Brian Till, on Moscow:

The street needs leaders, or cohesive coalitions of leaders, who can tell the movement when to lie low, like Mandela, and when to rise up, and who can demand more in the face of the regime’s tepid offerings. Starting with the Green revolution, in Iran, moving to Wall Street and what we’ve seen in Moscow today, these uprisings have sometimes seen individuals decline to lead (like Mir Hossein Moussavi in Iran), or suffer fractured leadership (like in Libya), or structure themselves in a way that they will never elevate a leader (Occupy), or simply too infant to have decided who, in the end, will lead (Moscow). But, it should be clear that revolutions need leaders, and those that succeed without will continue to be the exception rather than the rule — perhaps even more so today, because of both the advantages and dangers conferred by the digital era.