In the face of growing public discontent and a clear upward trend for the opposition—Alexei Navalny’s 27 percent of the vote in last month’s Moscow mayoral election was a wake-up call—the Russian authorities are considering their strategy for keeping the political system under control. The election for the Moscow City Duma, scheduled for September 2014, will be a particularly important test. In the current legislature of Russia’s capital city, “elected” in a sham 2009 vote, 91 percent of seats are occupied by Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, with the rest taken by the docile Communists. Given the levels of protest sentiments, the next Moscow Duma could look very different and become an important and high-profile political platform for Kremlin opponents.........
Article: http://www.worldaffairsjournal...
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