Open protest against Putin is notable

Demonstrations in the streets of Russian cities and towns Monday, directed against the rule and culture of President Vladimir Putin, contradicted the image and role of him and his government in recent relations with the United States.

The demonstrations, in an estimated 1,000 cities and towns across Russia, from St. Petersburg in the west to Vladivostok in the east, were allegedly directed against Putin and the corruption and heavyhanded nature of his rule. He has been in power since 1999. So what lies at the base of the visible opposition to Putin? First of all, Putin came to be riding high on the back of high oil prices.

Secondly, Putin seemed to offer Russians a firm hand on the wheel after the fall of the Soviet Union..

But it must never be forgotten that Russia is very hard to rule.

The regimes of Czar Nicholas II, Leon Trotsky, Josef Stalin and Mikhail Gorbachev basically fell, all in a century.

It is against that background that Putin rules, and sometimes plays very rough.

The forces beneath the surface, and the regime’s reaction to them, is what Russia, the United States and the world saw on Monday.

There is no reason to believe that the demonstrators or disorder will come to reign soon in Russia. But history and the nature of the country must be borne in mind in efforts to determine reasonable U.S. policy, or to traffic with the beast.