I'll take the enlightened despots of the 18th century over BushCo any day. At least they had the best intellectuals of the day as ministers.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

If you want to "improve" Russia, you have to have patience of a generation at least. History shows that instant progressive reforms in Russia have poor effects. This does not mean (by any any means) that Russia is backward or especially xenophobic. Just think of Russia's literature or classical music - the culture is more open minded than most others. But Russia has unusual social history, and troublesome experiences through ages. In a special way, Russia is a conservative country. And this is not very exceptional - think of special conservativisms of the Arab countries, or Japan.

Even if you solve Russia's problems (whatever they are), it will always be a unique country, and this is great. Only when you will have a generation (or two) which grew up with growing confidence in progressive governing, and gradual rejection of autocratic tendencies, we may talk about Russia in entirely new perspective. But sadly enough, what is happening now is just a new traumatic cycle apparently. Certainly, we can say the same about Iraq and several other places.

The generation cycle is important. There is a theory, for example, that says that the Soviet Union broke up under Gorbachov because he was the first Soviet leader without direct experience of the Bolshevik revolution and of the Great Patriotic War (WW II) - so he took many things for granted...