Opinion Something to fight for

The place on the river was called a youth living complex,the product of a classically harebrained Young Communist League scheme. Young professionals at important state enterprises were given months away from their jobs to labour as an overeducated communal construction crew,and then moved into a precious new apartment.

But this was 1991,a time of possibilities. Many of the families in my little microcosm moved into their new homes in the youth living complex “Atom” and promptly quit their state jobs to join the new private sector.

I followed a sample of Atom families as they tried to figure out the novelty of a self-reliant life. (Meanwhile one of their contemporaries,Vladimir Putin,was winding up his own formative experience in the ultimate bastion of the state,the KGB.)

My favourite Atom dweller was a brawny,idealistic engineer named Igor. While most new capitalists practiced some form of wheeling and dealing — importing jeans,computers,rock albums — Igor was one of the few who had set out to make it as a private manufacturer.

For Russia,it was a time of confused quest,a longing to be — normal people. But then what? Everything from the rules of the marketplace to the meaning of life had to be improvised on the ruins of a monstrous failed experiment. Rackets abounded. Mystics and healers and hypnotists attracted huge crowds.

Flash forward a decade,halfway to the present. The new Russia was still a work in progress. That obscure KGB colonel was a popular president. Putin provided prosperity enough,a paternalistic sense of order and a reassuring narrative of national pride. The price was bearable: an unspoken acceptance of the way things are,a small surrender of dignity. Shut up,get rich.

Flash forward another decade. When tens of thousands massed in Moscow this month to protest questionable parliamentary elections and Putin’s high-handed manner,the news reports characterised it as a revolt of the middle class. My first thought was to track down Igor,my model new middle-classnik.

He and Tanya live in London now. After 20 years of battling bureaucratic flimflam,corruption and the entitlement mentality of his own work force,he has given up on Russia,sold his business,and,at age 55,he is pursuing a master’s degree in design. He has little regard for politics or politicians,never had,but he watched the Moscow protests on the Internet and was pleased with what he saw. In the throngs — along with some diehards who still want to turn the clock back to despotism,and some liberals whose hopes of 20 years ago have been rekindled — Igor saw something that made him proud: educated,young professionals,apparently . Among them,he told me,was his daughter Maria.

A Russian journalist has dubbed them “the new angry ones.” They are successful,30-ish urbanites,old enough to have sampled the wider world,too young to miss the comforting conformity of the Soviet experience,and too young to be afraid. They feel cheated and insulted by the Divine Right of Putin. They believe normal people deserve normal leaders. It turns out that Russia grew a middle class,but that alone wasn’t enough to grow a democracy. For that,you need a generation born innocent.

Putin seems clueless in his disdain,dismissing the protesters as tools of America,sneering that the white ribbons they wore resembled “condoms.” (When the throngs returned to the streets on Saturday,looking even more determined,the inevitable protest art featured Putin draped in a giant condom.)

It’s difficult to see yet a clear alternative to Putin. The contenders include a billionaire oligarch who is majority owner of the New Jersey Nets,Putin’s disenchanted former finance minister,a few old faces from 20 years ago,Communists,ultra-nationalists,reformers. Absent a consensus opposition leader,the odds are that Putin will prevail for another round. But the children of Putin’s own generation are the light at the end of the long Soviet tunnel. Perhaps the lesson for the other new democracies being born around the globe is,it takes time: you can take people out of the system,but it’s not so easy to take the system out of the people.