Russian Voting: International observers declare the Russian parliamentary election "free . . . but not fair." Hardly surprising, but while the results show a solid win for Putin's party, he hardly won a Saddam majority (the 99% neighborhood). There will be mewling on the left, among those who tend to whine about unfair elections but consistently refer to Yasser Arafat as the freely elected leader of the PA. As Robert Lane Greene said in TNR last week, in his pre-election roundup:

While he's no committed democrat, Putin does seem genuinely committed to cautious but steady economic reform, including privatization and trade liberalization. He has also been pragmatic in foreign affairs. Though he made clear his displeasure with the enlargement of NATO, America's exit from the ABM treaty, and the war in Iraq, Putin accepted these developments as faits accomplis rather than risk a confrontation with America that would have been popular but probably fruitless.

The second thing to keep in mind about Putin is that he isn't personally lacking for democratic legitimacy. He is, in fact, far and away the most popular man in Russia. According to a recent independent poll, 81 percent of Russians have a favorable opinion of him, and 78 percent trust him. Thirty-nine percent can't think of a single bad thing to say about Putin, and 4 percent admit to being "enthralled" by him.

Most importantly, Greene say that "Russians are aware of Putin's authoritarian streak -- they just don't seem to mind it, at least not the way Westerners think they should." Which is the point, really. Firstly, no use criticizing the people's choice, even if you don't like him. The Russians do, and it's their vote, after all. Secondly, and more to the argument Greene is making, Russia (like Iraq) has no historical experience with democracy and freedom (either economic or social). Russia's history is authoritarian a thousand years back. No wonder the voting public likes their democracy with an authoritarian flavor. "It's not what we would have," I take Greene as saying, "but cut them some slack."

I too would like to see a freer Russia, and I don't think we should slip into thinking of Putin in "our bastard" terms. But after so many generations without freedom, the Russians are doing pretty well. I'm not sure how long it will take, but I bet Greene, despite what he may think now, will live to make the same observations about Iraq.

More: Think about America's first 10-15 years and you're likely to think of democratic experimentation, trial and error, the growing cause for federalism, etc. But we did some damned authoritarian things in our youth, too: Passing the Alien and Sedition Acts; calling up the militia to face the Shays Rebels and, later, the Whiskey Rebels; passing the Fugitive Slave Act, which was prima facie antithetical to the founding documents of the nation. Within 100 years we'd fought our own civil war. Some hard lessons learned in there. To belabor a metaphor, democracy is a flower that transplants anywhere, but which requires specialized care in each new soil. Put another way, the Greeks could not have helped us much in 1859.