Trying to translate one of my previous posts.

Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
I still don't see why democracy is so much worse in Russia than in Western countries.

Look at here in the UK.

We cannot start a demonstration if we want, need permission, and they will only grant it at bad times, in bad places.
1 May manifestations are banned, full stop.
Security services spy on people and can take anybody in for questioning for 2 weeks without even revealing what the charges are - for suspected terrorism.
Look how they are treating Assange.
The poor get poorer, rich get richer and immigrants are pouring in, while jobs are outsourced to cheaper countries. Nobody wants any of this. Yet it's happening.
UK participating in occupations and wars that nobody supports.
You are right, all European states encounter the same problems, more or less. And Russia encounters them too. But also here is something that goes far beyond the democracy, in any sense of this word. I'll try to explain it in details:

* Above 50% of the seats in the Parliament belongs to United Russia. That state of affairs is a result of massive fraud of the parliamentary elections. United Russia obeys all Putin wishes, so we can state the institutions of legislature are mostly nonexistent in nowadays Russia. Putin just can create any federal law he want.

* There are some "opposition" political parties, that has the other part of parliamentary seets. Although these parties are mostly controlled from the Kremlin too, and there is no real political struggles among them.

* There are a plenty of initiative groups that has the intention to be elected to Parliament, but the Department of Justice refuses to register them as political parties for ridiculous reasons. So when you are going to vote, you can see all the same faked parties in the list. Every time, every election.

* All the same happens for local parliaments and governments too. The most of the local parliaments are totally controlled by United Russia. And "proper" candidates always win any Major elections.

* Let's suppose you have passed all the idiotic restrictions and registered as a candidate for Major election. Now you have to face the following problems:

* Law enforcement authorities suddenly take an interest to your business and open some criminal cases against you. You'll be questioned many times, your home and headquarters will be searched and so on.

* If you are unlucky, you'll be convicted and imprisoned. If you are "lucky enough", they just ruin your business, but not your life.

* You have no chance to have access to the media. But "proper" candidates will be shown there all the time.

* When you contact some advertising agencies to place your promotional materials on street billboards, they tell you they've got a call from the city administration and strongly adviced do not mess with you "to avoid some problems".

* During voting procedure you have to have your volunteers (I'm not sure how they can be named in English; "person who watches for everything to go without violations") on every polling station to prevent cheating. Of course, there will be people trying to sabotage your volunteers from doing the job. So make sure your volunteers are persons of strong nature and they know their rights well, else they can get in trouble.

* There are mobile groups on each polling station, that enables ability to vote for disabled people etc. These groups are source of massive fraud, as it is very hard to keep watch over them.

* During counting of votes your volunteers also have to be on the alert. If they haven't, the officers just draw in the reports any numbers they'd like.

* And finally, if you've got through all these troubles, The Central Election Commission still can "correct a little bit" your results. 10% less or more... who cares?

We have EVERY elections going in that way.

As far as I know, Yekaterinburg is the only city for now, where the Major is not a Kremlin's person.

But that all is only a half of the problem. The other one is total corruption of any law enforcement authorities and courts. You just cannot file a lawsuit for election fraud and expect it to be processed in fair way. Judges always make their verdicts in favor of the state.

By the way, Article 305 of the Criminal Code states up to ten years in prison for unjust verdict and that is why corruptible judges will protect the government against people to the last. The goverment protects judges, judges protect the goverment — that's a criminal symbiosis.

All that system is a result of Soviet regime: several generations of people grown up without any idea of what democracy is. For now, there goes a struggle between new post-Soviet generation and the system. USSR is not eneded up at 1991, it is still here: it is in people minds.

During 90, democracy had some value for those Soviet people whom authorities and federal agencies consisted of. At least, they were pretending to "follow the rules of the game". I mean the rules of the democracy. Courts worked properly... well, almost properly. And so the goverment did. There was real freedom of speech too. Of course, there were alot of chaos, gangsterism and those "new Russians" in red suits. But there was some progress going too. But than KGB bandits took the power, and the society went back into USSR.

Quote Originally Posted by Hanna View Post
So based on this; I don't think I need to worry about democracy in Russia - we have our own problems with democracy. If the Russians aren't happy about the level of democracy, then they should do something about it.
It seems to me it's not really a priority for most Russians anyway.
I think you have no need to worry about democracy in Russia in any case. One has no moral obligations for worring about foreign countries.
But if you wonder what people do in Russia for democracy, I can tell you, they do a lot. There are definately a lot of people here who "doing something about it". But fighting against the system is not something that can be done in few moments. It is not like "we all go to the Kremlin, Putin run away frightened, and all people become happy". That job can take years.

Here is what Navalny said on that a few months ago, a day before he was unjustly judged: link (translated to English)