What is meant by democracy? Just one essential feature is that it is possible to have a peaceful, consensual transfer of power from one set of rulers to another - usually but not always after an election.
I thought about this while watching the Australian Prime Minister John Howard make a most gracious speech conceding defeat in the General Election to the Labour Party leader Kevin Rudd.
Howard was leader of the Australian Liberal Party (which is confusingly not a Liberal Party as we know it but the Australian Conservative Party).
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Indeed, Putin is making sure it will never happen!
Ever greater controls on the media and ever greater restrictions on the rights of opposition parties - plus fiddling the electoral system - means that no-one will knock out Putin's nationalists.
Musharraf for his part rules for as long as the army thinks fit.
Pakistan is due for elections in February. But even if they can take place in the current security situation, they may or may not to lead to a new government.
There will still be electoral choice. But even if opposition parties win the day, which they may in Pakistan and will not in Russia, they will still have to confront and negotiate with the existing rulers.
In those countries there will be no gracious democratic concession speeches of the Howard variety.
Neither can count as a proper democracy.
Does it matter to us? Russia is a huge country stretching from the eastern marches of Europe to the Pacific, with over 140 million people.
What it does and how it is ruled still affects everyone in the world - and no-one will be watching more closely in East Lancs than our residents from countries such as Poland and Lithuania.
This is even more the case with our large local communities of British Pakistanis.
A good and more democratic outcome from the present upheavals in Pakistan will indirectly benefit all of us.
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