Russia 's transition to pluralist democracy is at best shaky and at worst being reversed. The relatively liberal Yeltsin era has been eclipsed by a new wave of authoritarianism under Putin. The electoral system is fixed to block the emergence of new parties and anti-establishment candidates. Press freedom is constrained by threats, intimidation and the murder of journalists. Human rights violations are widespread and often unchecked.
Symptomatic of these many abuses is the banning of the Moscow Gay Pride march by the city's Mayor, Yuri Luzhkov. He has denounced the march as “satanic.”
On his weekly TV programme, Talking With Tatchell, human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell interviews Nikolai Alekseev, the Russian gay human rights campaigner who is organiser of Moscow Gay Pride and head of the LGBT Human Rights Project of Gay Russia.
