Anya n Charles

First off, I do believe that there are different forms of democracy that work. There are constitutional monarchies all over, for example.
The occupy movement is a good example of the similarities between the way Russia and the US deal with dissidents imo. The protest goes on for a period, then police use tear gas and crowd clearing techniques, arresting the leaders and most vocal. The main difference between Russian opposition protesters and occipiers seems to be that the Russians are aware of exactly what they are protesting from the start, and the probability that they will be punished for doing so. The occupiers have been slow to form a real agenda (protesting banks and rich people generally is just weak), and seem to believe that they won't be punished or arrested. It looks to me like the governments are reacting the same way though.

The problems with the businessmen put in jail is that they are thieves too. They just refused to share, that's it. If they weren't thieves, it would've been a lot harder to put them to jail.
As for teaching history - it is taught in the way that's good for the government. And it is valid for the USA as well. Maybe, killing Indians is not the case, but there is soooo much stuff that can be misinterpreted...
BTW, nobody tells Russian kids that what Stalin did was in any way OK. We're taught that he was killing Ukrainians, Caucasians etc. along with Russians, while in Ukraine they believe that Russian people hated Ukrainians and that's why they killed a bunch of them. NO. Everyone suffered.

The point is not that Russia is a perfect democracy or that it's more democratic than the US. The point is that most Americans are brainwashed into believing that American democracy is healthy and functional while most other countries (with the exception of Western Europe) are totalitarian sinkholes where you might be arrested for putting your pants on the wrong way.
We're perfectly fine talking about all of the problems in American politics until someone compares it to other countries and then suddenly there's a kneejerk reaction by a lot of Americans to acknowledge but still ignore all of the problems and go with the line that our country really is better than every other country (even by Americans who have never even been anywhere else).
The original question was, is Russia more democratic than most Americans would like to admit/ are lead to believe? The answer to that is a solid yes.