-- I think there are different varieties of democracy, but at some point it's possible to lose the right to use that word. Here's the problem in Russia's case. Clearly, elections are held and Mr. Putin is indeed very popular. In that sense, he does have a democratic mandate that the communist rulers never had. But a functional democratic system should have well-developed counterweights to executive power - the rule of law, the judicial system, a strong parliament. And beyond government there should be civil society and free media that criticize the goverment and explain to the public what it's doing. And that's where Russia has a problem.

-- How do you account for the fact that a country which is now further from liberal democratic standards is developing faster?

-- I've never said that democracy is essential for economic development. China is growing very fast, but it doesn't have democracy, and neither does Singapore. Taiwan and South Korea developed very rapidly under authoritarian regimes.
Democracy is not an essential prerequisite for economic growth.

-- If some non-democracies are developing better and faster than democracies, why should people desire democracy so much?

-- There are two answers to that. First: democracy is a good thing in itself, independently of growth. It's a question of living in a country that treats its citizens like puppets, or a country that treats its citizens with respect. But there's another answer as well. Your development is at greater risk if you have a more authoritarian political system, because if the rulers make mistakes, there's no way of making those mistakes public and correcting them. The state in Russia did need to be rebuilt, undoubtedly. But the question is how far you go with that
- after all, it's possible to overdo it.

-- Are you one of those who think that Russia is using its energy resources as a weapon?

-- I think that Western fears about this are exaggerated. Using energy as a weapon is a double-edged threat, affecting Russia as well. I'm not sure that the Russians really want to do that.

-- But there's increasing talk of a new Cold War.
--  I think that talk of a new Cold War is exaggerated, and the differences between the two sides are not deep-rooted. Given a certain amount of political professionalism, all this can be overcome.

-- In terms of ideology and political practice, Russia is closer to the West than China is - but in Western public opinion and the media, everything seems to be the other way round. Why?

-- One possible explanation is that many in the West expected Russia to make a transition to democracy, like Poland or Hungary, directly and rapidly. That didn't happen. There was the chaos of the 1990s, the oligarchs, the mafia, and then the growing strength of the Russian state under Putin. Those expectations fell through. Whereas China, with the exception of the Tiananmen Square events, has never been close to a democratic transition.

-- The West considers that the countries of Eastern Europe made the transition to democracy because they wanted freedom. From here, the picture appears somewhat different: people in Russia developed a love of freedom, and the USSR let its satellites go. It's a question of who ended the Cold War: Reagan or Gorbachev.

-- I know that many conservatives in the United States credit Reagan with winning the Cold War. But I think his role was far more modest - the main reason came down to internal contradictions in the communist system.

-- Let's look at the idea of America's "benevolent hegemony." A number of countries spent a long time under US hegemony - like the Philippines and some Latin American countries. Why are they underdeveloped and not very democratic?

-- In many cases American influence isn't particularly effective in building strong democratic institutions, and it doesn't always facilitate economic growth. The United States doesn't have a brilliant record as a hegemon country and a colonial power. And that was one reason for my skepticism about the whole Iraq project.

-- What should the next American president do about Iraq?
--  My personal opinion is that in the foreseeable future the United States should make the decision to simply get out of there. Rather than helping, its presence leads to more terrorism and instability.

-- Your book about biotechnology is less well-known in Russia. You say that history never really ends, because science can change human nature.
-- Technology will pave the way for social engineering, and technques for changing human behavior will become more sophisticated than they were in the 20th Century. What did social engineers use in the 20th Century? Agitprop, the Gulag, reeducation - all very crude instruments that didn't work very well. But new drugs, psychoactive substances, and genetic engineering are making it possible to change human behavior and control people. And this is happening already, to some extent - with all these pills in the USA, such as Prozac: they are intended to influence psychology and behavior. I think that the revolution
there is only beginning.