit in 2001.
Kuzmenko, 60, said she had voted for United Russia in every election since then but would think hard about her choice before casting her ballot on Sunday, when Russians elect a new State Duma lower house of parliament.
"Nothing’s got better — on the contrary," she said. "There used to be jobs here, now there’s no work, nothing."
A recent visit by Tula province governor Vladimir Gruzdev, a ruling party member, left Kuzmenko with no good news on her quest for a new flat — and with a feeling that United Russia is more interested in votes than in the people who cast them.
"They are for oligarchs, for businessmen," she said. "They only see what’s around them."
Voters like Kuzmenko could spell trouble for the party that Putin, who plans to return to the presidency in an election next March, has used both as a source of support and as a lever of power in 12 years as Russia’s paramount leader.
Opinion polls show United Russia may lose its constitutional two-thirds majority in the Duma, threatening to undermine Putin’s control over the legislature and galvanize opponents as he prepares for at least six more years in power.
In Tula, the provincial capital 175 km (110 miles) south of Moscow, the dominance United Russia has built up over a decade in power is evident along Lenin Avenue, the main thoroughfare that bisects the industrial city of half a million people.
The party’s push to maintain that dominance is just as visible.
"IT’S ALL BEEN DECIDED"
The governor’s face stares from billboards like the one in Dubna, each with a slogan pitching United Russia to drivers of cars choking the street at rush hour — which passes mostly in darkness morning and evening as winter draws close.
Others feature Boris Gryzlov, the State Duma speaker since 2003 and the day-to-day leader of United Russia who once encapsulated the party’s legislative style for its critics by saying the Duma was "no place for discussions".
Gryzlov is running for the Duma from Tula, an arrangement opponents say is meant to boost United Russia’s result in a province where its reputation suffered from a corruption scandal that led to the former governor’s dismissal in July.
Gryzlov visited Tula last week, bearing promises of budget funds. Gruzdev, a supermarket magnate turned politician who was appointed governor by President Dmitry Medvedev, has been traversing the province to hear citizens’ views before the vote.
United Russia youth movement Young Guard is trying to lure first-time voters with free tickets to ice rinks and discos.
Trading banter as they waited for delivery trucks at the back door of a food shop in downtown Tula on Monday, a handful of young employees were unimpressed by United Russia and its campaign.
City authorities have been paving streets for the election, said shop security guard Pavel Borisov, 25, but he said United Russia would do nothing to fight entrenched corruption or address economic inequality.
He said Putin had improved Russia’s standing in the world in the past decade. But despite this, Borisov was struggling to support his wife and daughter on a salary that stayed flat for years while prices have risen.
"It will never change," he said, waving his hand in a sweeping gesture meant to equate the grimy, rain-soaked courtyard behind the store with the nation itself. "This is how we live and this is how we’ll continue to live."
Yelena, 19, a senior sales associate who would not give her last name for fear of repercussions, said she does not support United Russia but might not vote at all on Sunday because she has no confidence her ballot would count.
"It’s all been decided ahead of time," she said, echoing a sentiment shared by many Russians, according to a July survey by pollster Levada-Center in which 53 percent of respondents said the election’s outcome would be determined by the authorities.
"They’ll get the votes they need," Yelena said of United Russia.
In Tula, opponents say the ruling party is using its levers of power, and a heavy dose of dirty tricks, to ensure that.
At their campaign headquarters in a crumbling building a stone’s throw from the shop where Yelena works, Communist Party officials said United Russia and its allies in power were mixing harassment of opponents with illegal tactics to attract votes.
"They are doing everything they can to lower our result," said Valentina Mishina, provincial campaign chief for the Communist Party, which polls say will come second on Sunday and could gain dozens of Duma seats now held by United Russia.
OPPOSITION WOES
Advertising companies have refused to sell the Communists space for campaign posters and heads of venues where they hoped to hold campaign meetings had turned them away, sometimes citing orders from above, Mishina said.
She said police stopped a delivery van and confiscated 84,000 copies of their campaign newspaper, whose front page features a picture of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and a red Communist fist punching a blue United Russia bear.
The Communists have protested against United Russia campaign advertising they say is meant to use the governor’s authority to trick or pressure people into voting for United Russia.
Some residents have received letters bearing the governor’s signature along with a slip of paper showing a check mark in a box labeled United Russia and the words: "A ballot marked any other way is considered invalid."
Pensioners in Tula have been given discount cards that feature a symbol similar to the United Russia logo, with the words "United Card" beneath.
The Communists and the liberal Yabloko party said bosses at some firms were putting pressure on employees to pick up tickets enabling them to vote outside their districts and surrender the documents, which could then be used to stuff ballot-boxes.
For United Russia, to win two-thirds of the Tula vote "would be impossible without big falsifications," said Yabloko’s Tula province campaign chief, Vladimir Dorokhov.
Gruzdev’s spokesman declined to comment on the allegations, and Gruzdev said he had not set any specific vote target for United Russia in the province. "We are working for the trust and support of the people — that is our main task," he said.
United Russia can rely on voters like Valentina, a "seventy-something" pensioner with gold teeth and a headscarf who walked down Freedom Street in Dubna, near the abandoned ironworks where she had worked "as a girl".
After a tirade against lawmakers, bureaucrats and a "miserly pension" she said meant she would live out her life in poverty, she said she would go to the polls if she feels well enough and vote for the ruling party because that pension is paid on time.
"For United Russia, of course," she said. "They won’t make things better for us, but at least you can buy bread and milk."
