The Kremlin recovered and regained its grip – but never forgot (or forgave) its fright of December 2011. The sticks were plenty – from increased repression and new political prisoners jailed under the “Bolotnaya Square case” to numerous political restrictions rubberstamped by the Duma, itself the product of the fraudulent 2011 vote.
Vladimir Kara-Murza: Kremlin’s election games provide opening for opposition
IRKUTSK, RUSSIA - This Sunday, Russians will vote in their seventh parliamentary election since the fall of the Soviet Union. The last three of those elections - all of them under the government of Vladimir Putin - were assessed by Western observers as falling far short of European standards of democracy. The last vote, in 2011, was marred by especially high - and especially blatant - manipulation and fraud, as some 14 million votes were estimated to have been "stolen" in favor of Putin's party, and was followed by mass protests across the country, when tens of thousands of people went to the streets to demand free and fair elections. This was the first time Putin's Kremlin was not in control of the political agenda - and, for a short while, it seemed that the regime was beginning to crumble.
