Russia's Vladimir Putin is the latest world leader to feel the chilly breath of democracy's outriders around his usually well-muffed ears.
Last weekend in Moscow up to 50,000 people braved the intemperate conditions to protest against alleged widespread corruption and election fraud at the hands of the prime minister's United Russia party. Nor was the protest limited to the seat of power: demonstrations were reported to have taken place in up to 50 cities, with 7000 assembling in St Petersburg and 4000 in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, undeterred by mid-winter temperatures of -20degC.
They were protesting against the blatant vote-rigging said to have occurred during the latest parliamentary election which saw United Russia gain a winning 49.32% of the vote, a figure alleged to have been bloated by various fraudulent activities, some of which were documented by now-widespread digital technologies - smartphones and the like - and circulated on the internet. Possessed by a growing, educated urban middle class, these same tools have helped to mobilise a usually compliant and apolitical section of Russian society. Mr Putin's functionaries have evidently yet to catch up with the notion that in the digital age nothing is secret - and the subsequent mobilisation of the outraged and the disenfranchised more easily facilitated than ever.
The tens of thousands who gathered to protest at the electoral fraud were mostly young and brought together through various social networking sites. Such is their penetration in Russia - as elsewhere in the world - that there is little an authoritarian government can do to redraw the curtain of secrecy across hitherto corrupt practices.
With the aid of new technology, the protester has emerged as a singular force in the modern age with a sway not seen since the social turmoil of 1968. Now Time magazine has named "The Protester" the Person of the Year for 2011.
Cited as the person or thing that has most influenced the culture and the news during the year in question, the magazine said it was recognising protesters because they are "redefining people power" around the world. The most far-reaching popular protest movements this year have been those of the "Arab Spring".
These were mobilised across North Africa and the Middle East by populations which had long suffered the multiple and ongoing injustices of tyrannical regimes - but until the widespread advent of digital devices and social networking sites had neither the means to share their outrage nor to organise their response. That changed as images of brutality and of resistance were captured by smartphone video and posted on the internet; and as sites sprang up to act as virtual headquarters or rallying points for popular protest movements.
Regimes fell in Tunisia and Egypt. A power struggle pitting forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad against dissidents throughout the country continues in Syria.
In Yemen there has been a change of leadership. Protest has quietened, for now, in Iran, but the political face of the region has been reconfigured away from despotism and towards more inclusive forms of government. The West, too, has seen sustained protest this year in the form of the Occupy movement, which, while initiated in the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon, spread across the globe.
Protesting against inequality and some of the more socially corrosive outcomes of unfettered neo-liberal capitalism, branches set up in public spaces in almost all New Zealand cities, including Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and in Dunedin's Octagon.
Whether this last group has succeeded in generating a coherent message to the masses is another matter. In a country in which most people eat three square meals a day and many spend parts of their weekends considering the inspection for purchase of the latest batch of consumer goods, it might be thought not. There are, however, indications it has generated support in some quarters, in particular as a red flag against increasing corporate wealth and rising levels of poverty. That in itself is not to be sniffed at. As Time editor Rick Stengel noted: "They [the protesters] literally embodied the idea that individual action can bring collective, colossal change."
