Russian "elections"

Excellent op-ed from Anne Appelbaum in today's Washington Post. She confirms my long-held view that the Russian government is reflexively anti-Western, and, since time immemorial, has been mounting a concerted effort to make the public feel the same way. I'm not trying to gloat -- she offer far more insight in the limited amount of space that a newspaper column allows than I ever could.

As we all know, Russia held "elections" last weekend. The basic question Appelbaum tries to answer is, "why bother?" The answer, she thinks, is the fundamental insecurity of the Kremlin regime. They know, deep inside, that their system is worse than a Western democracy both on a moral and philosophical level as well as a pragmatic one, but they have no effective way of dealing with the fallout should the public realize this. Therefore, an appearance of democracy is maintained, accompanied by doing everything possible to convince the populace that not only is there democracy in Russia, but that it is actually of higher quality than in the West.

Appelbaum's only point that made me raise my eyebrows a bit is her claim that this approach at least gives the Kremlin a fighting chance to stave off the massive civic unrest that would be almost guaranteed to happen once the oil runs out and the economy plummets again. Once that happens, the Russians will see that the emperor has no clothes (or too much expensive clothes as the case may be, and, more to the point, that it is an emperor in the first place), and would demand genuine, Western-style accountability. Oh how I wish she were right. But I have grave doubts. With no history of democracy and accountability in the entire society ever, what are the chances? Ukraine is small, and, as an identifiable geopolitical entity, relatively young, and therefore capable, socially, of an attempt at a Western-style system. Russia, of which neither is true -- I am not so sure.

Anyway, I heartily recommend her entire article.