What happens next is largely Mr Putin’s choice. He can respond to the pressure for change by trying to repress it, or by going with it. His past in the KGB, his record as an autocrat and his increasingly strident anti-Western rhetoric all suggest that he will lean towards the first course. So does the corruption that infuriates so many of the protesters. For Russia’s rulers, corruption is not a happy side-effect of power, but the core of the system. A small group of people wholly above the law has, in the past decade, become rich beyond the wildest dreams of the tsars. Mr Putin’s return to power would protect these ill-gotten gains. Reform would put them at risk.
But keeping Russia quiescent may prove difficult. Mr Putin succeeded in doing so for more than a decade partly because of rapid economic growth on the back of large real rises in oil prices. Oil and gas still make up two-thirds of Russia’s exports. Yet growth has now slowed sharply. Shale-gas discoveries elsewhere in the world are dragging down the price of gas, and the oil price is unlikely to rise as fast in the future as it has in the past. Europe, Russia’s largest market, is weak. Russia is suffering both capital flight and a brain drain. The working-age population is shrinking.
A new fiscal incontinence is aggravating these problems. At 40% of GDP, public spending is already high for a middle-income country. Mr Putin has made extravagant pre-election promises, adding up to as much as $160 billion to the budget, which will push this ratio even higher. His promises include large pay and pension increases for the armed forces, teachers and doctors. In 2012 alone he has pushed through a 33% rise in defence, security and police spending. The federal budget, which in 2007 achieved balance with oil prices at less than $30 a barrel, will soon need a figure closer to $130.
Nor is repression as easy to pull off as it once was.
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