Freedom House Ranks Russia as Outsiders in World Democracies

December 21, 2005

On December 19 the influential international organization Freedom House published its annual report covering the state of human rights and freedoms in the world. In the light of its performance in the past year, Russia, which was downgraded in 2004 from a Partly Free to a Not Free country, has slipped several notches down towards the bottom on the list that includes Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Russia's ranking declined from 5 to 6. The report’s authors were motivated in their decision to place Russia beyond the pale of democracy by the virtual eradication of influential political parties in opposition and the further centralization of the executive branch. To give substance to their verdict, the report’s authors cite numerous examples of events in Russia that they believe place it among the "not free" countries.

The report notes that in the year now ending, the Kremlin's attempts to marginalize the opposition, extend its control over the media and undermine the independence of the judicial system has become even more direct than before. In Russia-whose freedom status Freedom House lowered from Partly Free to Not Free one year ago-the Putin leadership's anti-democratic tendencies, appeared, if anything, more pronounced in 2005," says the report. For example, towards the end of the year, the government proposed [introducing] a bill that would put considerable pressure on research centers, human rights groups and other non-profit organizations, particularly those that receive their financing from abroad. Moreover, the document's authors find that President Putin took steps to compromise the achievements of the democratic movement in neighboring countries such as Ukraine, Georgia and the Baltic republics, and at the same time provided support for the most repressive regimes in the region, such as Belarus and Uzbekistan. What is more the report goes on, the Russian media, which is under Vladimir Putin’s control, promoted the idea that democratic revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia and other countries of the post-Soviet space had been undertaken by forces hostile to Russia and it would not have been possible for those revolutions to succeed had it not been for the support of the United States and other powers that are striving to curb Russia's influence in the region. The report also mentions Chechnya, which, along with Tibet, is found by the authors to be the two worst regions of the world in terms of democracy.

Russia is delegated to the worst, third group of countries, which the report authors classify into three groups - "free," "partly free" and "not free." Along with Russia, the list of 45 non-democratic regimes includes Cuba, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Myanmar, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Read Freedom House's summary of the 2005 report »

Read Freedom House's 2004 report on Russia »

Read Freedom House's statement on the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev verdict »