Barely a majority (56 percent) of Russians believe their country “needs democracy”, according to a new poll from the Levada Center. But that’s not the only grim statistic in the data. A full one-fourth said that democracy was not suitable for Russia, and virtually all respondents (95 percent!) agreed they “had little or no influence on what was happening in the country.”
Yikes.
Western observers have long been troubled by a simple fact: Even though Russia is growing increasingly autocratic, its government and leaders remain just as (if not evermore) popular. Elections in Russia are now little more than shams—Prime Minister Putin’s (or rather, United Russia, Putin’s party) picks indubitably win, and by rather hefty margins. There is no real opposition (United Russia controls 315 out of 450 seats in the Duma), and what little there is exists solely at the government’s will.
Russian politicians that the West likes are pretty much universally hated in the country. Partly this is a result of government propaganda dominating—more like running—the airwaves and controlling civil society. (And if you do step too far out of line, you end up with a bullet in the back of your head—just ask Anna Politkovskaya or Natalya Estemirova.) But this is also the case because the Russian politician that most Americans were most familiar with in the early post-Soviet years, former President Boris Yeltsin, was a blubbering, drunk buffoon. Yeltsin presided over a total economic collapse and a reversal in basically every quality-of-life indicator that exists. So while Yeltsin was paraded around by Bill Clinton (and attempted to hail DC taxis for late-night pizza completely blind), Russia fell apart.
Let’s be clear. Russia does not share Western political values, and it never has. Partly this is a result of the lack of a Russian middle-class. This is not to say that democracy, or liberal capitalism, can’t exist in the country. But it will take many, many years of slow, incrementalist reforms—and it will take a new generation of Russian politicians who are interested in reforms. For now, the West must approach Russia with realistic calculations of its capabilities, which is to say, not much.
