Masha Lipman writes in the Washington Post on the recent protests staged in Irkutsk and Kaliningrad (Grigory Pasko has also covered the Lake Baikal story here).

Control over mass-audience television enables the Kremlin to keep undesirable information from the majority. Control over decision-making makes it possible to raise taxes and tariffs or ignore environmental threats. Control over gubernatorial appointments means a governor can be replaced at any time. But when the economic crisis prompts unpopular decisions, resentment has festered into protests. And the unelected governors fail to connect with or quell their constituencies, especially if they lack regional roots.

Controlling the developments across Russia's 11 time zones is an increasing challenge for the centralized government. (President Dmitry Medvedev is adamant about retaining the system of unelected governors, but one of his recent proposals was to reduce the number of Russian time zones.) It was easy for the Kremlin to gloss over

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TODAY: Russia to query Bulgaria on missile plans; UN report on Moscow's secret prisons; Medvedev responds to public reaction over corrupt police; Stalin billboards divide the Duma; too late for green Sochi; gnome poster removed ahead of presidential visit; Yabloko to merge with People's Democratic Union?Russia plans to make an official query to Bulgaria regarding the 'goals and essences' of its plans to deploy US air defense missiles on its territory.  A new report on secret detention centers in Moscow, compiled by the UN Human Rights Council is 'confrontational' and shouldn't be published as an official document, says Russia.  Prosecutors have opened four criminal cases over the demolition of homes in Rechnik, insisting that the court order ...

TODAY: Opposition activist torture claims; Miliband leaves with no breakthrough regarding diplomatic concerns; meets with rights activists; Putin and Medvedev popularity waning?; President in need of own power structure to realize reforms; Stalin resurrection an identity issue; Gorbachev on Russophobia; alcohol; jokes; artThe Other Russia reports that Konstantin Makarov, a member of the outlawed National Bolshevik Party, and organizer of an opposition rally planned for the 31st October in Voronezh, was detained and beaten by two policeman, one of whom was S. Yemkov of the notorious Interior Ministry's Center for Extremism Prevention.  According to Makarov, his torturers told him that he would face similar treatment after each rally held by the National Bolsheviks.  Foreign Minister Sergei ...

Yesterday Russia went through another one of its time-honored traditions of organized elections under sovereign democracy, and as may well be expected, United Russia swept 76 of 83 regions - helped no doubt by the strictly controlled lack of competition (unless you count the sanitized communist party's 13%).  Accusations of fraud were rife and likely pretty well founded, and, although this certainly not anything new, I am continually surprised by how many candidates were banned and blocked from competing.  It's just that we are so often told that opposition politicians like Nemtsov, Milov, and others are "so unpopular with average Russian voters," yet are blocked from candidacy.  Why not just let Milov lose if he's so unpopular? At any rate, this discussion of Russia's barely passable imitation of an electoral process deserves its own space (not even ...

Doug Sanders at the Globe and Mail talks to Masha Lipman about how the "fragile bond" between the Kremlin and the business sector is coming under strain because of the economic crisis and the oligarch rescue plan. Sounds like the name of an ironic, obscure rock band, no? "The Russian public accepted a non-participation pact in which the government delivers [prosperity] and the people do not meddle in politics," said Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Moscow Centre, a political think tank. "And until now the government was delivering in a very generous way: People's incomes were growing faster than the economy; people's salaries were growing faster than the productivity of labour did. But now that the Kremlin will no longer be able to rely on ample resources, the question is to what extent will people be disaffected and how might they act." In other words, they might become more interested ...