#23 - JRL 2006-130 - JRL Home
From: Sergey Vorobiev <sergvorob2000@rambler.ru>
Subject: Re McFaul-Markov Debate/JRL #126 [re: Democracy]
Date: Tue, 06 Jun 2006

I would like to briefly comment on the debate between Michael McFaul and Sergei Markov. Sergei based his arguments on two theses:

(1) There was anarchy, not a developing democracy, in Russia in the early 1990’s.

(2) Under Putin, Russia is under way to democracy through attainment of economic and political stability.

Theoretically speaking, both constructs can be defended. However, actual developments, of which many readers of JRL were eyewitnesses, give, to say the least, significantly more space for maneuver in a debate to the proponents of the idea that feeble roots of democracy were present in the 1990’s and almost eradicated now.

The McFaul-Markov polemics have vividly put on a display one sad feature of the current state of public debates in Russia. They have not become a sort of extinct specie, as some may think in the West. But they do lack a basic ethic and academic standard which, by default, excludes variations of Orwellian claims that War is Peace or Hate is Love from any, more or less, serious discussions. Even the best Russian polemicists, accustomed to ignore this fundamental constraint in a domestic environment, are at loss when they find themselves addressing an audience allergic to such barefaced breakdown in intellectual “table manners”.