As promised, here’s more from the recent Yaroslavl Forum. On Friday, Russia’s titular head of state revealed his definition of “democracy” to the assembled political scientists. Even after carefully reading our exclusive translation from Vedomosti several times over, we still can’t quite figure out what exactly the “five” features are. We did find the statement that people living in a democracy need to be aware they are living in a democracy to be charming, given that, as is so often the case, things in Russia are just the opposite: many Russians think they’re living in a democracy when they’re actually not. Among the more unusual of the features of a true democracy à la Medvedev, along with a high level of culture, is the state’s ability to protect the population from corruption. Funny, we’d always thought that what makes a democracy a democracy is the population’s ability to protect the state from corruption by voting the bastards out and ensuring that the criminal justice system locks them up where they belong.

Either way, it’s a hell of a measuring stick the government has selected for itself.