[VulcanRider]

Originally posted by johnny: So Russia is a democracy for 14 years now ? Does the common Russian in the street know this ?

I'm not sure the Russian leadership knows about it...

George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush's four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin's crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. "Putin thought we'd fired Dan Rather," says a senior Administration official. "It was like something out of 1984."

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...032354,00.html