--- Jerry Monaco <monacojerry at gmail.com> wrote: To talk about this in terms of democracy is to stretch the concept of democracy (a very loose notion anyway) beyond comprehension.
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I think part of the issue is a translational one. The Russian word "demokratiya" that I translated as "democracy" has somewhat different connotations from its English cognate (which as you mention is itself extremely loose). The notion of demokratiya shifts a bit for the Russian-speaker depending on whether the "freedom" associated with the word is construed in terms of "svoboda" or "volya" (the latter also means "will". "Svoboda" is responsible, civic freedom. "Volya" has connotations of "doing whatever the hell I want regardless of the consequences, especially the consequences for other people." It is linked to histrorical memories of peasant insurrections, thievery, the Pugachev uprising, pogroms and so forth.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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