reduced by more than half and real GDP has grown rapidly. In foreign affairs, the Putin government seeks to emulate the former Soviet Union's grandeur, belligerence and expansionism. In November 2007, Simon Tisdall of The Guardian pointed out that "just as Russia once exported Marxist revolution, it may now be creating an international market for Putinism" as "more often than not, instinctively undemocratic, oligarchic and corrupt national elites find that an appearance of democracy, with parliamentary trappings and a pretense of pluralism, is much more attractive, and manageable, than the real thing". In an article published on 20 September 2007 in The Washington Times, American economist Richard W. Rahn called Putinism "a Russian nationalistic authoritarian form of government that pretends to be a free market democracy" and which "owes more of its lineage to fascism than communism", noting that "Putinism depended on the Russian economy growing rapidly enough that most people had rising standards of living and, in exchange, were willing to put up with the existing soft repression". He predicted that "as Russia's economic fortunes changed, Putinism was likely to become more repressive". After Rahn's remarks, Putin took actions to lessen democracy, promote conservative beliefs and values, and silence opposition to his policies and administration. Russian historian Andranik Migranyan saw the Putin regime as restoring what he viewed as the natural functions of a government after the period of the 1990s, when oligopolies expressing only their own narrow interests allegedly ruled Russia. Migranyan said: "If democracy is the rule by a majority and the protection of the rights and opportunities of a minority, the current political regime can be described as democratic, at least formally. A multiparty political system exists in Russia, while several parties, most of them representing the opposition, have seats in the State Duma". Putinism In an article published 11 January 2000 in Sovetskaya Rossiya, Russian political analyst Andrey Piontkovsky characterized Putinism as the highest and final stage of bandit capitalism in Russia, the stage where, as one half-forgotten classic said, the bourgeoisie throws the flag of democratic freedoms and human rights overboard; and also as a war, "consolidation" of the nation on the grounds of hatred against some ethnic group, attack on freedom of speech, information brainwashing, isolation from the outside world, and further economic degradation. It was the first recorded usage of the term "Putinism". The terms "Putinism" and "Putinist" often have negative connotations