The Kremlin made its first concrete concession to opposition protesters on Wednesday after Boris Gryzlov, the speaker of parliament and a top ally of Vladimir Putin, resigned from his post.
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His decision, which would undoubtedly have been instigated by the Kremlin, removes one of the most notorious practitioners of the Kremlin's home grown brand of "managed" or "sovereign" democracy from the public eye.
The 60-year-old Mr Gryzlov had been the speaker of the Duma, theRussian lower house of parliament, for the past eight years. His job as day-to-day manager of what remains a de facto one party state was to ensure that the chamber slavishly fulfilled its role as a Kremlin rubber stamp.
But after last Saturday's giant protest in Moscow against an allegedly rigged parliamentary election coupled with a 15 per cent drop in support for the ruling party, analysts said the Kremlin was looking for sacrificial lambs to placate public anger.
"He has long been a problem for the United Russia party," said Gleb Pavlovsky, a prominent political analyst who used to advise the Kremlin. "In some respects he can be considered the co-author of the December 4 defeat."
Mr Gryzlov insisted however that he had decided to step down because he did not want to dominate political life.
Famous for his loyalty to Mr Putin, his lack of charisma, and his widely-reported belief that parliament is not a place for debate, he is likely to be found a senior but less public job.
"Gryzlov was serving as speaker when the situation was comfortable and predictable and when the United Russia (party) had a constitutional majority. (But) the situation is more complex now. The new speaker must be able to conduct a dialogue with the opposition," Alexei Makarkin, a political analyst, told the Interfax news agency.
President Dmitry Medvedev has pledged an investigation into alleged voter fraud, and, in a further development on Wednesday, Moscow officials sanctioned a new opposition demonstration against the disputed election results for Christmas Eve. Granting permission for up to 50,000 people to attend the protest, the authorities astutely chose a location in Moscow which is much further away from the Kremlin than last Saturday's demonstration and that is relatively easy to seal off. As of Wednesday evening, around 19,000 people had indicated on online social networks that they would attend.
Mr Putin's plan to return to the presidency after a March 4 vote remains unchanged though. On Wednesday, a little-known Siberian governor who has no chance of winning said he would also be running for president in what analysts said was a Kremlin manoeuvre to ensure that the election has a minimum number of candidates for appearance's sake.
Meanwhile, one of the most colourful presidential pretenders, billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, said he wanted to buy Kommersant, one of Russia's biggest publishing companies.
The group's flagship daily paper, Kommersant, hit the headlines earlier this week after its billionaire owner Alisher Usmanov fired top managers for publishing a photograph which contained an offensive insult aimed at Mr Putin.
Mr Usmanov, a major shareholder of Arsenal football club, said on Wednesday his media empire was not for sale though and rejected criticism from his own journalists who alleged that his intervention had been "an act of intimidation aimed at preventing any critical statements about Vladimir Putin."
Mr Putin is due to address the nation on Thursday in a televised question and answer session in which he is expected to discuss the recent protests, a day after the European Parliament called on Russia to cancel the disputed parliamentary vote and hold a new election.
