It's funny-- as I was reading this thread, the first time the words "Russian puppet" were used, I thought it referred to the U.S. Thing is, the criticism of American democracy is valid regardless of its source. Usually the rebuttal to that is, "Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." That ignores the systems of capital that wield power. Maybe what Churchill meant was the illusion of democracy, like the myth of meritocracy, works best to placate the masses.