70+ years of godless Communism will do that to a country, it will take generations for Russia to recover from it. Not that the Tsars were all that great, neither.
Maybe. Maybe that’s the reason that don’t value liberty and prefer an autocrat. It’s part of their custom. Why we have political pilgrims of the left who run off to all the left wing dictators and sing their praises, and why we have folks on the right who fawn over rightist autocrats is also worth exploring. All the goals we want are not going to occur in the long run and for a sustained period of time if in the course of pursuing those goals the process becomes undemocratic.