According to Gorbachev, “I, for example, feel that after Putin went through two terms as president and now another term as prime minister that, I think, this story of a duumvirate, while it meets constitutional requirements, nevertheless essentially discredits democratic principles.”

In the former president’s opinion, the development of democracy in Russia is impossible while the people in charge of the country are not its actual leaders and do not defend the people’s interests.

Gorbachev believes that Russia’s leader should respect the rights of the people instead of the rights of “corporations.”

He also expressed doubt that upcoming parliamentary elections would be free and fair. Gorbachev labeled the ruling regime as “authoritarian” and said that the country can expect to have “to seriously fight for the rehabilitation of democratic principles, fair elections, and independent courts.”

He also said that voters should use the forthcoming elections as an opportunity to speak out against the current regime by voting against United Russia.

As the BBC also pointed out, other world leaders are less than thrilled at the idea of Putin taking up a third term as Russian president. Former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Putin’s decision “makes a bit of a mockery of the electoral process” and was “unfortunate.”

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, called Rice’s remarks “disrespectful.”

On Thursday, the institute released its Freedom in the World 2011 survey, which reports a serious decline in democracy worldwide.

“The world’s most powerful authoritarian regimes acted with increased brazenness in 2010,” says the survey. Among the most damaging acts of the year, Freedom House cited the trial and conviction of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky and China’s open disdain for the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony.

As the report notes, the Russian government’s charges against Khodorkovsky were widely dismissed as fraudulent. However, this did not prevent Prime Minister Vladimir Putin from publicly declaring “that Khodorkovsky belonged in jail even as the court was nearing a verdict.”

The report lambasts the Russian president for failing his entire pro-democracy agenda: “President Dmitry Medvedev’s highly publicized pledges to combat corruption, arrest those responsible for a series of high-profile murders of journalists and activists, and strengthen the rule of law have not been fulfilled. Instead, bribery and embezzlement remain the norm, politically motivated violence goes unpunished, and the law is enforced at the caprice of the leadership.”

Analysts said it was refreshing to learn that, behind closed doors, US diplomats in Russia and other authoritarian countries were “realistic, astute, concerned about growing repression, and often sympathetic toward the political opposition,” despite more positive statements that US officials make in public.

At the same time, they warned that strong, outspoken resistance on a global level was necessary to prevent authoritarian regimes from silencing their domestic critics. “Indeed,” says the report, “if the world’s democracies fail to unite and speak out in defense of their own values, despots will continue to gain from divide-and-conquer strategies, as Russia’s leaders are now doing in their approach to Europe and the United States.”

Freedom House ranks the level of each country’s political rights and civil liberties on a scale from 1 to 7, with 7 being the least free. For a self-proclaimed democracy, Russia’s scores are abysmal: 6 for political rights and 5 for civil liberties, putting it on the same level as the occupied West Bank, Rwanda and Yemen.

Read the full report here.

Authors of the report say that while Russia is making progress towards fulfilling the 1985 European Charter on Local Self-Government, which calls for the political, administrative, and financial independence of local government authorities, it must reintroduce direct elections for regional leaders, defend citizens’ current ability to elect mayors,  and begin seriously fighting against corruption.

Particularly problematic, notes the report, is Russia’s federal law regulating local self-government, especially a recent amendment that allows mayors and regional leaders to be fired by the Kremlin.

If Russia brought back direct elections for regional leaders, it could “bring back the former level of regional democracy that Russia enjoyed until 2004,” the authors say.

There was also a recommendation that Russia ease the process of creating and registering political parties – a major complaint of opposition groups. Moreover, conditions should be created so that independent candidates have the ability to participate at all levels of local elections.

The Kremlin was not pleased with the report.

Federation Council member Svetlana Orlova said that “it doesn’t follow to impose [the report’s] point of view onto Russia,” because “there are different procedures in the countries of the Council of Europe, like, for example, there are no direct elections for the heads of regions in Sweden.”

“Nobody can reproach Russia for a lack of democracy on the local level,” Orlova went on. “The system that has developed in Russia is absolutely normal, and it corresponds with all democratic norms.”

Russia has been a member of the Council of Europe since 1996.

Various structures of the council have repeatedly criticized the Russian authorities for many of its policies. In June, the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly issued a resolution condemning human rights violations in the North Caucasus. Moreover, it said that the situation with violations of human rights and of the supremacy of law in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and Dagestan is the worst in the entire geographic territory covered by member-countries of the Council of Europe.

The organization describes the annual report, entitled “Nations in Transit 2010,” as a study of democratic governance throughout Central Europe and Eurasia. It covers the events of 2009 and assigns countries individual ratings based on the state of democracy in each.

In a press release issued on Tuesday, Freedom House noted that ratings in 14 of the 29 countries had worsened since the year before. It goes on to single out Russia as having “experienced the single largest overall deterioration” of democracy over the period of the past ten years.

The authors of the report cite a marked rise in corruption, pressure on the opposition, and a shrinking space for dissent as reasons for the decline.

“The Nations in Transit findings suggest that there is a deep and ongoing governance crisis in the former Soviet Union,” said Freedom House Executive Director Jennifer Windsor. “The intimidation and violence used against lawyers, reporters, and civic activists in Russia and other countries in the region cast a pall over these societies and their ability to build rules-based systems,” Windsor added.

In addition to democratic decline in Russia, authors of the study noted similar trends in Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Uzbekistan and several other countries.

Russia has regularly received low marks on the state of its democratic governance from Freedom House. A report issued earlier this year gave the country a score of 6 out of 7 for political rights and 5 out of 7 for civil rights, with a higher score indicating a greater lack of freedom. The organization argues that Russia’s current regime is authoritarian in nature and has become more and more oppressive over time.

According to their website, Freedom House is “an independent watchdog organization that supports democratic change, monitors the status of freedom around the world, and advocates for democracy and human rights.”

The report in full can be read by clicking here.