At first glance, it looks as though life in Chechnya, semi-autonomous Caucasus republic is gradually getting more peaceful and democratic. About 60,000 eligible voters are expected to elect 58 members of the national parliament on Sunday. A total of 353 candidates from eight parties are bidding for the seats. The spectrum of candidates runs the gamut from former Soviet functionaries or administrative officials right up to the former "defense minister" of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, which is not recognized by the international community.

The legacy left behind by the Ichkeria regime in the early 1990s was the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Chechen residents, a large number of whom were Russians, public executions, hundreds of kidnappings and numerous murders of hostages, including European citizens. Warlords, armed Muslim extremists and sadistic organized criminals ran amok, unpunished in a lawless zone. Then Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov became increasingly weak in the presence of the armed bands to the point that he seldom ever left his office in Grosny.

Six years after Russian President Vladimir Putin annihilated the rebellious republic in a military campaign, the shadow of the Ichkeria gangster republic still hangs over the country. The second war in Chechnya, which left most of Grosny in rubble, began in autumn 1999. It cost thousands of people, including innumerable civilians, their lives. And the only people who have felt any kind of tangible improvement in their lives from the promised "rebuilding" have been a handful of corrupt officials.

The armed underground insurgency, with shootouts and bombing attacks, is now continuing into its seventh year. Each morning explosives experts must comb the streets for mines. And the security apparatuses have provided 500 metal detectors for polling stations so that "Black Widows" armed with explosive belts can't cast a final ballot.

Others are joining the underground. Freelance hostage-takers are being replaced by uniformed kidnappers in masks, who carry out nighttime raids and drag young suspected resistance fighters out of their homes, to be murdered in the style of South American death squads. Again and again, innocent people are killed: last week when police opened fire on a bus and killed three civilians; a week earlier artillery was "accidentally" fired into a village and injured six people. Many Chechens regard the 80,000 Russian troops who maintain armed guard of an area about the size of Connecticut as an occupying army. That 34,387 soldiers are voting in the regional election doesn't exactly strengthen the Chechens' faith in Russian democracy.

Just Like Old East German Elections

In an attempt to show that the subordinated rebel region is a part of Russia, the Kremlin repeatedly calls on the public to vote: to elect representatives to the Duma, to approve the regional constitution, to elect a regional leader and to elect the Russian president. According to official election results, Putin -- who collected 92.3 percent of Chechen votes in the March 2004 presidential election -- is more popular in bombed-out Grozny than in his hometown of St. Petersburg. These staged elections have about as much to do with the will of the people as the "multiparty system" of old East Germany.

On November 15, at a meeting of the Chechen regional government -- imposed on the region by Moscow -- Oleg Zhidkov, former general of the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, and deputy to the presidential aid responsible for the north Caucasus, said: "Our citizens don't fully understand the point of the new parliament. So actually, these elections are for us more than anyone else." At the cabinet meeting in Grozny, even the prime minister of Chechnya, Russian Sergey Abramov, voiced his fears of being disgraced by a vote scandal. According to Abramov, the population is "not sufficiently informed" about the elections, which could lead to low voter turnout.

Abramov wanted to make a critical speech about elections a few days later in Grozny to Dimitri Kosak, an official appointed by Putin to oversee the north Caucasus. But he didn't get to. On the way to the airport his armored Mercedes was rammed by a heavy truck, and the politician was sent with serious injuries to a hospital, where he's still being treated.

The Chechen government was suspiciously quick to deny rumors that Abramov had been hurt in an assassination attempt. Abramov had worked as a Russian watchdog of the government in Grozny; before that he was responsible for oversight of Chechnya in the accounting office. In the last several weeks there was a rumor that he wanted to resign. He couldn't fulfill his responsibilities because the true strongman in Chechnya, unelected Deputy Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, kept consolidating more and more power. After Abramov's "accident," Kadyrov moved up to acting prime minister. He's the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, a former Mufti- and Moscow-appointed president of Chechnya, who fell victim to a bombing in Grozny in May 2004.

Russian military intelligence suspects that Kadyrov Jr. wanted to dispose of Abramov. But the subject is officially taboo. Putin has met with Kadyrov several times and thereby enhanced his reputation. Among his own people, however, Kadyrov is known as the leader of a troop of killers and torturers. Human rights organizations suspect the "Kadyrovzi," as his on-hangers are known, of murders and kidnappings. Publicly, the Fitness-studio owner is a symbol of ebullience, who might turn up at the groundbreaking for a water park or promise that the war-torn region will get its own Disneyland.

Kadyrov also prepared for the election in his own unique style. He made an offer to functionaries of all the competing parties to "look after" their candidates -- mafia style. This is apparently how the ex-mayor of Grozny, an opponent of Kadyrov's named Beslan Gantemirov, disappeared from the candidate list of Rodina, a left-nationalistic party. The Republican Party -- run by liberal Duma member Vladimir Ryschkov, who didn't want to play along with such machinations -- was rejected by the election commission.

The Road to Kadyristan

Supporters of outright Chechen independence or even simply of the "broad autonomy" that Putin once promised are afraid to even submit candidate lists for elections. These days, "separatists" in Chechnya are not legal participants in a political struggle -- instead they face jail, the torture chamber or even a firing squad. The pleas of the handful of former separatist leaders who are now urging their countrymen on television to go to the polls and vote largely falls on deaf ears. And that both liberal opposition parties, the SPD and the Yabloko, are taking part in the Chechen election show says less about the openness of the contest than the condition of opposition.