Today’s news is packed with all sorts of opinion articles speculating on what sort of brave new world we are looking at after the December 10th protests.  Naturally, much of this stargazing is wildly premature, but still irresistible nonetheless.  Writing on The New Republic, Paul Starobin becomes the first guy to reach what we can assume will be a very popular conclusion in the coming months before the 2012 presidential election:  that Russia could become even worse off without Putin.

ANY POST-PUTIN FUTURE, then, is likely to be less than democratic. The yearning on the streets seems to be for a leader more responsive to nationalistic grievances than Putin has been—and committed (at least in word) to cleaning out the fouled stables of the Putin era. (It may sound like an ideal scenario for an army dictator but Russia, unlike, say, a Turkey or a Chile, generally doesn’t take its autocrats from the military.)