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Just a month after Vladimir Putin began his third term as Russia’s president, 70,000 Russian protestors took to the streets yesterday demanding that he step down. Chanting “Russia Without Putin” the protests were made even more poignant by occurring on Russia Day, a national holiday first celebrated on June 12th 1990 as a formal show of Russian independence from the Soviet Union. The six hours of protest ended without the level of police repression demonstrators faced last month, though draconian new laws against public actions were in place.

On May 6th, the day before Putin’s third inauguration ceremony, protestors held a March of Millions to oppose corruption in the March Presidential elections and during the previous parliamentary elections in December. In May, riot police were out in force and clashed with protestors, leading to 700 arrests. In response a Russian legislator approved restrictions on mass demonstrations and heavy punishments for protestors deemed to be acting illegally, including fines of up to 300,000 rubles per person, or nearly $10,000. Opposition leader Olga Romanova is quoted on Waging Nonviolence.org as saying this about yesterday’s continuation of mass demonstrations: “We’ve learned how to disobey nonviolently… now we have to defend our rights to think, discuss and decide.”

Election irregularities and a continuation of Vladimir Putin’s regime is the major focus of the opposition. A former KGB agent under the Soviet Union, Vladimir Putin was elected President of Russia for a third term in March after elections that were criticized by the election oversight body, the Organization for the Security and Co-operation in Europe as being “clearly skewed” in Putin’s favor. Putin has shuffled between the office of Russia’s President and Prime Minister since 1999, and his current term of six years ends in 2018.

GUEST: David Kotz is professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and coauthor of “Russia’s Path from Gorbachev to Putin: The Demise of the Soviet System and the New Russia.”