[Goose]

Has there ever been a real Russian Democracy?  We have gotten pretty good at proving that you can't create a viable democracy in a society who simply isn't ready for it and doesn't really want it.  
An interesting discussion of this concept can be found here:  https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/artic...autocracy/

The discussion is interesting but IMHO it omits the serious role that economics played in the end of Russian democracy. Short summary: The Russian economy functioned at all only because of "state credits", which were financial instruments created out of thin air that the various large economic entities in Russia used to finance their operations. An example was the coal mines in the Donbas paid for the shoring timber they got from Russia with a state credit which was then used by the timber suppliers to ... None of this was "on the books" and NOBODY knew the total extent of it. It was over 50% of economic activity.

You can't "restructure" what you don't know about. This is a very large subject that I obviously can't cover in a post but it basically doomed what both Gorbachev and Yeltsin tried to do. It is also arguable that both Belarus and Ukraine would have remained in the Russian Federation if they had not expected massive subsidies from Germany and the US (which the Baltic Republics and Poland did get). This aid was never promised. The US danced around the requests and tried to lower expectations but it didn't work. In point of fact the required aid would have far exceeded what the US and Germany could provide. The result was three states whose economies were in shambles and nobody really understood why. That fact discredited democracy in the eyes of many Russians. It obviously wasn't working and they needed "something else". Exactly what was unknown, so we have three states that evolved significantly differently.

Obviously, there are many sociological and historical factors that also help explain why a non-democratic solution was acceptable in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Ukraine rose above them, Belarus is still sorting it out, and Russia has Putin. However, "It's the economy, stupid" is a very major factor in how Russia got Putin and not somebody else. That isn't going to change quickly. Russia isn't going to peacefully "revert" to democracy unless and until it is rich enough to believe it can afford to try again. Putin will be replaced by an equally powerful leader unless Russia totally implodes. In that case, anything is possible and I don't think we want to do that experiment. Tracking down all those nuclear weapons sold to the highest bidder would be a real pain.

[Goose]

Has there ever been a real Russian Democracy?  We have gotten pretty good at proving that you can't create a viable democracy in a society who simply isn't ready for it and doesn't really want it.  
An interesting discussion of this concept can be found here:  https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/artic...autocracy/

The discussion is interesting but IMHO it omits the serious role that economics played in the end of Russian democracy. Short summary: The Russian economy functioned at all only because of "state credits", which were financial instruments created out of thin air that the various large economic entities in Russia used to finance their operations. An example was the coal mines in the Donbas paid for the shoring timber they got from Russia with a state credit which was then used by the timber suppliers to ... None of this was "on the books" and NOBODY knew the total extent of it. It was over 50% of economic activity.

You can't "restructure" what you don't know about. This is a very large subject that I obviously can't cover in a post but it basically doomed what both Gorbachev and Yeltsin tried to do. It is also arguable that both Belarus and Ukraine would have remained in the Russian Federation if they had not expected massive subsidies from Germany and the US (which the Baltic Republics and Poland did get). This aid was never promised. The US danced around the requests and tried to lower expectations but it didn't work. In point of fact the required aid would have far exceeded what the US and Germany could provide. The result was three states whose economies were in shambles and nobody really understood why. That fact discredited democracy in the eyes of many Russians. It obviously wasn't working and they needed "something else". Exactly what was unknown, so we have three states that evolved significantly differently.

Obviously, there are many sociological and historical factors that also help explain why a non-democratic solution was acceptable in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Ukraine rose above them, Belarus is still sorting it out, and Russia has Putin. However, "It's the economy, stupid" is a very major factor in how Russia got Putin and not somebody else. That isn't going to change quickly. Russia isn't going to peacefully "revert" to democracy unless and until it is rich enough to believe it can afford to try again. Putin will be replaced by an equally powerful leader unless Russia totally implodes. In that case, anything is possible and I don't think we want to do that experiment. Tracking down all those nuclear weapons sold to the highest bidder would be a real pain.