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It is difficult to be optimistic about Russia’s eventual move to democracy. The parliament has become a rubber stamp—the media controlled, opposition journalists and political figures murdered, and independent businessmen jailed. The limitations on democracy come amid signs in Russia of a continuing demographic decline and severe economic stresses.
Has democracy in Russia been completely derailed? Or is the current regression a pendulum swing as Putin reshapes it into a more centralized and less liberal form?
David Satter, a former Moscow correspondent, is a long time observer of Russia and the Soviet Union. He was a special correspondent on Soviet affairs for the Wall Street Journal, and is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, the Hudson Institute, and a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
He is the author of Age of Delirium: the Decline and Fall of the Soviet Union and Darkness at Dawn: the Rise of the Russian Criminal State, describing two consecutive periods of modern Russian history. His articles and essays have been published in the Los Angeles Times, National Review, New Republic, and the Wall Street Journal. |
