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How the West helped inventRussia’s election fraudWith Russians on the streets protesting yet another fraud-riddled election, andHillary Clinton lecturing the Kremlin on the evils of election fraud, the website TheeXiled decided to repost this important background story on Russian election fraud,and how the West, led by Hillary’s husband Bill Clinton, enabled and whitewashedRussia’s 1996 stolen elections which assured that the hugely unpopular BorisYeltsin won. Yeltsin’s Western-backed victory allowed him to pick his successor,Vladimir Putin, in 2000.This article by Alexander Zaitchik and Mark Ames about the West’s activecomplicity in Russian election fraud, in creating the template still used today byPutin, was first published in The eXile (the precursor to The eXiled) on 30November 2007, the eve of Russia’s 2007 Duma elections, the last time before thisyear Russians voted in parliamentary elections.‘A Victory for Russian Democracy’– Title of a New YorkTimes editorial, days after theODIHR-approved 1996 presidentialelection‘Exit, Russian Democracy’– Title of a New York Times editorial,days before the ODIHR-boycotted2007 Duma electionsW O R L D A F F A I R SWHEN Russia told the Organisationfor Security and Co-operation in Europe(OSCE) that their election monitoringmission would be severely limitedlast month, it seemed as thoughPutin had fired an authoritarian shotout of the blue, baring his innerStalinist once and for all. The Westreacted as if the OSCE was the crucifixof democracy, and Putin’s rejectionof that crucifix was evil rejectinggood.Well, that’s one way of lookingat it. Another way is that the recentRussia-OSCE door-slamming episodeis the inevitable outcome of years ofcynical Western manipulation of anorganisation that once held enormouspromise and impeccable credentials,but is now with good reason considereda propaganda tool for the West.If that last sentence sounds likethe paranoid rant of a Putin-era silovikrevanchist, then think again. It’s theMuscovites voting in Russia’s 1996 presidential polls. Boris Yeltsin’s win in thoseelections was rife with fraud.view held by none other than the manwho headed the OSCE’s 1996 electionmission in Russia, MichaelMeadowcroft.‘The West let Russia down, andit’s a shame,’ said Meadowcroft, aformer British MP and veteran of 48election monitoring missions to 35countries.In a recent telephone interviewwith The eXile, Meadowcroft explainedhow he was pressured byOSCE and EU authorities to ignoreserious irregularities in Boris Yeltsin’sheavily manipulated 1996 electionvictory, and how EU officials suppresseda report about the Russianmedia’s near-total subservience topro-Yeltsin forces.‘Up to the last minute I was beingpressured by [the OSCE higherupsin] Warsaw to change what Iwanted to say,’ said Meadowcroft. ‘Interms of what the OSCE was preparedto say publicly about the election, theywere very opposed to any suggestionthat the election had been manipulated.’THIRD WORLD RESURGENCE No 255/25659