AFTER several years of political slumber and mild depression, Moscow has suddenly woken up in a state of commotion and excitement, simmering with protests, counter-protests, political debates and revolutionary ideas. On February 4th no fewer than four political demonstrations took place in the city. Talk of emigration, the favourite subject of Moscow's most successful and active people a few months ago, has been replaced by talk of change.

With less than a month to go before the presidential election on March 4th, the discussion is not about whether Vladimir Putin will win (he will), but about how long he will last and what may come next. The atmosphere of danger and excitement among protesters two months ago has been replaced by one of giddiness and celebration. The first mass protest, triggered by blatant vote-rigging in Moscow in the December 4th parliamentary elections, gathered some 7,000 people and was followed by police clashes with the activists. Two months later, on February 4th, ten times as many people strolled, unhindered, towards the Kremlin chanting “Russia without Putin”.

It was billed as a march, but it turned into a festive promenade. Politically affiliated columns consisting of communists, nationalists, anarchists, monarchists and liberals were overtaken and outnumbered by private citizens united in their dislike of political parties and uniforms. There were students, businessmen, journalists, pensioners, teachers and managers of different backgrounds and views. Some sported ski jackets previously worn on European slopes; others wore Russian felt boots and sheepskin coats.

What they had in common was not their incomes, but their unwillingness to be treated as imbeciles by their government. Many carried white balloons with the slogan “if you blow us out again we will burst”, a reference to the December election. This appeared to be not just a protest aimed at the Kremlin, but also a demonstration to one another of their numbers and resolve. Although the majority of protesters lack political representation, together they represent the politicisation of the urban middle class—a social shift that is transforming Russia's political landscape.

The main role in organising the protests belongs not to political parties or even to an official steering committee, but to Facebook. It has a concentration of the liberal-minded and affluent Moscow intelligentsia that is disproportionately larger than that of other social networks, according to Ilya Faybisovich, a Facebook activist. In the aftermath of the rigged Duma election, he helped a dozen journalists, activists and opinion-makers to form a private chat group that has over time evolved into the brain centre of the protest movement.

One of them is Yuri Saprykin, editorial director at Afisha-Rambler, a media group that publishes Afisha, a popular listing and entertainment magazine. He says the group's role is not to lead the protesters but to “sense their demands and formulate them”. Yet magazines like Afisha have shaped the expectations of Moscow professionals who travel abroad and spend time in art galleries and cafés. As Mr Saprykin notes, in recent years the image constructed by Afisha of Moscow as a European city has become incompatible with the reality of social inequality, corrupt police, bent courts and rigged elections.

Instead of adjusting expectations to reality or leaving the country, this successful and emancipated creative class is now starting to demand political changes that match its own view of the world. Its members want the Kremlin to give them the same freedom to choose and the same respect to which they have become accustomed in other spheres of their life. For many younger urban intellectuals, including Afisha's editor, Ilya Krasilshchik, Mr Putin and the Kremlin establishment “belong to a different civilisation”. But so does much of the rest of the country.

Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Mr Putin, duly portrays the protests as local events limited to some 200,000 affluent and bored Muscovites seeking political excitement. He is right that a large part of the Russian population from outside Moscow still backs Mr Putin because they fear instability. Yet sociologists and analysts say that the discontent of the urban middle class in Moscow is now mirrored in other large Russian cities. Even more important, although Russia's middle class may still be a minority, it has the capacity to set trends and form public opinion. The Kremlin has been quick to realise this, but its response has been uncertain.

It has made symbolic concessions such as bringing back elections for governors (but at the same time reserving the right to sack them). It has let some opposition politicians appear on the tightly controlled state television channels, while at the same time portraying them as agents of America. It has registered Mikhail Prokhorov, a billionaire tycoon, as a presidential contender who could appeal to the middle class, but disqualified Grigory Yavlinsky, the veteran leader of the liberal Yabloko party. All this, says a senior Russian businessman, suggests that Mr Putin will continue to simulate change instead of opening the political system to genuine competition.

The Kremlin's latest gesture was a rally organised to counter the protest march. On February 4th tens of thousands of state employees and people were brought in buses from nearby towns to Moscow to stage a show of public support for Mr Putin. Speeches by pro-Kremlin propagandists were meant to stir hysteria against the West and the protest movement they call the “orange plague”. Yet the more likely effect of this propaganda was to stoke anger against Mr Putin.

Alfred Kokh, a former deputy prime minister, predicts that Mr Putin's popularity rating and legitimacy are likely to suffer, not least because of the economic reforms he will have to undertake. “A wave of hatred of Putin personally will grow and his most pragmatic supporters will start abandoning him,” Mr Kokh writes. If Mr Putin tries to crack down, it would worsen his conflict with the elite.

Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister, has tried to act as an intermediary between the Kremlin and the protesters. So far neither side has taken up his offer. Mr Prokhorov, who is backed by part of the ruling elite, has also failed to win the protesters' support, because he is seen as another Kremlin project and part of the establishment. “What do we need him for?” asks Kirill Rogov, a popular columnist and ideologist of the protests. He argues that Russia needs institutional change, not another backroom deal. An honest election is the only way to ensure a transfer of power to a government committed to the rule of law. This has never happened in Russia.

Intriguingly, the most moderate voice is that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the jailed former head of the Yukos oil company. In a recent appeal to the protesters, which they have largely ignored, he argued that the best strategy would be to increase civil control over the bureaucracy, while engaging with those bureaucrats who are willing to co-operate. “Kudrin and his colleagues from Putin's entourage should not be rejected. Putin may see them as agents of influence, but we must see them as our fellow citizens. We are talking about whether we can get through without a civil war—no more and no less.”