ON THE face of it, Vladimir Putin got everything he wanted. On September 18th his United Russia party won a thumping three-quarters majority in the parliamentary elections. There were no protests of the sort that marred its last victory in the Duma five years ago. The president called this a sign of stability and trust in his party.
It is anything but that. The Kremlin made every effort to ensure the elections were as sterile and low-profile as possible. It banned and harassed genuine opposition parties and their leaders. And it persuaded many that nothing depended on voters. The official turnout was 48%—the lowest ever in the history of Russian elections. This average included several ethnic regions, such as Chechnya and Dagestan, where the turnout was an improbably high 80% or more. In the largest cities, such as Moscow and St Petersburg, only a third of voters cast their ballots, down from two-thirds five years ago. Alexei Navalny, an opposition politician who led the protests in 2011 and was barred from taking part in this election, told his followers: “You have not lost because this was not an…