Here is the view of democracy and elections by one of the commenters to my Gary Kasparov post. (By the way the entire comment was initially published by mistake (mine) as a entry that made it look as if I authored it. No. I just wanted to excerpt it so that people are under no illusion about the nature of of the arrogant stalinoid throwbacks among Putin’s supporters and how they rationalize their crushing of demcoracy and dissidents:

“Elections in Russia are not supposed to choose governments, they are an opportunity for the people to show their support for the existing government by voting for it en masse. The biggest fear of the Russian government is that they will get a low turnout of people voting for them. A large turnout of people voting for them gives them legitimacy. Winning with 60% of the vote from 25% of the electorate would raise the specter of what they call ’social tension’.’

Don’t you love that! Elections are an opportunity to show support (or else). Yes, lock people up if they threaten to cause “social tension”. That says it all.