Talk online about the Constitution is taking people away from the slogan of fighting for honest elections to the slogan of being against the country’s autocratic government. People are now speaking out not just against United Russia and Putin, but against the constitutionally enshrined institutional system that has made the phenomenon that is Putin possible. So what is being proposed in place of the “autocratic government”?

Putin, who is associated with certainty may accelerate the processes of decay. For his part, Medvedev, with his diffuse position and penchant for mimicry, might slow them down. But what is better for Russia? Putin's regime, relying on security structures and their control of property, is inherently repressive and incapable of modernisation.

Another factor of decline is the obsession of the power apparatus, above all security men, with their personal enrichment. All civilisations perished when their elites started thinking about their own purses. Sparta and the Ottoman Empire were invincible until the Spartans and the Janissaries engaged in trade...

Read Lilia Shevtsova