The mass protests of December 10 and 24 in Moscow, in which an estimated fifty to sixty thousand people (or twenty-nine to thirty thousand people, according to official government reports) demanded fair elections and protested the alleged mass falsifications of the recent Duma-election results, caused widespread euphoria in opposition circles both in Russia and in the West. Many began to talk of a Russian “Arab Spring,” the delegitimization of Russian authority and the end of the Putin regime. I shall seek to describe the condition that the authorities and the opposition now find themselves in and their readiness to face each other.
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