Garry Kasparov is the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and was the 13th world chess champion.
Whether or not President Donald Trump persuades Republicans to pass the Save America Act, his recent speech about threats to the country’s electoral system is part of a dangerous attack on election integrity. The most important safeguard for American democracy is widespread trust in the electoral system. When the public stops believing they have the final say on their government, democracy falls apart.
We saw this demonstrated in Ukraine and Russia, as the key variable explaining why Russian President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to assimilate swaths of Ukraine and reconstruct his mythic Novorossiya have failed. The two countries’ deeply intertwined cultural and linguistic histories create a natural experiment of sorts that reveals how impactful governance can be in shaping national identity.
After the Soviet Union fell in 1991, the border between Russia and eastern Ukraine was so porous as to be virtually nonexistent. Ukrainian citizens living in the Donbas region spoke Russian, consumed the same media as their Russian neighbors and inhabited basically the same cultural milieu. When independent Ukraine held its first presidential elections in 1994, Donbas residents joined other Ukrainians in choosing a pro-Russian candidate. What came next was a defining step in Ukraine’s nascent democracy: The defeated nationalist candidate conceded and walked away. By doing so, he provided an example for future leaders, a template of respect for Ukraine’s electoral institutions, regardless of outcome.
The peaceful transfer of power that continued over the following decades strengthened Ukraine’s institutions with each transition. And when Putin tried to interfere with Ukraine’s growing connection to Europe, Ukrainian protests culminated with the Maidan uprising of 2014, which drove their pro-Russian president out of the country. Ukrainians had learned that they were in charge of their future, and they would not have a foreign dictator meddling with their political fate.
By contrast, citizens of post-Soviet Russia developed an entirely different relationship with their government. When Boris Yeltsin, its first president, came up for reelection in 1996, he began trying to manipulate the results before a single vote was cast. His instigation of the first Chechen war in 1994 was a cynical maneuver to justify his staying in power. He won. He did end up handing over the office to Putin a few years later, but in a backroom deal, not in response to the will of the people. Over the course of a series of such bad-faith tactics by their leaders, Russians learned that their voice doesn’t matter, that they could go to the polls and cast a vote, sure, but those in power could freely tamper with their political will. Russians were moving in the opposite direction of Ukrainians: Instead of strengthening their fledgling democracy, they were beginning its steady demise. Every election cycle under Putin has further degraded the quality of democratic institutions. With every stage — from the registering of candidates to the shaping of their platforms — under Kremlin control, there is no need to tamper with individual votes. Elections are not rigged so much as irrelevant.
The crisis of war has created a complicated situation for both countries. The Russian economy is struggling, it is suffering from fuel shortages, and young men are dying on the front lines in shocking numbers. Yet somehow, discussion of the war is totally absent from political discourse. Reading the public statements of candidates in upcoming elections, I hardly find even a mention of the conflict. This eerie omission is the symptom of a zombie democracy. Elections exist on paper, but there is no political heartbeat left in the country — the people have learned to see themselves as powerless.
It is striking to observe how differently this moment of war is unfolding within Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s recent firing of his defense minister, an architect of Ukraine’s enormously successful drone offensive, resulted in such public outrage that the president was forced to backtrack. Though he did not reinstate Mykhailo Fedorov, he replaced Ukraine’s old-school army chief with a close ally of Fedorov who supports the same program of modernization — a victory for the protesters. And he offered Fedorov himself a prominent new position. Just as Ukrainians continue to mount a valiant defense against Russian aggression, they continue to be vigorous participants in their democracy and have developed a political mindset far different from their Russian counterparts. They live in a true democracy because they trust that this democracy depends on them.
Trump has been chipping away at the integrity of American institutions since he first assumed office, and now he has reached the most important institution of all. If he succeeds in undermining Americans’ faith in the power of their vote, he will have inflicted serious damage on the very edifice of American democracy.
During the Maidan uprising, America served as an example to the Ukrainians who bravely went into the street to protest foreign interference in their government. Now, it is Ukrainians who have refused to back down against Russian aggression and who continue to hold their own government accountable, providing a reciprocal example. They are a testament to the fact that democracy must be actively practiced. Words on paper are not enough to guarantee freedom. Trust that these words mean something requires standing up for the lived institutions that they enshrine.
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