After hearing the news of the outbreak of the 1848 Paris revolution, Nicolas I is said to have rushed to the palace to interrupt the dancing and give the counter-revolutionary command: “On horses! To Paris!”
Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is in a similar mood. When protesters in the small, strategically insignificant Balkan state of Macedonia, outraged at revelations of corruption and the abuse of power, last month besieged a government building and demanded the resignation of the government, the Russian minister of foreign affairs raced to denounce Skopje’s colour revolution in the making.
Why? A clue lies in Sergei Lavrov’s appearance before the UN General Assembly this year, when the Russian foreign minister asked for a declaration “on the inadmissibility of interference into domestic affairs of sovereign states and the non-recognition of coups d’état as a method for changing governments”. Moscow, once the combative centre of world communist revolution, has become the world’s pre-eminent defender of sitting governments against their restless citizens.