Sovereign democracy

You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Russian. (April 2014) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Russian article. Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Russian Wikipedia article at [[:ru:Суверенная демократия]]; see its history for attribution. You may also add the template {{Translated|ru|Суверенная демократия}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

This article is part of a series on
Conservatism in Russia
Ideologies Eurasianism Duginism Monarchism Tsarism Populism Putinism Russian nationalism All-Russian Christian Ultra Slavophilia Pochvennichestvo Traditionalist conservatism
Principles Authority Autocracy Bureaucracy Byzantinism Duty Economic interventionism Familialism Imperialism Irredentism Law and order Orthodox values Nuclear Orthodoxy Moscow, third Rome  Patriotism Reactionism Russian culture Russification Sobornost Social hierarchy Social order Sovereign democracy Statism
History Black Hundreds Great Russia Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality Russian Empire White movement White Army White émigré Zemstvo
Intellectuals Aksakov Boot Chudinova Dostoevsky Dugin Frank Ilyin Karamzin Katkov Khomyakov Leontiev von Lilienfeld Obolensky Pobedonostsev Prokhanov Rozanov Semyonov Shafarevich Shcherbatov Solovyov Solzhenitsyn Sorokin Strakhov Surkov Tikhomirov Tikhon Trubetskoy Uvarov Vikulov Wrangel Yuryev Zhukovsky
Literature St Petersburg Dialogues (1821) The Organic Theory of Societies (1873) Sociology of Revolution 1925 The Gulag Archipelago (1973) Foundations of Geopolitics (1997) The Notre Dame de Paris Mosque (2005) The Fourth Political Theory (2009)
Politicians Alexander I Alexander III Butina Dubrovin Durnovo Gryzlov Kolchak Kornilov von Lilienfeld Luzhkov Malyshkin Mizulina Nicholas I Nicholas II Pikhno Pobedonostsev Putin Rodzianko Rogozin Rostopchin Sadovnichiy Shulgin Slutsky Surkov Tolstoy von Ungern Uvarov Vladimir Volodin Yuryev Zhirinovsky
Parties Active Eurasia Party Great Russia Liberal Democratic Party of Russia Rodina Russian All-People's Union Union of Right Forces United Russia Defunct For Truth Liberal Democratic Party of the Soviet Union People's Union Pamyat Society Union of the Russian People
Organisations All-Russia People's Front Izborsky Club Krepostniki National Alliance of Russian Solidarists Union of the Russian People
Media Elementy (Defunct) Kievlyanin Kozma Minin Nash Sovremennik Russkoye Znamya Zavtra Znamya
Related topics Anti-Americanism Anti-Chechenism Anti-communism Anti-Islamism Anti-Polonism Antisemitism Anti-Tatarism Anti-Turkism Anti-Ukrainianism Politics of Russia Liberalism Russia for Russians Russia under Vladimir Putin Serfdom in Russia Silovik
Conservatism portal Russia portal
v t e

Sovereign democracy (Russian: суверенная демократия, transl. suverennaya demokratiya) is a term describing modern Russian politics first used by Vladislav Surkov on 22 February 2006 in a speech before a gathering of the Russian political party United Russia.^[1] According to Surkov, sovereign democracy is:

A society's political life where the political powers, their authorities and decisions are decided and controlled by a diverse Russian nation for the purpose of reaching material welfare, freedom and fairness by all citizens, social groups and nationalities, by the people that formed it.^[2]

This term was used thereafter by political figures such as Sergei Ivanov, Vladimir Putin, Boris Gryzlov and Vasily Yakemenko. It was the official ideology of the Russian youth movement NASHI, which was created in support of Vladimir Putin.

Sovereign Democracy in Russia was realised in the form of a dominant-party system which was put into place in 2007 when as a result of the Russian legislative election of 2007 the political party United Russia, headed by President Vladimir Putin, without forming a government, formally became the leading and guiding force in Russian society.

Concrete priorities and orientations of Sovereign Democracy were conceptualized in Prime Minister Putin's Plan.

According to The Washington Post, the term sovereign democracy conveys that "Russia's regime is democratic and, second, that this claim must be accepted without demanding any proof, period. Any attempt at verification will be regarded as unfriendly and as meddling in Russia's domestic affairs."^[3] Yuri Semyonov wrote in 2008:

The concept of sovereignty relates to government as a whole, and not to a certain form of rule or to a political regime. Democracy can be direct or representative, real (which has never actually existed in the human history), formal (as in antiquity, or the modern Western countries), or a fiction (as in the USSR and other so-called socialist countries).^[4]

Commenting on the term in an interview for Expert published in 2006, Dmitry Medvedev said that sovereignty and democracy belong in different conceptual categories and that fusing them is impossible. "If you take the word 'democracy' and start attaching qualifiers to it that would seem a little odd. It would lead one to think that we're talking about some other, non-traditional type of democracy."^[5]

On 19 July 2006, Mikhail Gorbachev commented on the abolitions of single-member constituencies as well as the raising of the threshold for participation in the Duma to 7%. He stated that "these innovations into legislation cannot be justified by theories of 'sovereign' or 'managed' democracy. Limitations that may be found to be necessary when the very existence of the government and its citizens may be threatened must be looked upon as temporary, and not elevated into principles, like is done by the theorists of 'sovereign' and 'managed' democracy. These kinds of definitions distort the essence of democracy, just like the concepts of 'socialist' and 'people's' democracy before them."^[6]

Whilst talking about sovereign democracy in 2006, Mikhail Kasyanov said that "... the aims of this doctrine are quite clear: the concentration and holding of political power and property at any cost. The consequences of this are already evident, including the glorification of populism, the steady destruction of private and public institutions and the departure from the principles of the law, democracy, and the free market."^[7]

United States Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried (in office 2005–2009) stated in a 2007 interview:

I get nervous when people put labels in front of democracy. Sovereign democracy, managed democracy, people's democracy, socialist democracy, Aryan democracy, Islamic democracy—I am not a big fan of adjectives. Managed democracy doesn't sound like democracy. Sovereign democracy strikes me as meaningless.^[8]

• Sovereigntism
• Authoritarianism
• Conservative democracy
• Guided democracy
• Human rights
• Illiberal democracy

• Project "Russia—Sovereign democracy", analytical portal.
• "Sovereignty is a political synonym for the ability to compete", Vladislav Surkov, public speech, 7 February 2006
• "Nationalisation of the Future", Vladislav Surkov
• "Our Russian model of democracy is called 'Sovereign democracy'", Vladislav Surkov, briefing, 28 June 2006