If it was no longer ‘communist’, did that mean that a newly independent Russia had become a ‘democracy’? Or at least, that it was ‘in transition’? Competitive elections, freedom of speech and a commitment to the rule of law appeared to suggest a positive answer. But elections came increasingly to be regulated by the authorities themselves, freedom of speech (at least on television) became increasingly restricted, and there was little reality to a rule of law if judges were corrupt and high-ranking officials and rich businessmen were effectively outside its scope. Another view was that postcommunist Russia was an ‘authoritarian’ system; but so were many other countries that lay in a large and heterogeneous ‘grey zone’ between Western-style democracy and naked dictatorship. There appeared to be strong arguments in these circumstances for avoiding the term ‘democracy’ altogether and focusing instead on mechanisms of accountability and their effectiveness in Russia as compared with other countries.