Not everybody's crazy about Western-style democracy

Sunday's parliamentary election nearly brought the eradication of Russia's two Western-oriented democratic parties. Neither Gaidar's Union of Right Forces nor the Yabloko party run by another prominent economist-turned-politician, Grigory Yavlinsky, secured enough votes to pass the 5 percent threshold needed to secure party representation in parliament.

Not a single one of Russia's most prominent democratic leaders won a seat through voting for individual districts.

... The October arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky on fraud and tax evasion charges also worked against the parties. Russia's richest man and chief owner of the Yukos oil company, he gave millions of dollars to both groups. Yabloko was particularly dependent on his money. But his arrest proved popular with the public. Pro-Kremlin parties used it effectively to secure votes, and Khodorkovsky's funds stopped coming in just as the campaign was heating up.

... The rest of the public often blames the democrats for the tumultuous economic restructuring of the 1990s, which enriched a select few such as Khodorkovsky but left millions of others struggling without the social safety net the Soviet Union provided.

...In the end, said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a consultant for United Russia, Putin's party, the vote reflected the failure of the reformers to create a broad middle class and the isolation of the liberal intelligentsia.

The election, he added, was all about class -- and the upper class that voted for the Union of Right Forces was simply too small. Judging by the number of votes they received, "it looks like many of them left the country," he said. The Yabloko base of "liberal intelligentsia aren't in big supply here, either," he said dryly.  article

Hey, dude. They aren't in big supply here, either.