>Russians are deeply uncomfortable with actual democratic openness >It inspired pure panic, as people had never seen anything but utter certainty from their le

>Russians are deeply uncomfortable with actual democratic openness >It inspired pure panic, as people had never seen anything but utter certainty from their leaders Russians are not uncomfortable with actual democratic openness. There were periods in Russian history when actual democratic openness was an option. Right before the USSR formation and around 1990s The problem is that after 1991 you've got a few generations of people who are used to ussr socialism and its ways and guarantees. You can't expect people to switch from one way of thinking to the other. The state had beed paying them all their lives. Sometime only because they had some kind of job at all. Many of them developed an addiction to their "salary for existence". You can't go and tell them that starting tommorow they will have to compete on a market that is yet to be build. And that the whole new shiny system like that of the West will be functional 2-3 decades later. And right after they were playing (from their perspective) the same game waiting for the communism.