But a longer view of Russian history suggests that what looks like a harbinger of democratic change can be better understood as something else: a familiar drama pitting the father of the nation against a flock of discontented children. It is a dynamic that has played out cyclically in Russia over the centuries, back to the pre-Soviet times of the czars. In this case, a generation that has come of age under Putin, at first accepting and in many cases admiring of his strict rule, is now tiring of it. “This is the Putin generation that has grown up,” Tina Kandelaki, a 36-year-old talk show host, told The Wall Street Journal. “That doesn’t mean they have to love Putin.”
As the protest movement gains strength, which seems likely, it will be important for the West to keep this dynamic in mind. A revolt bent on toppling a father figure could produce a dangerous vacuum in which the pattern, the arrival of a new strongman, is repeated. Russia may be headed for a future without the embattled Putin, who is bidding for a six-year term as president in an election set for March. But to understand how this cycle plays out in Russian history is to realize that it isn’t necessarily heading for a democratic promised land.
Russian society has deep and abiding patriarchal roots, a legacy of its Orthodox Byzantine culture, in which the father — otets — is enshrined as the imperious (and infallible) ruler of the household. “Domostroi,” the 16th-century Orthodox manual for household management, promoted by both church and czar as an idealized expression of how Russians should live, calls for strict and unquestioning obedience of wife to husband and of children to parents, for the communal good of all.
