http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/opinion/what-the-west-gets-wrong-about-russia.html
According to Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin is "still enigmatic, but no longer strategic." Kremlin policy is now "fashioned rather like the music of a jazz group; its continuing improvisation is an attempt to survive the latest crisis." Pavlovsky thinks Putin "lost interest in day-to-day decision making" after the accession of Crimea to Russia when he won the support of more than 80 percent...
... righting present wrongs, it was better to imagine a virtuous past even where none truly existed (Smith, 2008: 81).
European elites, derived from both the Feudal aristocracy and from the rising elites of trade and commerce started out adamantly opposed to democracy. They feared and resisted extension of the franchise, and democratization more generally. Most of the Framers of the American Constitution were suspicious of democracy. The word "democracy" does not appear at all in either the Declaration ...
... competitive politics. They smugly assumed that all talk of competitive politics was shear hypocrisy. “If Putin really wanted competitive politics,” they would say, “why does he persecute the Opposition?” Quite apart from the issue of ... ... participating in round tables like those in which the leaderships of several East European Communist regimes negotiated transition to democracy with their oppositions. In a recent interview, the leader of the Solidarity movement in Poland, Lech Walensa said "They ...
