Bloomberg View: Is the Arab Spring Headed to Moscow?; How to Defend Against Superbugs

The humiliation of Russia’s ruling party in the Dec. 4 parliamentary election—and the eruption of antigovernment protests that followed it—demonstrate just how fed up Russians are with a regime that has brought them crushing corruption and 12 years of monolithic rule. They also expose a deeper problem: the lack of a viable way to bring about peaceful democratic change.

The official results, which shrank the parliamentary majority of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party to 53 percent from 70 percent, only partly reflect what was a surprising triumph of grassroots activism. Hundreds of Russians, many of whom had never before shown much interest in politics, came out to act as monitors and document the Kremlin’s efforts to “win” the vote. Thanks to the monitors’ vigilance, we know that the elections were probably much worse for United Russia than the official tally suggests. Observers reported thousands of violations and posted videos on the Internet. One showed prestuffed voting urns at a just-opened polling station. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe noted “several serious indications of ballot box stuffing.”