As Publius Pundit readers know, a crisis is brewing in Georgia. After discovering a spy ring seeking to subvert the current pro-West presidential administration on Russia????????s behalf, just as Georgia entered the final round of talks on NATO membership, the Georgian government took action to arrest the conspirators, who included several Russian military officers. In response, Russia has recalled its ambassador and imposed a trade and travel blockade on tiny Georgia, seeking to destabilize its economy. More recently, it has loosed a pogrom-like assault on Georgian-owned businesses and assets in Russia, as well as a series of crude attacks on the Georgian embassy in Moscow, and Vladimir Putin has accused Georgia of ???????blackmail and provocation.???????

Some Russophiles attempt to justify Russia????????s actions against Georgia on the grounds that Georgia is some sort of unwieldy quasi-dictatorship and therefore claim that criticism of Russia????????s actions as anti-democratic is unfounded. Given this, it????????s useful to look at the facts regarding the relative democratic qualities of the two national governments.

In its 2005 democracy survey, Freedom House downgraded the Russian government from 5 to 6 on its sliding scale from 0 (meaning perfect democracy) to 7 (meaning absolute dictatorship), due to ???????the virtual elimination of influential political opposition parties within the country and the further concentration of executive power.??????? In the same survey, it upgraded Georgia from 4 to 3 ???????due to the holding of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections.??????? In other words, it found Georgia twice as democratic as Russia, though still not having arrived at official status as a democracy.

In the 2006 survey, Georgia was classified as ???????partly free??????? while Russia was designated ???????not free??????? (ratings average 1.0 to 2.5 are considered Free, 3.0 to 5.0 Partly Free, and 5.5 to 7.0 Not Free). In the two main categories, ???????political rights??????? and ???????civil liberties,??????? Georgia scored a 3 in both while Russia scored a 6 in the former and 5 in the later.

For the first time this year, Freedom House also released scores in various specific subcategories where the nations of the world were compared. The subcategory scores for Georgia and Russia (the first three are the ???????political rights??????? categories and the next four are the ???????civil liberties??????? categories; the scores are given as a fraction of the total available points in each subcategory with higher scores showing more democracy):

Subcategory	Georgia’s Score	Russia’s Score
Electoral Process	9/12	3/12
Political Pluralism and Participation	9/16	5/16
Functioning of Government	6/12	3/12
Freedom of Expression and Belief	11/16	8/16
Electoral Process	9/12	3/12
Associational and Organizational Rights	8/12	6/12
Rule of Law	8/16	4/16
Personal Autonomy and Individual Rights	10/16	6/16

As can be seen, Georgia significantly exceeded Russia in every category. Well-known pundit Fareed Zakaria of Newsweek stated: ???????While there are many sources of economic data, good political data is hard to find. Freedom House’s survey is an exception. For anyone concerned with the state of freedom, or simply with the state of the world, Freedom in the World is an indispensable guide.???????

If you are surprised by these findings, you may be the victim of Russian propaganda, as well as Georgia????????s lack of resources to tell its own story as prominently as Russia. As previously reported on Publius Pundit, Russia is in the process of weaponizing the field of psychiatry, just as was done in the old Soviet days, and various Russophile propagandists have already accused the Georgian president of suffering from mental illness, as Publius Pundit has previously noted. This is only one sign that Russia is currently attempting a major propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting and undermining the Georgian government before it can fully become assimilated into the Western fold. As Publius Pundit has reported, this even includes paying the expenses of Western Russia watchers to hobnob at Kremlin parties; some of these same people are now writing reports on the Russo-Georgian conflict, and their reports cannot be taken at face value.

There is no doubt that Georgia still has a way to go before it can be considered a full-fledged democracy. But there is even less doubt that Russia has a much longer, harder path to travel before it can reach that lofty goal, and Georgia has to contend with being victimized by years of Russian imperialism as well as aggressive Russian attempts to impede its development, issues Russia does not have to face. If Russia seized control of Georgia, the country would instantly become less democratic, not more. The Russia-Georgia confrontation is a key test of the West????????s resolve to stand behind countries moving towards Western values and against those who oppose this process.

Kim Zigfeld publishes the Russia blog La Russophobe.