From: Solzhenitsyn Open Letter to the Soviet Leaders, 1973
Here in Russia, due to a complete absence of habit, democracy had existed for only eight months – from February to October, 1917.
Groups of emigrants, former CD and SD, who are still living, are still proud of that democracy, stating it was wrecked by alien forces.
In fact, though, that democracy was their disgrace: they had so ambitiously called out to it and promised it, but succeeded in establishing only something messy, a caricature of democracy; they proved first and foremost unprepared for it themselves, and Russia proved even more so.
In the recent half a century Russia could have only become even less prepared for democracy, for a multi-party parliamentary system.
A sudden introduction of democracy at present might come to be another sorry repetition of 1917. For a thousand years Russia had lived under an authoritarian regime and at the turn of the 20th century it still retained the people’s physical and spiritual health.
Yet there was a very important condition fulfilled: that authoritarian regime had a strong moral base: Orthodoxy.
Then, probably, we should admit that the chosen way was wrong and premature? Probably, for the near future, whether we like it or not, whether we assign it so or not, an authoritarian regime is by all means predestined for Russia. Probably it is the only one Russia is mature for.
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