askchapo

No, Russia is like the US - controlled by oligarchic factions.

In fact, Russia is just what the US will become in 10 years if Republicans continue to rule the country: neoliberal, socially reactionary and borderline fascist.

Liberal political scientists would call it an illiberal or managed democracy - substantially oligarchic or authoritarian, but maintaining the forms of democracy. The democratic forms legitimate the government but don't significantly affect policy.

I think that's accurate, but they tend to ignore how accurately the same framework describes the US as well.

Russia is an interesting case in the "democracy vs authoritarian" liberal doxa. The US more or less created the constitution of the Russian federation, so in terms of how the system works, liberals were supposed to say that Russia is democratic. However, since Putin made his anti-west turn, they just have to call him authoritarian, because liberals can't antagonise a country if it is "democratic".

But yeah in Marxist terms, it's a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie that plays tougher than imperial core ones

It is as democratic as any other liberal democracy, they are just more blatant with their corruption

No, but it's not uniquely dictatorial either. It's a very similar setup to the US, where your vote doesn't really mean anything because a small circle of the rich elite decide everything that happens. If anything, it seems like Russians care more about violence against Putin's political enemies because it is at a talking point in Russian politics. Americans watch anyone who could be a threat to the American elite get imprisoned and killed and forced into poverty or hiding and don't give a shit

Russia is at least as democratic as the United States.

Russia is a liberal democracy

Yes, it is basically the same as the US. They have material interests that diverge from ours so we hate them. They might also not like us because they don't trust us. However I don't think that would hold up if we just bought them out. I think that just by accident of not likening us they do good work sometimes, however I think they are basically a fully modern neoliberal democracy.

Wtf does "democratic" mean anyway, the deeper I look into it the more I want to just give up on it

No lol

constitution says yes ..

"We, the multinational people of the Russian Federation, united by a common fate on our land, establishing human rights and freedoms, civic peace and accord, preserving the historically established state unity, proceeding from the universally recognized principles of equality and self-determination of peoples, revering the memory of ancestors who have conveyed to us the love for the Fatherland, belief in the good and justice, reviving the sovereign statehood of Russia and asserting the firmness of its democratic basic, striving to ensure the well-being and prosperity of Russia, proceeding from the responsibility for our Fatherland before the present and future generations, recognizing ourselves as part of the world community, adopt the CONSTITUTION OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION"

As democratic as Boris Yeltsin’s Russia

Are the libs right

No.

We're still right because we never claimed it was a democratic, AES state. Leftists have always identified it as a reactionary liberal bourgeois state, at best.