I just posted a response to one of the Edward Lucas' blog entries on a very similar subject. I will have to borrow from myself replying to you, Sean.

Democracy is just a concept. A concept of popular governance and it varies greatly in implementation from a very limited Athenian aristocratic democracy to universal suffrage. Societies develop and their implementations of popular governance change. To my Marxist trained mind there is a clear trend that parallels (and in my opinion determines) current form of democracy in a given society - the ever expanding institute of private property of means of production. Private property is the foundation and guarantor of democracy.

Democracy and freedom are often used interchangeably but very often refer to political freedom only, although both freedom and democracy span beyond purely political speech and cover economic freedom just as much. In a monopolistic environment a consumer of (gas, telephone service, health care, jobs, workforce, food, water, anything tangible or intangible) has less choice then a free market would provide.

From this perspective current Putin's Russia is not very free, not very democratic and not very capitalist either. It is almost impossible to determine where state ends and private sector begins. Some areas have been privatized more then others and there is more freedom in these sectors. Governance has been re-nationalized to the point of democratic institutions becoming irrelevant. Is there any pretense at all regarding upcoming presidential elections having any value?

Sean is also making a convenient substitution between democracy and human rights and specifically a very marginal case of legal disagreement whether Geneva Convention applies to non-uniform saboteurs, extrapolating it on democracy in general. Using Jimmy Carter, arguably one of the worst Presidents the US ever had, and a person indirectly responsible for quite a share of current problems with Islamic militants does not fortify the case either.

Cyrill