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 Post suggested that it was a New Perestroika, and that the only thing standing between Russia and democracy is Putin’s stubborn hold on power.
But if the situation in Russia merits two cheers for popular protests, we should be more cautious about giving it a third. There was nothing tidy and unequivocal about the two historical analogies Tom Friedman and the Washington Post invoked. As the Arab Spring and the original Perestroika showed us, democratization does not necessarily follow from reformers toppling dictators. In fact, when a country lacks democratic institutions, such revolution can easily lead to violence, or even right back to the authoritarianism it sought to displace. Russia’s middle-class protest movement is especially prone to these dangers for a number of reasons rooted in recent history.
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