Russian Elections - One Week Later

When I said last week that I don't usually respond quickly to current events, I thought that it would be quite reasonable to make an exception in this case – Russian opposition parties had made serious gains in elections for the Duma; considering the country's recent political history, this was already news...and it seemed unlikely that there would be any more.
I was wrong, and I was not alone. Even expert political commentators seemed shocked by what followed. Not only did many people complain about electoral fraud (making this election similar to many others here), but, using social networking sites, they also actually acted together in coordinated way to protest the official election results. In the past, those opposed to the governing party were splintered into a various movements that spent as much time squabbling with one another as they did with those in power – their protests were relatively easily put down by overwhelming police power. This time, though, thousands of people in Russia's major cities gathered to criticize the government and demand a new election.

In Novosibirsk at least 3000 people turned up for protests.

And in Moscow tens of thousands of protesters went to the streets.

The only thing remotely similar I've seen in the 10 years that I have been here were the protests related to the monetization of pensioner’s benefits in 2005. Yet even here the differences are greater than the similarities. At that time the protesters were almost all elderly, and their anger was directed at a single government policy. Many of those gathered at protests this time around would disagree with one another about nearly every political issue. Yet, they were able to put aside their differences and make their voices heard. This time around the protesters were, to a large extent, also much younger. I've been very surprised to see that many acquaintances my age or younger have suddenly shown an interest in politics, whereas in previous years these same people either gave the government no thought or felt that they were powerless to make change.¹

That is not to say that those who went to the protests are likely to achieve the cancellation of previous election results. Much more likely is that the government will find a few “exceptional cases” where election laws were broken, but make clear that these had little effect on the final results. This seems to be the sense, in any case, of President Medvedev's annoucement on his Facebook page that said:

“People have the right to express their position, which is what they did... [but] I agree neither with the slogans, nor the statements voiced at the protests. Nevertheless, I have ordered checks into all the reports from polling stations regarding the compliance with the election laws.”

This has already generated an interesting response in the internet: 

Most of the signs from the protest read: “we're for fair elections.” “He doesn't agree,” reads the caption.

If nothing more is done by the government, protest organizers plan to go out on the streets again in two weeks time. The situation has suddenly become quite unpredictable, yet in a way that many here are approaching (contrary to the country's traditional instincts) with a degree of optimism. If those dissatisfied with the current domination of United Russia and Prime Minister Putin can find an attractive alternative (it doesn't seem at the moment any of the leaders of the opposition parties fit that bill), there is, surprisingly, a chance that the presidential election this coming March will be interesting for the first time in more than a decade.

1 No less surprising is the fact that officials from the  Russian Orthodox Church have called for “more public control” over the electoral system. In the past years the Orthodox Church has almost without exception supported the government currently in power.