Nina L Khrushcheva There are arguably two moments in the last century when a wrecking ball was taken to Russia’s political regime. In 1917, the Bolshevik revolution toppled the country’s teetering monarchy. And, in 1991, an abortive coup by Marxist-Leninist hardliners against the reformist Mikhail Gorbachev accelerated the tottering Soviet Union’s collapse. Does the wave of protests which have swept Russia in recent weeks herald another regime change? Not likely. To be sure, unlike the protests that shook Russia in 2011-12 in response to Vladimir Putin’s third inauguration as president, today’s protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader. Not only has Alexei Navalny been a relentless anti-corruption advocate for years; when he was arrested last month, he had just returned from Germany—where he had spent months recovering, after being poisoned with the Kremlin’s favourite nerve agent, Novichok—to continue confronting Putin’s regime.