Russian Governors: All the President's Men; Vladimir Putin says he can do a better job than the voters in picking regional leaders. But his talent pool is far too limited.

Byline: Frank Brown

Earlier this month the people of the southern Russian republic of Karachayevo-Cherkessia rebelled against their locally elected governor, Mustafa Batdyev. More than 3,000 of them ransacked Batdyev's offices, refusing to leave until he stepped down. The problem? Batdyev's son-in-law, allegedly aided by local police, murdered seven local businessmen at his home one October night, according to investigators. (Neither the son-in-law nor his lawyer have responded to the charges.) The core of the mob, led by the dead men's female relatives, held on for three days before an emissary from President Vladimir Putin got them to end the siege with promises of a fair inquiry. "Our only hope for justice is in Putin," says Rima Bagatyreva, 67, whose son died in the killing spree. "Let Moscow send us a new governor."

That's exactly what the Kremlin is aiming to do, everywhere: cancel elections in Russia's 89 regions and appoint provincial leaders directly from Moscow. Parliament is expected to approve the measure by the year's end. The problem is that several of Russia's least competent regional governors are already Putin's men--if not appointed by him, then at least handpicked by the president and pushed into office with substantial Kremlin backing. While it's sometimes difficult to fathom the choices of Russian voters--Batdyev was elected despite his son-in-law's earlier business shenanigans--there's little reason to think that reducing the electorate to one will result in any better choices. "It'll only get worse," says Gleb Kuznetsov, a political consultant who works on regional elections. "The local governors will be even less responsible to the people."

The problem is twofold. For one thing, the Kremlin-backed governors often have little rapport with their constituents and no long-term commitment to their regions. Murat Zyazikov, the governor of Ingushetia, so distrusts residents of the restive region abutting Chechnya that he sleeps at a ...