Sleeping bear

IT WOULD be wrong to dismiss the past three months of mass protests against Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin as nothing but a mirage, a bad dream.

The protest movement has left two indelible marks. It has proved that the democratic spirit in Russia – expressed in the yearning for political pluralism, the rule of law and an active civil society – did not come and go at the start of the 1990s. It lies dormant in Russia, biding its time.

And the movement also showed that a new generation of Russians, generally young and untainted by the chaos and venality of the Boris Yeltsin era, was prepared to pick up the cudgels of reform.

Putin would, therefore, be foolish to think he has recaptured Russian hearts just because he got the numbers, a convincing 64 percent of the vote.

He secured another term of office largely because of a series of negatives – because the opposition was not united, was not politically experienced, had not yet generated national leaders and had no means to prove to the Russia outside Moscow and St Petersburg that they were a viable alternative.

Nor did they themselves want a revolution. Putin must not confuse fear of chaos with positive support.

Equally, the hard graft for the opposition is now just starting. Filling the streets was quite easy, but building awareness of civil society in places where it does not exist, or shaking “la Russie profonde” out of its lethargy is less glamorous work.

If Putin’s vulnerability is not just personal, but a failure of the system he put in place, then the task for the unsanctioned opposition which operates beyond the control of the Kremlin is to behave differently from generations of leaders before them.

It is to build constituencies from the bottom up. It would be a novelty for political leaders to represent their people, rather than themselves, but that is what has to start happening. – The Guardian