The political exclusion and commodification of women - Environmental and Human Security in the Arctic - page 258

peace, stating that commerce can give an opportunity to exercise liberty in a
civil society.
The progress of society in both dimensions, social and moral, was the key.
Adam Smith set out to discover the social foundations of moral behavior.
Commerce and armies together could, he argued, push societies from ser-
vile dependency and a continual state of international war to something
better, a civil society enjoying natural freedom and prospect of peace.
(Doyle 1997:241)
The fundamental nature of human beings has led founders and proponents of
liberalism to believe that not all people and nations are free just as a matter
of course . There are two basic requirements of liberation: 'First, persons or
nations must be themselves enlightened, aware of their interests and how they
should be secured. Second, people must live under enlightened political insti-
tutions which allow their true interest to shape politics' (Owen 1996:123).
Consequently, there is a distinct and important relationship between the state
and the individual. The state holds the possibility of liberating the individ-
ual, and provides the necessary conditions for freedom through the use of
democratic institutions and systems of legislation. It is difficult to generalize
about liberalism as individual freedom within the body of democracy, and it is
important to take into consideration the distinct understanding of liberalism
within the national context. 'Typically, liberals are associated with the values
of freedom, tolerance and democracy in the world. Liberalism, however, may
be shaped differently in different social and cultural contexts' (Tsygankov
and Tsygankov 2004:54). Russian individuals and communities had a long
history of a particularly oppressive experience with, and relationship to, the
state. This, among other things, has contributed to the formation of democ-
racy after the fall of the Soviet Union, and to subsequent attitudes towards
prostitution and trafficking.
Democracy in Russia
There is a significant amount of literature discussing the challenges with the
development of democracy in Russia. Ross has written that: 'Many authors
have alluded to the unique nature of Russia's dual transition and its difficult
task of simultaneously reforming its economy and polity' (Ross 2000:405).
He suggests that the literature on the problem of democratization in Russia
may be divided into several schools. The first one pays attention to the
preconditions that are important for the emergence of democracy (such as
industrialization, capitalism, class structure, institutional factors, political
culture and civil society); the second focuses on the transition processes; the
third addresses the period following the collapse of the old regime and the
emergence of current problems (Ross 2000).