You know, the Russians had thousands of possible futures in 1991. They had a nascent democracy in the palms of their hands and chose dictatorship --- again.
I'm starting to wonder if George Kennan was right in 1946:
"At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. Originally, this was insecurity of a peaceful agricultural people trying to live on vast exposed plain in neighborhood of fierce nomadic peoples. To this was added, as Russia came into contact with economically advanced West, fear of more competent, more powerful, more highly organized societies in that area. But this latter type of insecurity was one which afflicted rather Russian rulers than Russian people; for Russian rulers have invariably sensed that their rule was relatively archaic in form fragile and artificial in its psychological foundation, unable to stand comparison or contact with political systems of Western countries. For this reason they have always feared foreign penetration, feared direct contact between Western world and their own, feared what would happen if Russians learned truth about world without or if foreigners learned truth about world within. And they have learned to seek security only in patient but deadly struggle for total destruction of rival power, never in compacts and compromises with it."
They are somehow psychologically incapable of being democratic, despite seeing the benefits on their televisions and in their daily media, at least for a while. Frustrating. Perhaps it's because they have to defend an area more than 22 times as large as Texas with a population roughly 3.5 times that of Texas.