Sovereign democracy

Sovereign democracy (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. 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. This term was used thereafter by political figures such as Sergei Ivanov, Vladimir Putin, Boris Gryzlov and Vasily Yakemenko. It is the official ideology of the Russian youth movement NASHI, 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." 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). 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.