http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=363&year=2002
On the site of Freedom House, a research agency that evaluates the state of affiars of different countries and comment on how FREE they are.
One can consult the map spf freedom efor each year with countries being marked as free, partly free or not free.
It is interesting to see the difference between the maps in 2003 and 2009. One sees the phenomenon of the East losing free states while the west has more and more free states. This is mainly due to Russia being classified as a non-free country and countries in South America being classified as the free or partly free countries.
How does one then justify the rise of the east?