Russia

On 24 September 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he would step aside so that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin could return to the presidency in 2012, presumably for two six-year terms. This fait accompli effectively ended the period since 2008 in which Putin had claimed to share power with Medvedev, who articulated a desire to modernize Russia but failed to implement any significant policies toward that end in practice. Putin’s return seemed to signal that Russia would face 12 more years of systemic corruption, control of the country’s key assets by a narrow group of magnates closely tied to the leadership, national media that block free discussion of Russia’s problems, and courts that decide politically driven cases largely according to the whims of the executive authorities. However, the 4 December elections for the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, introduced a new dynamic in the Russian political system. Although the balloting was deeply flawed, voters used the process to reject the status quo, leaving the dominant United Russia party with just under 50 percent of the vote, according to official figures. What had been a steadily emerging mobilization of civil society before the elections culminated in large Moscow rallies on 10 and 24 December, backed by smaller protests across the country, at which participants denounced the electoral abuses and called for an end to Putin’s tenure. Though Russian activists have few institutional ways to turn their proposals into state policy, the elections and their aftermath showed that the authorities could no longer expect the public to passively accept their political decisions and low standards of governance.