ABSTRACT
In December 2011, the Russian opposition got a boost of strength when tens of thousands of people gathered on the streets of Moscow to protest against the recent parliamentary elections that they saw as falsified in favour of the United Russia Party. These anti-government protests were the largest since the perestroika era, and many commenters interpreted the electoral protests of late 2011 as a sudden awakening of Russian civil society (e.g. Alexandrova 2011; Whitmore 2011). People’s anger started to grow after the Prime Minister at the time, Vladimir Putin, and President Dmitry Medvedev announced in September 2011 that they would ‘swap places’. This kind of announcement, three months before the elections, was interpreted as the country leaders being too arrogant, and the opposition seized the opportunity to mobilize people’s dissatisfaction. The real trigger for people to take their disappointment to the streets was the parliamentary elections in December 2011, which were reported as falsified in many ways.
