Now, what is the problem of the Russian opposition? How come in the past ten years, with all the advances of the mobile technology, Internet, and unrestricted travel and communication, it failed to become stronger, or even just adapt and change? Sadly, the question is still partially answered by Russia Blog's 2007 post "Liberals and Lesbians." That article talked about back-then liberal opposition party SPS hiring a transvestite band "Army of Lovers" to compose and sing the party's anthem across Russia. Other SPS-hired promoters were under-aged lesbian singers T.A.T.U; they made out at the arenas across Russian towns and several babushkas who happened to tune in at that moment on their TV sets had heart attacks and literally died. The sad part of the story is that not much has changed in the past four years. Russian liberal opposition is still out of touch with reality and Russian people. Prokhorov knows it and suggested to not call his party "The Right Cause" (Pravoye Delo) an opposition party. In his acceptance speech, he said "I propose to eliminate the word 'opposition' from our lexicon. For our citizens, the word 'opposition' is associated with marginal groups and not political parties."

Garry Kasparov--admired in the West for winning chess competitions and calling Putin a dictator--is known back in Russia as just a chess master. Those in Russia who read Western media, know him as a crazy chess master. Kasparov's moments of truth on the pages of American publications are joked about in Moscow's corporate offices. However, Kasparov is the most innocent opposition leader-wannabe. The new faces of PARNAS are rotten leftovers of the Yeltsin's era and early Putin's days.

Mikhail Kasyanov, Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Vladimir Milov are taken seriously neither by babushkas nor by the growing and educated middle class of the thirty-something-year-old professionals. Furthermore, now with Alexey Navalny on the scene, the capable, educated, and relatively wealthy group of young Russian (highly anti-Putin) intelligentsia found a new center of gravity. However, Navalny is unpolished and would not be able to win popular elections at least for a few more years.

I called several anti-Kremlin friends in Moscow and St. Peterburg--young and old--to ask their opinions about PARNAS' failure to register and the truth about the Russian opposition. Here is the story I got from the Russians in Russia:

First of all they don't care. Why? Because, not just Russians, but any people need a vision to follow. Following freak shows conducted by chess players in public squares during normal business hours can be merely called "a vision." Obama won the elections not just because he publicly hated Bush. He had a vision. The vision of a new healthcare system and foreign policy may be right or wrong or left or center--that's not the point--the point is that there was a clearly stated, easy-to-understand vision. American people followed.

Shifting to personalities and quality-control, Kasyanov, Nemtsov, Ryzhkov & Co. are very full of themselves. They've been at the country's steering wheel, made money, and were driven around town with the blue lights. They did have their chances! They wasted them. They are associated with bad. They think they are gods. They didn't fit in either system, and were left without jobs. In attempts to self-actualize without getting real jobs, they joined the semi-dead, Western-praised Russian opposition. They are incapable of a real democratic process. Americans know how their congressional candidates collect signatures and walk from home to home to answer electorate's questions. We will never live to see the day when Nemtsov and Kasyanov walk around the apartment blocks collecting those signatures. Furthermore, the capable managers who could ensure the due-diligence of the process of walking the blocks (currently that would be younger employees of PWC, EY, KPMG, Coca-Cola, Yandex, and other Russian-based well-functioning companies) do not want to be affiliated with the "crazies" (the word repeated multiple times by the responders of my non-scientific poll).

This leaves PARNAS with a very unmotivated but educated or uneducated but highly-motivated workforce, and zero hands-on supervision. The dead souls and under-aged signatures could have been just a fluke of people who never managed anything in their lives. Stealing budget money under drunken Yeltsin can barely be comparable to Joe Biden's or Dick Cheney's workloads.

On another hand, majority of Russians still sincerely follow Putin in praise of the achieved stability and a hope of a better tomorrow. While his accomplishments are obvious but outdated, the belief in a "better tomorrow" is an emotional consequence of Putin's personal charisma and that relative stability.

The liberal-organized monthly demonstrations in downtown Moscow attract hundreds. Fascists' spontaneous gathering attracted thousands. The hundreds of oppositionists that gather do annoy common people - they interrupt daily routine, create traffic jams, take over busy sidewalks, and simply discourage common citizens with their crazed presence and memories of the awful Nineties. That's where Kremlin shows its unpolished side - Russia Blog would like to give a free advice not only to the liberals, but also to Putin: let them be! Angry drivers will disperse "the opposition" much better than police units, and Western media won't get the photos of screaming hippies and chess players dragged away by people in uniforms.

The ultimate truth is - Kremlin needs opposition more than opposition needs itself. For now, all the evils of the world--foreign and domestic--get blamed on Medvedev and Putin. Communists are comfortable where they are - their dying electorate is aging with the party leaders. Fat paychecks and immunity combined with zero responsibilities have been a sweet gig for Zyuganov and his party. Zhirinovsky is known to sell parliament seats - he's been routinely doing stuff that got Blagojevich convicted. However, Kremlin treasures him - Zhirinovsky's LDPR is a healthy outlet for nationalistic tendencies in the Russia society. Liberals? They don't exist. They have failed to gain even 1 percent of Russians' vote for years.

The bottom-line is: no one has got the vision. Neither do Putin and Medvedev. Russian politics have become a balancing act of balancing the balance sheets of oil revenues and national approval. The hamster in a wheel doesn't get far. Neither do Russian politicians. Putin, Medvedev, Zyganov, Zhirinovsky, Kasparov, Kasyanov, etc. are all hamsters. Let's hope one of them evolves into a rabbit (or a pig) to start running in a straight line, towards that vision that the Russian nation desperately needs.