Is Democracy Possible in Russia?

Abstract

This article discusses the question of why a Western-style democracy has not been formed in Russia. The prerequisite for the formation of a democracy as a political regime is the domination of small and medium-sized private property and a middle class. Since the middle class has been small in Russia throughout most of its history for a number of objective reasons, the country has hardly known full-fledged democracy, and the current political system only imitates it. Russia’s attempts to enter the trajectory of democratic development—both in the early twentieth century, and since the early 1990s–have failed, and the trend of abandoning the basic principles of democracy has prevailed over the past two decades. The blame for this lies not only on the current Russian leadership but to no lesser extent on the political leadership of the West, which for the sake of short-term self-serving interests or political ambitions has contributed much to the formation of the current Russian regime.