WHAT DO THE RUSSIANS ON THE STREET WANT ?

People in Russia want the kind of things that people in the U.S. and Western Europe take for granted. They just want fair elections. They want a kind of real, plural media that listens to opposition voices. They want a more plural political landscape, because at the moment, basically Russia is formally a democracy but in reality it is nothing of the kind. It has a pretend opposition rather than a real opposition. And it has none of the safeguards that are taken for granted in the West. The court system is corrupted and susceptible to political influence. And people are just not protected when they go about their everyday life. They are at the mercy of predatory bureaucrats, policement, people who've got a stake in the regime and ordinary Russians are increasingly fed up with this.

There are other factors as well:

1. There is a rise of a new generation of young Russian people who are not afraid of change. They want social mobility and dream about meteoric careers.

2. Another factor is the swelling internal opposition within the Russian elite.

3. The parliamentary elections are a pretext for the maximum inflammation of social dissatisfaction and to deligitimize the upcoming Presidential elections. The falsification of the election results truly have a place but they occured in 2007 and then even possibly on a greater scale than now. But then it was not an issue for anyone. Today Russian society is incensed and will continue to be deliberately heated up.

The Russian prostests are a middle class phenomena. They are a revolt of an abused middle calss both against the 1% oligarchs and against the infuriating lowest layer of corrupt officialdom with which the middle class cannot avoid frequent run-ins. The perception of a corrupt regime is exactly what it driving people on the streets.

The very fact that leadership positions can be challenged reminds us that the corollary of democratic consent is the allowance of permanent dissent.

Democracies pride themselves on allowing as much room as possible for dissenting opinions, including opinions on the political-legal foundations of the state itself, its economic arrangements and its current incumbent officers. Indeed, this permissiveness is seen as one of the cornerstones of liberal democratic stability, the paradoxical provision of security through the maintenance of opposition and challenge.

Dissent must not only be accepted as unavoidable in practice but also positively welcomed because it encourages a diversity of views and promotes debates, discussion and deliberation, thereby encouraging progress, innovation and dynamism and fostering a healthy civic life.