The quality of demoracy in these countries was determined by a composite of five scores: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties. From 0 to 10, with 10 being the most democratic, Russia received the following scores:

Electoral process and pluralism: 5.25
Functioning of government: 3.21
Political participation: 5.00
Political culture: 3.13
Civil liberties: 4.71
Overall score: 4.26

The report also noted that Russia was one of 36 countries in which scores for media freedom fell between 2008 and 2010. Its overall score fell slightly from 2008, when it was stood at 4.48 and ranked in 107th place.

Countries with an overall score of between 4 and 6 were classified as hybrid regimes, and a score of 4 or lower indicated an authoritarian regime. Other hybrid regimes with scores similar to Russia’s were Pakistan (4.55), Sierra Leone (4.51), Nepal (4.24), Armenia (4.09), and Iraq (4.00).

The Economist elaborated on its reasons for scoring Russia’s quality of democracy as it did:

In Russia, the one positive development (the fact that the constitution was respected and that Vladimir Putin stepped down from the presidency in 2008) was offset by a number of negative developments. Although the formal trappings of democracy remain in place, today’s Russia has been called a “managed” (or “stage managed”) democracy. All the main decisions are made by a small group of insiders. The Duma is now little more than a rubber-stamp parliament; regional governors are appointed directly; the main media are state-controlled; civil society organisations have come under pressure; and the state has increased its hold over the economy. Even though Dmitry Medvedev, Mr Putin’s successor, has adopted a softer style, and has instituted some liberalising changes around the edges of the system, there have been no fundamental reforms during his presidency so far.

Most Russians appear unperturbed by the trend towards authoritarianism. During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, many Russians came to associate the term democracy with chaos, and “capitalism” was synonymous with rigged privatisations, the rise of the oligarchs and widespread poverty. For now, however, the Russian middle class appears content with growing incomes and increased personal freedom, including opportunities to travel.

Read the full report by clicking here.

Speaking in an interview with CNN host Larry King, the prime minister effectively accused the United States of applying a double-standard to criticism of democracy. “When we talk with our American friends and tell them there are systemic problems in this regard, we hear from them: ‘Don’t interfere in our affairs. These are our traditions, and we don’t plan on changing them.’ And we don’t interfere,” Putin said. “But to our colleagues, I would also like to advise you: don’t interfere, either, [with] the sovereign choice of the Russian people.”

In response to a Wikileaks document where the United States compares Putin and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to Batman and Robin, Putin responded that such remarks “are made in order to compromise one of us.”

“The truth is that this was said regarding our [Putin and Medvedev’s – ed.] cooperation. And this is an important thing for the domestic politics of our country,” the prime minister said. “To be honest, we didn’t suspect that it was going to be done with such arrogance, with such rudeness, and so unethically.”

Overall, however, Putin said he did not think the Wikileaks scandal was a catastrophe. “Some experts believe that somebody is using Wikileaks for their own political goals,” he said in the interview. “That’s one of the versions. That’s the opinion of experts. If that’s not the case, then the diplomatic services need to be more attentive in providing confidentiality for their correspondence. Leaks like this, by the way, have happened before, so it’s not a catastrophe.”

The interview will be aired on CNN tonight at 9 pm EST. It comes ten years after Putin’s last interview with Larry King, memorable for the then-president’s response to King’s question about the Kursk nuclear submarine disaster. When asked “what happened with the submarine,” Putin paused and simply responded: “it sunk.”

For the past several months, United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov has been engulfed in a campaign to help his former chess rival, Anatoly Karpov, win the presidency of the World Chess Federation. The incumbent, multi-millionaire Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has been criticized for shady business dealings, alleged responsibility for the murder of a journalist, his admiration for Saddam Hussein, and a conviction that he has been visited by aliens, among other things.

On Wednesday, Ilyumzhinov won re-election in a vote of 95 to 55. “Considering the rampant abuses that took place there,” as the Karpov campaign web site puts it, “…it is difficult, if not impossible, to consider this a legitimate election.”

In an interview with the British magazine Standpoint shortly before the election, Kasparov discusses the importance of the Karpov campaign, his insights into Russia’s nefarious ruling elite, and the United Civil Front’s ongoing efforts to make the country truly democratic.

Can Kasparov Checkmate Putin?
By Anna Aslanyan
Standpoint Magazine
October 2010

Garry Kasparov grew up knowing that coming second was not good enough. This will to win was one of the crucial factors behind the 22-year-old Soviet chess player becoming the youngest-ever World Chess Champion in 1985. He retained his title for 15 years. The ambitious, outspoken youth was seen by the West as the new face of Russian chess — and, more importantly, of the country that was ready for the first time in 70 years to say good-bye to communism and start moving towards democracy. The Cold War, both on and off the chessboard, was over. Kasparov and his fellow players no longer had to be part of it and could concentrate on the game in which they excelled.

Or so it seemed in the heady days when Gorbachev’s reforms awoke a sense of elation in many. That was not to last long. Immediately after retiring from professional chess, Kasparov returned to action — this time on a political battleground. He formed the United Civil Front, a pro-democracy movement, and took an active part in creating The Other Russia, an anti-Putin coalition. After Kasparov’s plans to stand as a candidate for the 2008 Russian presidential race were disrupted — no one was willing to rent him a hall large enough to hold his supporters so he wasn’t allowed to be a candidate — he remained the leader of the UCF, organising an online “Putin must go” campaign.

However, it was not in his capacity as a political opposition leader that Kasparov visited Britain in September. He came to support his former rival, Anatoly Karpov, from whom he wrested the World Champion title a quarter of a century ago. It was the illegal arrest of Kasparov at a Moscow demonstration in 2007 that brought the two old foes back together: Karpov tried to visit his former rival in prison to lend Kasparov what support he could.

I meet Kasparov after the press conference held in London last month to promote Karpov’s campaign for the FIDE (World Chess Federation) presidency. The incumbent, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, has just lost his main political asset — the presidency of the southern Russian republic of Kalmykia. When one of the journalists talks about it as “resignation”, Kasparov is quick to correct him: “People don’t resign in Russia. He was kicked out.”

The eccentric Ilyumzhinov, who claims to have been abducted by aliens at one point, has led FIDE since 1993. During his reign, chess lost a lot of its glamour. Indeed, the championships are now held in places that, to quote Kasparov, “you need to be a very good student of geography to find on the map.” Desperate to be re-elected, Ilyumzhinov made exorbitant promises to national chess federations, of the type he would have to be “at least Russian president to fulfil”, as Karpov noted in his speech at the conference. There are, however, indications that Ilyumzhinov’s popularity is fading, both in Russia and worldwide.

When the event ends, Kasparov is torn between signing books, being photographed and giving advice to chess players. I start our conversation by apologising for returning to Russian politics now that his mind is busy with FIDE and related problems. “Not busy,” he interrupts, “I am absolutely immersed in this. We have to win.” However, he is soon talking about issues with which he has been out of touch for the last four months: his comrades-in-arms supported his decision to take a sabbatical. As for his enemies: “They are probably grateful to Karpov — he managed to take me out of the game for a while, after all.”

Vladimir Putin does not rule out the possibility of staying in power for another decade or longer. What does Kasparov think of Putin’s bravado? “Putin didn’t say anything new. It was probably the form his statement took that shocked, but the content was predictable all along. It became more or less clear, I think, in the middle of his second presidential term that he would never leave. You know the expression, ‘galley slave’ — I believe there is a certain Freudian subtext to it in Putin’s case. He is doomed to stay — he has nowhere else to go. He should have thought about this much earlier, but even if he ever was trying to solve this problem, to find an escape route, he failed.”

Parallels between the current regime in Russia and those of Stalin and Mao have been drawn frequently enough, but Kasparov is more subtle. “Putin has all the traits of a dictator, but he is different from that lot — he is, in essence, an oligarch. I’ve said before that what he really wants is to rule like Stalin while living like [Chelsea FC owner Roman] Abramovich. Power for him is the means, not the end.” It was the realisation that Putin, were he to become president for a third time in 2012, could potentially stay until 2024 that made people concerned. Kasparov would not ascribe too much significance to this date, insisting that the prime minister’s recent statement naturally follows from all he has said and done before. “That he was instrumental in making [the current President Dmitry] Medvedev his heir was quite logical, too — things like that have happened before. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a clever move. Sometimes a successor, instead of toeing the party line, becomes a hindrance. Medvedev has never created any problems for Putin, who in this instance showed himself a fine psychologist.”

Remembering why he failed to stand last time, Kasparov believes this to be another example of people being afraid of the authorities. He cannot see things changing dramatically in the near future. When asked if he is planning an attempt to participate in the next election, he replies: “What exactly do you call the next election? To me, it’s just a date, 2012 or some other, doesn’t matter, which is set by them and has nothing to do with our activity. It should be clear to everyone by now that there is no democracy in Russia. You don’t need to prove this point further by trying — and inevitably failing — to register as a candidate. Only those who are on the regime’s side — and I mean, totally, without a shadow of a doubt — will be allowed to do so. To take part in this farce would mean to accept their rules, to surrender, to lie down and think of Russia, so to speak — and we are not going to do that.” This must be hard for a natural-born winner to accept. However, Kasparov’s mood is defiant, not defeatist.

He stresses that his politics have nothing to do with his personal ambitions, and that he got involved in a business where you cannot win driven solely by the motto: “Do what you must, come what may.” Yet it takes a lot of courage to embark on something as uncertain and unpromising. “Yes, I was prepared for uncertainty. Then again, how do you define a victory here? A defeat? This is a different game played by very different rules and you have to take it as it is. I’ve always said to my colleagues: ‘We are in for a marathon race, which can become a 100-metres sprint at any moment. The starting signal will be given by someone else and we should be ready for it.’ So it’s difficult to talk about winning and losing given the nature of the game. However, I don’t consider our efforts to be a failure. The fact is that most of the ideas I came up with back in 2005 are still relevant, perhaps more than ever, in Russian politics. If you look at our programme published in 2006, it’s all in there. We used to be criticised by other opposition forces for being too unrealistic, but now those concepts have become part of the mainstream.”

Characteristically, Kasparov is reluctant to call his activity straightforward politics. The UCF is part political party, part human rights organisation and part social movement. “We try to use the existing social landscape in order to promote democracy as the only way forward. Our approach is to take a particular problem — for instance, that of the Khimki Forest — and work with it.” He is referring to the ongoing battle to save a park in a Moscow suburb, a legally protected eco-system that will be wiped out by the construction of the new Moscow-St Petersburg motorway.

“Our main and, for now, only activity should be propaganda. We need to demonstrate to the people of Russia that changes are needed. A moment must come — it would probably require a backlash of some kind — when the country is ready to embrace democratic ways.” Kasparov goes back to the question of settling for a successful career as a trainer and an entrepreneur, one of his interests being chess computer programs, and adds: “We all had high hopes in the early 1990s. Then it became obvious pretty soon that you couldn’t just step aside. You had to fight or leave the country. I chose to fight — and have been doing what I can ever since.”

Leaving the country would have been easy for someone like Kasparov. He has been repeatedly criticised by Russian nationalists for acquiring American citizenship — rumours he dismisses as disinformation propagated by Nashi, the pro-Kremlin youth organisation that is often compared to the Soviet-era Konsomol or even the Hitler Youth. “Neither I nor my wife has an American passport. My daughter, the youngest, does — she was born in the States. But I never applied for one. Those thugs thought they could say anything about me, but when the case came to court their only excuse was that they meant another person, an American citizen whose name also happens to be Kasparov.”

Returning to the forthcoming FIDE elections, we talk about Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who has repeatedly been accused of accumulating an enormous fortune by unscrupulous means, and his statement that “a wealthy president is the best safeguard against corruption in the country”. Kasparov points out that the oligarchs who are running Russia these days made their money after they came to power: “This is what makes the whole difference. Russia can only serve as a counter-example in these speculations since it has no history of wealth going back a couple of centuries. On the other hand, I would have nothing against a leader who was well-off before, and not as a result of, starting a political career. Such wealthy people might be immune to corruption — at least, I’d like to hope so. At the same time, the temptation may be too strong even for them. The way I see it, corruption is about your personal attitude. For me, it’s simply unspeakable to steal, to bribe or take bribes — but then again, I am relatively poor compared to the ruling classes.”

In a country where at least 15 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line, corruption is a serious problem. Although not suggesting it can be resolved immediately, Kasparov has a vision of future changes. “You have to explain to people that their financial troubles result from the lack of basic freedoms. Until this is understood, democracy will remain impossible. Sure, TV is a powerful weapon,” he continues, then quips with a smile, “of mass destruction. But at the end of the day, as domestic appliances go, a fridge is more vital.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged what she calls a global crackdown on human rights during a trip through former Soviet republics over the weekend, lamenting a “steel vise” squeezing the life out of social activism.

Clinton arrived in Azerbaijan on Sunday after declaring in Poland that intolerant governments, including Russia’s, are undercutting rights groups whose work is vital to the development of democracy. She said the trend is apparent and growing worse, even in countries that call themselves democracies.

At the palatial residence of President Ilham Aliyev, overlooking the vast, glimmering Caspian Sea, Aliyev and Clinton spoke briefly before reporters and television cameras.

Aliyev stressed the urgency of his country’s territorial dispute with neighboring Armenia. The two nations are in conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan that has been under control of Armenian troops and ethnic Armenian forces since a 1994 cease-fire.

“This is the major problem for us and the major threat to regional security,” he said.

At an airport news conference later with her Azeri counterpart, Elmar Mammadyarov, Clinton said they had discussed at length the territorial dispute.

“The final steps toward peace are often the most difficult, but we believe peace is possible,” Clinton told reporters.

“This is a high priority for the United States,” she added. She said the 1994 cease-fire agreement “must be enforced.”

Following her meeting with Aliyev, Clinton gathered with about a dozen Azeri youth activists, including bloggers, to encourage them to speak out in favor of social change.

She said she raised the issue of freedom of expression in her talks with Aliyev.

On Saturday, addressing an international conference in Poland on democracy and human rights, Clinton recalled Winston Churchill’s warning 60 years ago that an iron curtain was descending across Europe. She noted that with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that curtain no longer remains.

“But we must be wary of the steel vise in which governments around the world are slowly crushing civil society and the human spirit,” she said.

Among the offenders she cited: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Cuba, Belarus, Egypt, Iran, Venezuela, China and Russia.

Clinton said her current trip, which began in Ukraine on Thursday and was to include stops in Armenia and Georgia, is intended to demonstrate the Obama administration’s commitment to democracy and human rights.

In Ukraine, Clinton praised the new Moscow-friendly leadership for its pursuit of democracy, skimming over concerns about a rollback of liberties.

At a joint news conference with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Clinton said the Obama administration supports efforts by Ukraine to deepen its relationship with Russia, so long as it also remains open to closer ties to the United States and Europe.

Yanukovych said he views the United States as a reliable strategic partner and is prepared to take new steps to build a stronger partnership.

Clinton also met privately at her Kiev hotel with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who lost the February presidential election to Yanukovych and remains his political enemy.

“What’s more important – democracy or order?” Moreover, how do Russians understand both of these concepts? These were the questions posed to 1600 Russian citizens in January by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM), and published on April 12. The most eye-catching statistic is the overwhelming majority of respondents who say that order is more important for Russia than democracy – 72 percent, with 16 percent responding conversely. But that number is actually down from the last time VTsIOM conducted a similar survey in 2000, when 75 percent of Russians said they favored order, and 13 percent – democracy.

But the Russian perception of what “democracy” actually means has changed significantly in the past few years. Given a list of attributes to pick from to define it, significantly fewer respondents chose “freedom of speech/press/religion” as emblematic of democracy (down to 44 percent in 2010 from 55 percent in 2007). While 44 percent picked “economic prosperity” three years ago, only 28 percent picked it in 2010. Figures were also down for “strict lawfulness” (23 to 21 percent) and “order and stability” (25 to 19 percent). On the other hand, more people defined democracy as “the opportunity for everyone to do whatever they want” (10 percent in 2010 compared to 7 percent in 2007), “anarchy” (up to 6 percent from 3 percent), and, most notably, “empty chatter” (up to 11 percent from 5 percent).

Russian perceptions of “order” have changed significantly as well, but VTsIOM’s most recent data prior to this year is from 2000, making the comparisons less meaningful. In any case, compared to opinions in the year 2000, fewer Russians today define “order” as “political and economic stability of a country” (down to 41 from 46 percent), “a stop in the plundering and stripping of a country” (25 from 34 percent) or “the strict observation of laws” (24 from 35 percent). They do define it more often as “social defense of underprivileged segments of the population” (up to 29 from 25 percent) and “the opportunity for people to see their rights fulfilled” (25 from 16 percent).

For both definitions, more Russians were unsure of how to answer this year than in previous ones: 8 percent were unsure about “democracy” in 2010 compared to 5 percent in 2007, and 4 percent were unsure about “order” in 2010 compared to 2 percent in 2000.

As for demographics, those who favored order over democracy consisted primarily of the elderly, the uneducated, and low-income individuals. The majority of them are members of the Communist Party or the Kremlin-loyal opposition party A Just Russia. Democracy was valued more by 18-24 year olds, the highly educated, and wealthier individuals.

Overall, it appears that even if preferences for democracy are on the rise, positive views of what that word means are dwindling. But as the third of the population that still favors a Stalin-like leader (and, consequently, order) continues to age, it doesn’t look like their grandkids plan to follow in their ideological footsteps.

The second poll, conducted by the Levada Center and also consisting of 1600 surveyees from all over Russia, focused on perceptions of the president’s political independence. Caricatures of President Dmitri Medvedev as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s puppet became ubiquitous in the West after Russia’s 2008 presidential election, but have fallen out of style as the press finds itself faced with more and more conflicting statements from the two prominent leaders. And while experts continue to debate whether these conflicts represent real differences of opinion or just attempts to feign legitimacy, most Russians have apparently taken the puppet metaphor to heart. The Levada Center survey published today estimates that 66 percent of Russians believe that President Medvedev “operates under the control of Putin and his adherents” in the Kremlin. At the same time, a sizeable minority of 22 percent reject this notion, maintaining that Medvedev works to further his own policies. Both of these figures are more or less consistent with two other studies conducted in the past year.

Similarly, the majority of Russians (51 percent) feel that power is shared equally by both of these leaders. Indeed, Putin and Medvedev have often remarked about how they work “as a tandem.” But the Russians who do feel that there is an imbalance of power in country are more likely to believe that the majority of it rests with Putin (28 percent) as opposed to Medvedev (13 percent).

Regardless of who’s pulling the strings, Russians are overwhelmingly united in their belief that Medvedev’s is following the same political course as his predecessor: 55 percent say he’s continuing it generally, and 24 percent – exactly. Only 3 percent of Russians believe that Medvedev’s policies are “entirely new.”

The VTsIOM poll can be read in Russian by clicking here.
The Levada Center poll can be read in Russian by clicking here.

“A modern transport infrastructure is the real road to Russia’s future,” said then-President Putin to a gathering of highway construction workers in the city of Krasnoyarsk in late 2007. And yet, not a single highway or expressway and only a smattering of smaller roads have been built in Russia over the past two decades. By comparison, China has laid more than 40,000 thousand miles of high-volume roadways over the same amount of time. “Naturally,” said Latynina, “this raises the question: Has anything been built in Russia with this money? And if yes, then what?”

It turns out that something was.

“For example, the presidential residence in the city of Yekaterinburg, which cost 1.2 billion rubles [about $40 million] to construct, and which President Medvedev has stayed in once,” said the journalist. A similar example was Konstantinovsky Palace in St. Petersburg, a crumbling historic landmark that Putin ordered be renovated in 2001 for use as a presidential residence. The official cost of renovation: $250 million.

There were more. One new presidential residence was constructed just two years ago. Another called Lunnaya Polyana is now in the works, blocked off from public view. An Olympic residence in Sochi is also planned for construction. All in all, said Latynina, Russia has built thirteen official residences for its president. Compare this, she proposed, to the number of official presidential residences in America: there are but two. And neither the White House nor Camp David is anything to rival the grandeur of Konstantinovsky Palace. “My point is that if you consider the number of residences, then Russia is a superpower and the United States just gets these two little things,” the journalist said.

On the topic of superpowers, Latynina questioned Putin’s declaration that Russia is a superpower in the raw materials market. “It’s very interesting to compare Russia with the production of natural gas in the United States,” she said, and followed to rattle off a list of figures: In 2008, Russia extracted 640 billion cubic meters of gas, 550 billion of which were from the state-owned company Gazprom – the latter figure being the more telling, as that’s what gets sold abroad. American production of gas totaled 582 billion cubic meters during the same year – less than Russia, but more than Gazprom. Then there’s the revenue: American gas sales totaled $185 billion in 2008, while Russian sales to Europe, its primary source of export, totaled only $47 billion. In addition, Russian production fell in 2009 to 575 billion cubic meters of gas, with 460 from Gazprom. America’s grew to 620 billion. “So why is Russia called a raw materials superpower?”

Russia, Latynina explained, has virtually no chemical industry. The United States, on the other hand, has the world’s most highly developed chemical industry. Thanks to its more energy-efficient facilities, she explained, the States are able to sell gas at a much higher price than Russia with its long, cold, ineffective pipelines. Meanwhile, instead of building more effective facilities, Gazprom built an exact replica of Konstantinovsky Palace for its CEO, Aleksei Miller. “I invite you to think about the philosophy of the matter,” said Latynina. “Bill Gates could not allow himself to build a Konstantinovsky Palace, because it’s a different philosophy of life… But Aleksei Miller could.”

Frivolous spending on the part of the Russian elite brought about the question of why the Russian government tells its citizens that “the West doesn’t love us.” If that were true, asks Latynina, then why would Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, Putin’s right-hand man, keep his plane in Helsinki and buy three different villas in Sardinia? Why are oligarch Roman Abromovich’s yachts registered in the West, including the $50 million one he gifted to Vladimir Putin? Why do all of the people who tell Russia’s citizens that the West doesn’t love them send their children to study in England? “Why don’t they keep their money in the banks of Iraq, North Korea, Venezuela, or the other wonderful countries that are friendly to Russia and love us a great deal?” asked Latynina.

In some cases, they do. On October 17, 2009, Prime Minister Putin announced the government’s decision to make a $500 million purchase of microprocessors with 90 nanometer process technology from the primarily government-supported French-Italian firm STMicroelectronics. Two weeks before this happened, Intel had announced that they were going to begin producing microprocessors with 32 nanometer technology. What was the point of buying something so expensive that was already out of date? According to Latynina, it was simply a way of transferring money abroad.

“In fact, for me it turns out to be a very sad story,” she went on. “It’s the story of the technical degradation of the foundation that we had from the Soviet Union.” While the STMicroelectronics purchase was sure to hinder the pace and efficiency of Russian industry and development, other instances of such degradation represented more direct threats to the safety of ordinary Russians. Poor construction and shoddy upkeep lead to the deaths of 75 people on August 17, 2009, when an old turbine in the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric dam spun out of control, breaking open the ceiling and flooding the facility. On the night of December 4, 2009, more than 150 people died in the Lame Horse club in the city of Perm when, having violated “every single possible fire safety regulation,” it shot up in flames. But most of the dead bodies dragged out of the club, Latynina pointed out, had no burn marks: the victims died almost instantly from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning that resulted from burning foam polystyrene insulation. A commission set up to investigate the fire released its findings on March 9, concluding that the club’s own management was to blame. “But the scariest part is that it said in this report, verbatim, that ‘we cannot establish how harmful the foam polystyrene insulation was, how chemically harmful it was for people, for the reason that there was a lack of men on whom we would have liked to conduct experiments.'”

Really? “After the fire in the Lame Horse,” Latynina went on, “the government made quite a big fuss, especially President Medvedev. He loves to stomp his feet, crying ‘I’m going to deal with it,’ he always yells in future tense. ‘We must put an end to terrorism; we must put an end to corruption.’ I still haven’t heard that we’ve put an end to it, so it’s always in future tense.” It was clear, Latynina said, that the government wanted the situation to go away, and suppliers of construction materials had paid off the commission to keep silent about the foam. “So it turns out that they don’t have any men,” she said. “The president stomps his feet.”

Thus, in a nutshell, was Latynina’s dour prognosis of Russia’s current state of affairs.

During the questions that followed, Latynina was asked who would make a worthy Russian president. Her response: “Khodorkovsky,” the former oil tycoon currently sitting in prison. And what is to become of him? “He’ll sit in prison as long as Putin is in power.”

Latynina played down the audience’s fears that her safety was at stake for criticizing the Russian government. Arguing that Russia lacks internet censorship (as opposed to China) and allows Ekho Moskvy radio to broadcast whatever it wants, Latynina linked fears that free speech was being suppressed to the legacy left over from Soviet times. Back then, she said, people were arrested or murdered for speaking out against the government. “The maximum now is that they turn off the broadcast.” When numerous members of the audience objected that Russia figures as the third most lethal country in the world for journalists, Latynina countered that Russia was a lethal country for everyone. “It’s more dangerous to be a citizen of Russia than to be a journalist,” she said. “If you drive down Leninsky Prospekt and meet Lukoil Vice President Barkov, he’s not going to ask if you’re a journalist or not.”

That said, Latynina was skeptical of the effectiveness of initiatives by the Russian opposition, including a petition calling for Putin to resign that has so far gathered more than 18,000 signatures.

Asked for her opinion on Moscow’s plan to put up posters of Josef Stalin for Victory Day celebrations in May, Latynina replied: “Every person who wants to has a right to march for Stalin, because unlike Hitler, Stalin was never sentenced for having committed any crime – there are no laws saying that he was a criminal. But when it’s state-sponsored… You know, when dealing with these situations, I always think: What would Stalin do with Putin? He would put him up against the wall!”

It became apparent during the question and answer session that Latynina’s cynicism had frightened at least some members of her audience into considering the prospect that democracy in Russia was simply not possible, leaving Putin’s regime as the only viable choice. She was quick to dispel this notion, and delivered a more hopeful version of events then one might otherwise have come to expect. “First of all, I maintain that democracy in Russia is of course possible,” the journalist said in response. “But, you know, democracy is like a refrigerator. You can’t say that a certain refrigerator doesn’t work in Russia; it’s just that in Russia the electricity flows different. No – the refrigerator works in Russia if it has the particular electrical wiring for the place where you want it to work. If it doesn’t have the wiring, then it isn’t going to work.”