'Russian democracy has disappeared'; on the 20th anniversary of the Soviet Union's collapse, Vladimir Putin is taking Russia down an autocratic path.

• Author: Levy, Clifford J.
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

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Mikhail Beketov, a newspaper editor in a Moscow suburb, had been warned, but he would not stop writing--about dubious land deals, crooked loans, under-the-table hush money. It was all evidence, he argued, of rampant government corruption.

Not long after, Beketov was savagely beaten outside his home and left to bleed in the snow. Now he's in a wheelchair, his brain so damaged that he cannot utter a simple sentence.

The attack against Beketov in 2008 was the first of a wave of attacks against and harassment of Russian journalists, human rights activists, and opposition politicians. These attacks, along with the abolition of some local elections and other moves to concentrate power in the hands of the Kremlin, * are all evidence that Russia is becoming an increasingly authoritarian country.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it looked like Russia might emerge as a true democracy. But democracy is not a natural fit for Russia. For 350 years, the country was ruled by powerful czars, and the Soviet Union--America's adversary during the Cold War--was a brutal Communist dictatorship dating back to the 1917 Russian Revolution.

Gorbachev Speaks Out

In the last decade, the Russian economy has thrived and foreign investment has soared. Consumer goods are widely available, and millions of Russians, part of a growing middle class, are able to afford them. But at the same time, the country has become less free.

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Milkhail Gorbachev, who introduced a wide range of political and economic reforms as the last leader of the Soviet Union, has now become a prominent critic of the Kremlin. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, he says, is undermining Russia's fledgling democracy by crippling opposition forces.

"He thinks that democracy stands in his way," says Gorbachev, who won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his reform policies.

The U.S. shares his concerns. The release last month by Wikileaks of classified U.S. diplomatic communications included the statement by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates that "Russian democracy has disappeared."

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In 2008, Putin found a way around the law that prevented him from running for President again when his second term expired: He handpicked Dmitri Medvedev as his successor, and after he won in a landslide, Medvedev appointed Putin as his Prime Minister. Although President Medvedev is technically the country's leader, Putin continues to wield considerable power. One...