The Re-Birth of Russian Civil Society ?

The latest news on the series of Russian protests against Putin cruel Benefit Reform, including the latest one on February 12 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4260117.stm
shows that Russian Society has begun to fight back the Putin Regime amoral policies. I followed the news about these protests for quite some time on the Internet. The fact is that protesters, mostly elderly people and previously big fans of the President, displayed signs like "Putin is the enemy worse then Hitler", "Putin is the murderer of the elderly" or "Bastards, Return the Benefits", shows how quickly all illusions about Putin that Kremlin political technologists crafted about him and his regime of "managed democracy" have been shattered. The good sign is that civic movement in Russia is not dead. However, one thing is to protest against specific policies of the regime or even against Putin himself, and quite another thing is to decide where to go from there. Do protesters want to replace now bad czar Putin into nicer and kinder czar ? Or will protesters and Russian public in general understand that all these popular Russian myths of kind and gentle czar-autocrat who will solve all the social ills at once is the road to nowhere--the road to another Putin ? I am certainly hope that the answer will be yes to the latter rather then the former question. I will become a real optimist when the majority of Russian people realize that autocracy, no matter how benign autocrat may be, will inevitably lead to enormous corruption, unchecked abuse of power and finally, the collapse of the entire political and socio-economic structure once the autocrat retires or dies without decent successor. The best thing United States government and US Non-Governmental organizations can do right now is to establish the contact between the American and Russian non-totalitarian civil movements and encourage the discussion of what kind of government Russian people really need so the Russia at last can become democratic, prosperous, law-abiding and non-threatening society.