UNFOLDING DEMOCRACY: CONTRASTS THAT ARE RESHAPING THE MODERN WORLD

Abstract

This article was prepared at a time when one global crisis is changing to another on the international agenda, and the leading world leaders and authoritative international institutions see the end of the war waged by Russia in Ukraine as one of the most urgent tasks. The article was written in Ukraine, to the sound of alarms, as part of an educational and scientific collaboration while studying the course "General Theory of Politics". The authors try to analyze the modern theory of political regimes and rethink its significance in the conditions of the Russian-Ukrainian war. The well-known approaches to the definition and classification of political regimes, their contribution to the modern understanding of democracy, political relations and processes in general are considered. Ukraine and the Russian Federation are analyzed in multi-year international democracy rankings, case studies and opinion polls. The collected data of Freedom House 2017-2022, which allow us to assert that Russia has the status of an authoritarian country with a very low level of development of democratic institutions, and over the years only deepens this civilizational abyss. At the same time, Ukraine appears in independent assessments as a partially free country, showing some dynamic changes in the direction of democracy. The focus is on contrasts that have been pointing to oppositely different political paths chosen by the Russian and Ukrainian peoples and their elites for many years. While the former were restoring Stalinism, curtailing and discrediting the democratic foundations of politics, the latter were building up democratic ideals and aspirations with varying success. Consequently, the modern war is proposed to be understood as an unprovoked attack of the ancient Russian totalitarianism on the young Ukrainian democracy. This anti-democratic act of unlimited anger brings about irreversible changes for all mankind.