Authoritarian Russia: the flight of freedom, or why democracy does not take root. Gelman V.

Democracy does not guarantee citizens that they will live better. But it allows you to reduce the risks of the fact that in conditions of autocracy they will suffer from the arbitrariness of corrupt rulers who violate their rights, while not having opportunities for a peaceful change in power. Why and how exactly over the past three decades has passed from the communist regime not to democracy, but to new personalist authoritarianism? The post -communist Russia has not coped with the “dilemma of simultaneousness” - the need to solve the problems of democratization, carry out market reforms and change the national -state structure of the country. The low involvement of citizens in politics helped Russian political actors build an authoritarian regime and concentrate power in their hands. Will our country be able to overcome these trends and reach the path of development of political and civil freedoms, or is this path closed to it for many decades?