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An old Russian friend teases me when I complain about British politics. He finds my tales of Westminster negligence and dysfunction touchingly insipid. When I described pro-European trauma on the morning after the Brexit referendum, he shot back: At least you all went to bed not knowing what the result was going to be.

The morning after Russias most recent presidential election in 2018, no one woke up surprised that Vladimir Putin had won. The result did raise a question of how the incumbent would get around constitutional term limits that should exclude his candidacy in 2024. The solution was revealed last week in a proposal to rewrite the rules. The clock will be reset so Putin can run again and again. The arrangements will be ratified in a referendum, on the eve of which no Russian will go to bed unsure about the result.

To oppose Putin in a polling booth is futile, and less secluded action is potentially dangerous. There is a great Russian tradition of defying authoritarian rule, but it proceeds by the slow-burn propulsion of endurance and martyrdom. If the regime has brittleness I am not qualified to measure it. That was hard enough when I lived in Moscow and I know better than to tackle Kremlin enigmas with an out-of-date code book.

My Russian is a bit rusty, too. But I have not forgotten the feeling of a society submerged in mistrust of politics. Communist rule laid deep foundations of cynicism. The Party failed to provide people with the goods and rights they craved, so instead penalised the craving itself as decadent and seditious. Post-Soviet transition swapped the caprice of ideological bullies for lawless gangsterism. The idea of democracy was discredited by the chaos. Justice felt no less arbitrary than before, with the added indignity of losing the USSRs superpower status.

Putin exploited that trauma, casting himself as the guarantor of stability and macho incarnation of national self-confidence. On that ticket he could still have been competitive in elections without all the intimidation and state propaganda but he didnt take any chances.

That political evolution has bred contempt for the idea of public service through elected office. It promotes a jaundiced view of motive, seeing the darkest intent behind any official deed, presuming that the truest analysis is the one that unearths the most malicious plan via the most convoluted conspiracy. And because democracy did not flourish in Russia it must be ridiculed abroad. To suggest that western politicians ever try to do the right thing, or that bad outcomes can be accidental, invites derision.

The taste of that embitterment is not easily forgotten. I recognised it as it seeped into Britain a familiar credulous cynicism that will believe fairytales if they are shared in a paranoid whisper, branded as secrets that shadowy powers do not want you to know. The BBC covers up the truth; Brussels funds the opposition; Zionists pull the strings. This stuff is acrid and endemic online, stirred up by international troll battalions and extremist provocateurs. It corrodes the base of common facts, churning up the level ground on which liberal, pluralist institutions can build consent for government.

That mechanism has been weaponised by the Kremlin. It works by persuading citizens in functioning democracies that their own governments are no better than authoritarian ones, and just as worthy of contempt. It is depressing to see it working, when British citizens denigrate their institutions the way Russians dismiss theirs, complaining as if our own elections are hardly less fraudulent than the ones that keep Putin in office.

It is hardest to praise democracy when its output is unwelcome. Noisy pro-European campaigners hated the referendum result so much they rejected claims that political trust would be undermined by aborting Brexit, although many quieter former remain voters felt the job had to be seen through. Fans of Jeremy Corbyn want to believe that the rightwing media hypnotised the working class out of affection for socialism, although the Labour leader needed no help repelling voters. There is much to repair in Britains electoral machinery, from the voting system to the poor invigilation of campaign finance. Its hinges creak with anachronism, but it is not a sham.

To affirm that faith invites charges of naivety or complacency. History counsels vigilance and the imagination can always plot a curve from ministerial misadventure towards dictatorship. Any slope away from ideal practice can be made to look slippery. The coming months dealing with Covid-19 will test our liberal political culture in unfamiliar ways. Parliament will struggle to function; emergency powers will resemble the draconian expedients of war. It is the closest most of us will come to living under martial law. The pausing of freedoms we have long taken for granted can be tolerable only if we believe they can survive hibernation.

The government response has not always radiated competence. We do not know how the economy or our institutions will cope. Emergency laws expose tensions between liberty and security and it is essential to guard against casual disposal of fundamental rights. It is also important to resist the excesses of anti-political mania common to fire-breathing radicals on the left and right alike, who point at democracys imperfections and call them tyranny.

Boris Johnson is deeply flawed, dishonest and cavalier, but not a thief or a murderer. His unserious style doesnt suit the gravity of the moment, but he is a creature of British political tradition and not a despot. Those who hate seeing him in Downing Street can be consoled by the knowledge that he is not our prime minister for life. Despair at election results is tempered by the belief that other outcomes were genuinely possible. There is democratic privilege hidden in political disappointment, so long as it comes with an element of surprise.

In authoritarian regimes there is no consensual management of freedoms. They are bestowed or withdrawn from on high. Putin adorns his power with the symbols of democracy elections and court rulings but he does it out of contempt for the real thing. The Kremlin-issued facsimile cannot replicate the intricacy and delicacy of a truly democratic system, entrenched in culture, assembled from millions of interlocking parts. Laws and parliaments are the scaffolding that support countless civic acts, each one affirming the faith that ours is a political system that exists for the benefit of the people, not a conspiracy against them. Anyone who has lived under both types of government can easily tell the difference.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

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British democracy is about to be tested. I believe it can pass - The Guardian