Two weeks ago on this same page, when the country was still different, I wrote that the people, transformed into a crowd of philistines during Putin's 12 years, could very quickly become citizens if the minority presented an alternative and examples of responsible behavior. Change does not require a majority, it requires an active minority, even if it constitutes, as some offices believe, some three percent. The energy of this minority was enough for the thaw, perestroika, liberal reforms, the vote for Yeltsin in 1996. It was enough for marginal values to become mainstream.

And so it happened last week: part of the nation felt like responsible citizens. And perhaps there were many more of these people and they woke up much faster than one could have expected. Even if the share of violations, as calculated by the most prominent statistician of our time – the press secretary of the prime minister, amounted to a magical figure for the Russian ear (and throat) of 0.5 (%). This “half a liter” is quite enough for the “eternal” Putin regime to suffer an unprecedented moral defeat from the people, whom it considered forever recruited.

These days, a social stratum has been rapidly born that will determine the rules of the game for the next five or six years. The authorities, like some men in relationships with women, are waiting for everything to “dissipate” on its own. The rallies may begin to decline. But the new people with a completely new consciousness will not go anywhere. The authorities will not just have to put up with its existence – they will have to either “crush” it or negotiate with it.

It has become fashionable to think that civil awakening is a conspiracy of the well-fed. Nothing of the sort. It is a conspiracy of the working people. Those responsible for their families. The educated. Those who are not ready and cannot resettle their families to safer and better climates and educate their children in educational institutions in countries that are likely adversaries. A conspiracy of those who consider Russia their country. Who are not inclined to equate the state interest (which justifies kickbacks and embezzlement) with the interest of the nation. Participation in the affairs of the country is an absolute value for them, a condition for living in Russia, not beyond its borders.

Our leaders were looking for the middle class under the street lamp. Well, here it is! In all its glory: both low and upper – for every taste. Here, in the immortal words of the poet, are "a seamstress, a student, a responsible worker." Next to the gray-bearded intellectuals of the sixties, who had seen not only the rallies of the late 1980s, perfect boys and girls, dressed inappropriately for the weather, were walking to Bolotnaya, and refined Facebook users were neighbors with simple responsible tenants from the sleeping areas insulted by Putin, Medvedev and Churov.

And these are the well-fed? No, these are "products of different spheres" who have become citizens. Moreover, citizens with different political views, but now with the same values, which they are ready to defend.

The minority did not become the majority. It acquired its "self" and voice. It learned to talk. Now, like Akhmatova, who "taught women to talk", it will have to force the authorities to talk to it.

Andrey Kolesnikov: Three-percent people - 2