In the view of numerous online and street protests against the results of Parliamentary elections in Russia in November 2011, Putin decided to "Go Social Media" and opened people's opinion page on his Presidential Campaign 2012 website where anyone can type up his mind. The first day tens of thousands people suggested Putin has to retire. . .
It is worth saying that for 30 days after the elections, the Putin's administration did not react to protests in any way; protests of this scale had not happened in Russia since 1993. To give you an idea of how big the crowd is, one of the Moscow protests in November kept the number of participants around 100,000 given that most people did join the crowd only for a couple hours. The protest movement rejected any sort of leader so far, at least those who attempted to head it.
And this all started through social media in a matter of hours. Hundreds of thousands people joined. And is happening through social media: blogs and twitter. The almighty government has no idea how to control it, or how to appropriately address it.
Putin's first attempt to start a dialogue succeeded. He got to hear his people. Was it something he wanted to hear? What would be the ultimate response? He can't afford suppressions of any kind now. Would he start loosening control? Or he already lost it?
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