AT TWO O'CLOCK on the afternoon of June 12th, Elizaveta Chukicheva, a 16-year-old technical-college student, stood in the middle of Tverskaya Street in central Moscow next to a large reproduction of an idol from Russia's pagan antiquity. Ms Chukicheva held a sign on which she had written the words "I love Russia", and wore a T-shirt bearing the image of Aleksei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader. Against her parents' advice, she had answered Mr Navalny's call to attend a rally on Russia's national holiday against corruption, and for his campaign for the presidential election in 2018. "My parents told me that we can't change anything and that there are no prospects for us in this country," she said. "But I don't want to leave Russia, and I believe that we can change things." It was her first political action ever, and she was nervous.
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