After the December 4 elections to the State Duma, the general situation in Russia is judged by single acts of protest in a number of Russian cities, first of all in Moscow, where acts of discontent are met with suppression.

The reactions themselves vary from biased Westerns comments to opposition mouthpieces with a tendency to denunciate the ruling authorities “at any cost”, to less prejudiced opinion of those who are truly concerned with the real state of affairs in Russia.

An accurate evaluation of the post election state of affairs cannot be taken only from oppositional press or from the internet’s “social network”.

Acts of protest, one way or another, are currently happening in many countries, both less and more democratic than Russia. And everywhere they are accompanied by tough methods of dispersal of demonstrators, so the Russia authorities, and equally their political and public structures supporting them, always have a convenient excuse “for comparison”.

When analyzing the power layout in Russia one should depart from certain other details.

First of all it’s about the fact that despite the active pre-election campaign of the ruling power, in the atmosphere of non-stop calls “to take part in the voting by all means”, 40 percent of voters ignored and boycotted the voting itself.

Figures speak for themselves: the number of voters who boycotted the election (40 percent) was only a little less than those who voted for the ruling political party Yedinaya Rossia (United Russia, 50 percent). Suffice to say, that the number of non-participants exceeded the total number of supporters of the other three parties (the Communist Party, Spravedlivaya Rossia (Fair Russia)) and the Liberal-Democratic Party) that have entered the new State Duma. This fact points to the high level of apathy ruling in Russian society.

Second, it should always be taken into consideration that low turnout does not demonstrate the sentiments of Russian, rather than Russia-based, voters: 60 percent of voters who took part in the election – is an average arithmetic indicator achieved due to high level of active participation of the population in a number of Russian ethnic territorial entities.

For example, in North-Caucasian autonomies a completely unique (feudal) form of governance has been established, when the president of this or that territorial entity possesses practically unlimited authority and is capable of “driving all the populations” to polling stations, because his/her presidential chair depends on that active participation, and so does the size of allotments from the federal budget.

In Dagestan, in particular, more than 90 percent turnout was secured and more than 90 percent of them voted for Yedinaya Rossia. In Chechnya, there was a 99 percent turnout to vote. And, 99 percent of those who voted, voted for Yedinaya Rossia; Ingushetia showed 86 percent turnout and more than 90 percent voted for Yedinaya Rossia, in Karachai-Cherkess the turnout was more than 93 percent, and 90 percent voted for Yedinaya Rossia.

A diametrically opposite situation was observed in (ethnic) Russian regions, in some of which more than half of the registered voter population did not show up for voting. Namely, Krasnoyarsk showed 49 percent turnout, Primorsk region – 48 percent, Arkhangelsk region – 48 percent, etc.

These were the indicators that became the main shock to the ruling authorities. The situation is, practically, rather paradoxical: the majority of boycotting voters reside in the most successful and better-off regions of Russia.

Moreover, even in their motherland – Leningrad region – the president and the premier received only 30-percent of votes.

To sum it up: in Russia representatives of the lower-middle and middle class spoke against the current leadership.

And it is that numerous stratum of society that has chosen its “alternative to Putin” as represented by oligarch-out-of-favor Mikhail Khodorovsky. Not surprisingly it is Khodorovsky’s supporters who are holding the acts of protests.

Khodorovsky is the person who, in case of coming to the office, could create a more or les acceptable atmosphere for private business.

As for the most deprived strata of Russia society, they do not have a manifested leader yet. It is possible, that with the aggravation of the second wave of the global economic crisis acts of protests of the poor would acquire spontaneous but mass character, and then the option in Russia would be prospects of a bourgeois-democratic, rather than bourgeois revolution as is the case today.