I'm glad some of my qualms about the high potential for police violence in Moscow haven't come to pass (yet, at least not today — they plan to come back December 24 to rally) — but I remain skeptical and curious about the current Internet-driven Russian Revo. What should we call it, the Netizen Revolution? The Colourless Revolution? (they're all wearing white ribbons which were suggested and virally-spread by Live Journal bloggers).

It's funny the Sublime Oblivion has voted my post of yesterday "the most reality-disconnected". I'm not afraid to be out of touch, different, contrary, etc. I'm not an official or paid Russia-watcher, although in the past I've had jobs directly related to translating Russian or writing news or reports about Russia and I've translated quite a few books, including the works of Putin and Yeltsin. I'm just someone whose fate has been intertwined with Russia so I follow it when I can.

1. While 35,000 pledged on Facebook and related groups to turn out to the street, only 15,000 to 20,000 came. So what happened to 10-20,000 people? I'm sure it will be churlish to ask this question but I don't fear labels — the reality is we have to ask why, if the Internet is supposed to be this great boon and amplifier of social movements and protest, 10,000 or more people chicken out. Either those numbers were inflated to begin with, or people just found lots more interesting or compelling things to do Saturday morning like watch the Arsenals' game or sleep off a hangover.

2. The media is reporting (lenta.ru) that there were no major police brutality incidents and only a few hundred arrested in the provinces. Well, just because it wasn't the Moscow beau-monde, let's care what happened to those people in the provinces, they may be looking at more than the usual 15-sutok (15-day arrest) punishment.

3. We're also hearing that official media broke out of character and covered the demonstrations. Everyone finds that a marvel and somehow a tremendously encouraging thing. I turn a weather eye on it. TV doesn't change overnight. That they are covering largely Just Russia and Communist Party rallies in the streets lets me know that there could be a long-term plan here by Kremlin social-controller Surkov and others to co-opt Just Russia and let Nature take its course with the CP and LDPR (they will self-discredit or cross over or will be junior partners for the right price).

If you're Putin, a KGB master manipulator and hands-on thug, what do you do if you see that public opinion about your actual nastiness is getting stronger? You could use brute, unrelenting force (and we may still see that) or you could do another thing: let people let off steam, manage it, control it (by seeming to embrace it on state TV, and ultimately co-opt it.

Things are seldom what they seem in Russia, it has such a long history of manipulation. I remember when everybody thought Yeltsin, democracy, the liberals had triumphed and taken over the White House in 1991. But there was a wing of the White House where soon, Yeltsin's people complained they couldn't go to. If you peered down that corridor you would see men with guns. These were Alexander Rutskoy's people and perhaps he was busy praying to the Virgin Mary. In any event, it wasn't too long before Rutskoy was taking over the White House with what you could describe as the reactionaries, the communists (people seldom understand that's what communists are.) But before that, a delegation of triumphant anti-coup Russian leaders came to New York City for meetings. There was a reception at the Russian mission to the UN I was invited to. To my surprise, along with Rutskoy, head of delegation, there was the same KGB minder I had met some years previously who was assigned to us from APN to dog our camera crew. No accident, comrade. That time was the first I saw the Russian Cossacks welcomed back to the mission — and they haven't left.

4. We're hearing calls for release of political prisoners. Good! What do they mean, though? Navalny? Navalny *and* Nemtsov? Or will they include Khodorkovsky and Lebedev? That's the test.

5. What is the nature of this revolution? We still don't know, fully. Let's remember it's about justice, not democracy and freedom and human rights, which are all different things. Example from the Times:

Leonid Gigen, 26, an artist, said frustration has boiled over because of violations in the parliamentary campaign. During the parliamentary campaign, young Russians filmed authority figures cajoling, bribing or offering money to their subordinates to get out the vote for United Russia and posted the video online. More video circulated on Election Day, when many Russians in their teens and 20s camped out in polling stations as amateur observers.

These are people who want the elections to be fair and clean and less baldly manipulated than they were, but if the elections were cleaned up, might vote for Communists, Just Russia (which is…whatever it is), and even the ill-named Libertarians. Or they might in fact vote for United Russia in many places. Will we ever know?

The sense of justice in Russia is strong. It's what propels people to go up against the state monolith. But let's not forget that it's what compels them to put state monoliths in place in the first place. Russians have a deep sense of hatred and vengeance for each other and they actually look to the state to keep down their fellow man, whom they view as untrustworthy and unruly.

Overcoming that sense of vicious suspicion for people outside one's circle — deliberately fostered by the KGB and its predecessors and successors all these years but also culturally inherent — is not going to be easy. Having some kind of sense of solidarity with other people even if you don't like their views or don't like them, for reasons of higher principle — that would be a nice thing to see emerge in Russia, and it will have to emerge to make any revolution succeed. But revolutions aren't about being nice. They're about kicking out people you don't like and taking power.

If the crowd cries "Putina na nary" (i.e. send Putin to labour camp to sleep on wooden planks like they have in the camp cells), but not "Putina v sud" (to court), then you get the idea. Justice isn't about due process and the rule of law and the law of discovery and adversarial defense. It's about bypassing all of that and putting the person right into jail, do not pass "go", do not collect $200 dollars.

I'm sure there are plenty of things one could arrest Putin for. Let's start with Chechnya? Wrongful imprisonment of Khodorkovsky and Magnitsky? And then sure, ballot-box stuffing. But if you were to jail Putin for these things, there would be literally thousands of lieutenants — Kremlin officials, regional governors, enforcers — that would all have to go to jail, too. That's what gave them all pause when they should have tried the Communist Party in 1991 for crimes against humanity — they'd have to send more than half the parliament to jail. And anyone at the level of a regional party secretary would be implicated in such crimes — and more. In fact, it would be very hard to have a de-Nazification type of operation as you would literally be left without the red directors who kept the factories running…

BTW, when we first filmed Nemtsov back in 1991-1992, he was clearly supported by the KGB and red directors of the military-industrial complex of Gorky/Nizhny Novgorod. Yes, a Jewish liberal, a scientist, a supporter of Andrei Sakharov's who ensured that his apartment in exile was made a museum immediately. But also supported by those siloviki in the regions, some of whom later went on to become successful businessmen. Is that what the Kremlin was always afraid of, other people's regional siloviki?

Some posters in a slideshow by Slon.

6. Navalny. Says Ellen Barry ofthe Times, who first wonderfully describes Navalny's "paint-stripping contempt":

MR. NAVALNY has Nordic good looks, a caustic sense of humor and no political organization.

Five years ago, he quit the liberal party Yabloko, frustrated with the liberals’ infighting and isolation from mainstream Russian opinion. Liberals, meanwhile, have deep reservations about him, because he espouses Russian nationalist views. He has appeared as a speaker alongside neo-Nazis and skinheads, and once starred in a video that compares dark-skinned Caucasus militants to cockroaches. While cockroaches can be killed with a slipper, he says that in the case of humans, “I recommend a pistol.”

Well, wait. Is this the Norwegian terrorist Breitbart we're talking about, or the hope of Russian democracy? To be sure, the Times hasn't always gotten it right over the years about dissidents (Clifford Levy is a notable exception) — there's some decided diffidence about dissidents there in fact which sometimes makes the Washington Post a better read on the subject (and certainly the Wall Street Journal).

Still, it's not just the Times ringing these warning bells.

When the Egyptian revolution got started, everybody said that ElBaradei, of the atomic agency, would lead the scientists and liberals and we didn't have to worry. When that become obviously a non-starter, everybody said Wael Ghonim, the Google engineer who had worked outside of Egypt and run a Facebook page under a pseudonym, would save the day by rallying Internet people, hipsters, young kids, etc. No matter that Wael was soon spouting that weird amalgam of Leninism and Islamism that you see in movements in the region where Islamism *is* literally inspired and shaped by Leninism. We were supposed to look past crude calls for collectivism and see all the beauty. Today, we have a choice between the brutal military, and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood — or worse, the Salafis.

In Russia, we'll have a choice that will look superficially similar — the brutal KGB and siloviki that Putin can muster, and the…whatever we're supposed to call the amalgam of old-line Communists, fascistic red/brown "libertarians," and nationalist Navalny youth. Not pretty! I wish better for Russia, and maybe if Leonid Gozman has his way, it will be better.