CONCEPT «DEMOCRACY» IN RUSSIAN OFFICIAL DISCOURSE AS AN INDICATOR OF RELATIONS RUSSIAN FEDERATION WITH THE WEST

Abstract

The concept of democracy in Russian political discourse in the early 1990s was largely corresponded to the «end of history» and the triumph of liberal values proclaimed in the West. The attempt to integrate into the proposed American political discourse was unsuccessful for the Russian political leadership, which had demonstrated a significantly different view on democracy than the Western one. The emphasis on social justice and the assurance of socio- economic rights, completely ignoring democratic institutions, pointed to the fundamental closeness the power circles ideas to the communists (the doctrines of socialist democracy). The Russia's integration into a community of democratic states and Euro-Atlantic structures was problematic. In this way the West hoped to change the Russian leadership's view of interests and basic values. The answer to the American democracy promotion was the Russian concept of «sovereign democracy». It was the first attempt to create an alternative discourse about the concept of democracy and at the same time a demonstration of true value – sovereignty in a democratic wrapper. The evidence of distance from the Western model was the Russian discourse about multipolar (polycentric) world order, described by the categories of the Russian vision of democracy, as opposed to the liberal (unipolar) world order. The Russian leadership's rejection to discuss about democracy is a shift to the competitive discourse that is creating the alternative way of governance. There is a deep conflict of values in RF-USA relations, which can be qualified as a confrontation between authoritarianism and democracy.