A fiction author of the most vivid imagination would have a tough time coming up with a story as satirical as the recent 10,000-strong protests in Kaliningrad followed by political theatrics of the state-approved opposition, as Speaker of the Federation Council Sergei Mironov (of the state-sanitized opposition party, A Just Russia) made a big show out of publicly and sharply criticizing the ruling party over the budget and shortcomings of the anti-crisis measures – and then, for good measure, he took a little shot at Vladimir Putin himself.  Just to make sure we believed that the outburst was genuine, Mironov himself was then attacked and called “a rat” by United Russia deputies and then threatened with dismissal.

For a while, the gambit was working its magic – especially fueled on by the additionally well-timed publishing of Igor Yurgens report calling for urgent and immediate political reforms or else Russia would face atrophy.  Olga Kryshtanovskaya of the Russian Academy of Sciences appeared to be buying into it, as she told the Financial Times that the Kaliningrad-Mironov-Yurgens events showed that “Cracks are starting to appear in the hierarchy of the state.“