We seem to be in a very strange period. Because George W. Bush, the neoconservatives and Natan Sharansky made the promotion of democracy a major issue, we have come to expect that democracy should flourish in Russia after the fall of communism.
We are inclined in this direction because of our positive postwar experience with Germany, Italy, Japan, Israel and a few East European countries. That experience suggested that democracy is more feasible than reality since then evinces.
Each of these examples was a unique and telling story. Germany, Italy, Israel, Poland and the Czech Republic were brand-new, countries with less than 75 years of existence as a cohesive nation. Japan was the exception. Being a recently formed country seems to help.
Japan was fertile ground for democracy because the Japanese had been creating it themselves since the Meiji Restoration in the 1870s. Moreover they have adapted democracy to their own political model. Japan has a hereditary hierarchy that survives by the use of adult adoption. My close friend in the Japanese Upper House was adopted by the Senator he replaced. My friend had the new adoptive family name. That was the family name that his constituency joyfully voted for generation after generation
This pattern is not unlike the American habitat of voting for the wife of somebody who dies in office. Only in Japan the standard practice is adoption not marriage to the dead incumbent.
Now it's time to talk about Russia. Russia has been a coherent country, excluding the parts that were accreted by the USSR, for 1000 years. Russia has a well-established millennum old political system and it is not democracy. In fact, efforts to democratize Russian society have historically resulted in rebellion, coups or revolution.
We should not be misled by the democracy champions of this world into thinking democracy has some automatic implementation features.