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In Moscow this Saturday thousands of people marched against fraudulent elections and the Putin regime. This was the third such mass protest since the December 4 parliamentary elections, in which Vladimir Putin’s previously dominant United Russia party failed to get more than 50 percent of the vote despite widespread fraud in its favor.  Clearly, the anti-Putin movement, comprised primarily of members of the urban middle class, is here to stay.

There is a great deal to cheer about seeing Russians protest their leaders’ heavy-handedness and corruption, and indeed American commentators have been among the biggest cheerleaders. Thomas Friedman, for instance, characterized the movement as a northern migration of the Arab Spring, while the Washington...