The election of the once and future president of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, tempts one to despair that the brief and inspiring political awakening in Russia over the past year was for naught. He has gotten his way — replacing his protege Dmitry Medvedev and reclaiming the Kremlin to solidify authoritarianism and political stagnation.

But this victory may be both Putin's last and the final one for Putinism. The future turns on the behavior of a rising Russian middle class that is integrated into the world and alienated by the Kremlin's corrupt politics.

I first went to the Soviet Union in 1979 as a graduate student. I was immediately struck by how Soviet citizens walked along — looking at their feet. This was a frightened and cowed population, many of whom remembered firsthand the oppression and violence of Stalinism. Repression casts a long historical shadow.