Turning to the analysis of the “democracy” notion, the author notes that the widely spread understanding of the democratic arrangement presuming such elements of a political system as periodical change of political leadership by means of free elections and securing broadest individual rights as well as minorities’ rights within a national state, is far from always corresponding to the substantial meaning of the said notion. In the context of such an approach it is the concepts of electiveness, suffrage, nation-state etc., that become the subject of the author’ s attention. The objective of the article is to initiate a discussion of the problematic zones and of the “tension points” of democracy, often to be found at the periphery of the political science discourse.